She has built a career, which now includes 12 novels, on defiantly difficult-to-like heroines, contrarian social and political views, and general tetchiness.
It's hard to quantify the psychological impact of all this on equity investors, but maybe we can see some of it in the tetchiness of stock markets these days.
The guitarist is one of those rare musicians who will answer any question thrown at him without guile or obfuscation, though not without the odd flash of tetchiness.
