Livre d'Or

Now, it's made clear elsewhere that it's Audley the character who is homophobic, not the author. But to be making that kind of joke, which relies on the idea that nobody could ever possibly imagine that a woman could be a doctor in the seventies (incidentally some thirty years after my grandmother qualified as a doctor, and it wasn't news then), is abyssmal.

I got caught out by a riddle that relied on the fact a doctor was a woman in the nineties, and I'd had a female doctor living across my parents' back fence when I grew up. It's not that being a female doctor is inconceivable, it's just that the default interpretation kicks in really fast in cases of gender-neutral speech.

The second speaker in the above quote would probably have figured it out a few seconds later, but the first speaker explains it before he gets a chance. (He says, not having read the book, therefore not really having a leg to stand on.)