Making peace with a mother’s death – and life

A fundamental question is posed midway through this narrative by Michael Portillo. Speaking in his guise as a colourfully dressed TV presenter rather than politician, he demands of Natasha Walter as the cameras roll: ‘What did your parents actually achieve?’ They are standing in a nuclear bunker, the site of her parents’ most audacious stunt, but the implication of futility resounds throughout the book, probed most rigorously by their daughter.

Walter counts as royalty in left-wing activist circles, her parents, Nicolas and Ruth, having been foundational in the nuclear disarmament movement of the 1960s alongside many other progressive campaigns. Nicolas served time in prison and Ruth was arrested. Both repeatedly put their lives on the line for what they believed in – a better, fairer, nuke-free world. It was clearly a given that their daughter would continue to carry the banner. Besides writing The New Feminism (1998), Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism (2008) and a spy novel, A Quiet Life (2016), she has worked tirelessly for refugee women through her journalism, founding a charity in 2007.

Portillo’s probing came at an especially difficult time, four months after the death of Walter’s mother. Nicolas had died in 2000, a firebrand to the end; Ruth had become a quieter, more nervous figure, albeit one who relished fun. Natasha’s final sight of her mother was at Euston station after an enjoyable lunch, only memorable in hindsight in that it was to be their last together. They ate vegetarian Indian food in the newly developed King’s Cross complex and the regeneration of the area prompted talk of progress. They discussed the #MeToo movement and approved of the changing expectations of women over three generations (Walter has a daughter). In retrospect, one statement of her mother’s was ominous but, refusing to pick up the clue, Natasha ‘went on talking about politics, memories and children’.