The Observer asks what five ‘bril­liant’ writ­ers believe ‘makes a man’. Jackie Collins goes for tal­ent, Tony Par­sons votes for pride, and Jonathan Coe says chivalry… and confusion?

If I’m con­fused about mas­culin­ity, in any case, I think that puts me in pretty safe com­pany — the com­pany of every other think­ing male in the coun­try. Because after the New Man deba­cle came the 1990s waste­lands of Lad Cul­ture, and where does that leave us now? Our sex­ual pol­i­tics are in the same state as our national pol­i­tics: con­fused, mori­bund, rud­der­less. Is it time to try to recover some essen­tials, to see if there might pos­si­bly have been some virtue in that baby we so ruth­lessly threw out with all the chau­vin­ist bathwater?

It’s actu­ally a good ques­tion to ask of your­self; What makes me a (wo)man?

As I said last month, accord­ing to Esquire I may not be all man.