The Spectator magazine combines incisive political analysis with books and arts reviews of unrivaled authority. Absolutely free. Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher.

Hello and welcome to Women with Balls, where I, Katie Balls, speak to today's trailblazers.

My guest today is an artist whose work once seen is hard to forget. Growing up on a family

farm that at one point has llamas, 200 goats and a pair of

ostriches, she still works for animals today, but in a rather unconventional way. She studied

English literature at university, but it was her job as a bartender at the Shortwich Electricity

showrooms that introduced her to new artists and saw her start creating her own work in the form of

taxidermy. It wasn't long before she was going to parties thrown by Damien Hirst and selling pieces to

Cape Moss, and she recently won the first Pintz Award. She describes those who question her art as childish,

asking, why anthropomorphise the animals? All you can say I'm doing at the very worst is depriving a crow of a meal.

My guest today is the taxidermist, Polly Morgan.

So Polly, thank you for joining us today.

On this podcast, we like to begin by asking her in the same question,

which is, would you describe your childhood as a happy one?

In the main, yes, it was.

It wasn't perfect, but I mean, it was great.

I had two older sisters and we got on very, well, we kind of thought like normal sisters do,

but we're very close now.

My mum and dad went happily married and they'd really struggled with money.

But I think all of those things ended up actually being a help probably in the long term,

not a hindrance.

It was quite an eccentric childhood.

...