Feminism

Why haven’t we heard of Phillis Bottome? In her 60-year career she published 33 novels, several of them bestsellers, short stories, essays, biographies and memoirs. Why haven’t we heard of Phyllis Bottome? In her 60-year career she published 33 novels, several of them bestsellers, short stories, essays, biographies and memoirs. She lectured widely in Britain and America. She was translated into nine languages. Her 1937 novel The Mortal Storm predicted the horrific consequences of Fascism. MGM made a film of it, starring James Stewart — the studio’s first openly anti-Nazi film. It premiered in America in 1940, just as Hitler’s troops entered Paris, and was arguably influential in persuading the

The last time I saw Benazir Bhutto was at Oxford, over champagne outside the Examination Schools, when she inquired piercingly of a subfusc linguist, ‘Racine? What is Racine?’ Older and richer than most undergraduates, and as a Harvard graduate presumably better educated, she was already world famous, and was obviously not at Oxford to learn about classical tragedy. The last time I saw Benazir Bhutto was at Oxford, over champagne outside the Examination Schools, when she inquired piercingly of a subfusc linguist, ‘Racine? What is Racine?’ Older and richer than most undergraduates, and as a Harvard graduate presumably better educated, she was already world famous, and was obviously not at

It is more than ten years since Natasha Walter published The New Feminism, a can-do look at the ‘uniquely happy story’ of the women’s movement. It is more than ten years since Natasha Walter published The New Feminism, a can-do look at the ‘uniquely happy story’ of the women’s movement. Then she urged the sisterhood to cast aside the puritanical fixations of yesterday and instead concentrate on politics, pay and the right to work part-time for a year or two without being left behind. At the time I was one of the several crosspatch hoodies who said ‘steady on: patchwork careers are all very well, but what about the uses