Sarah Ditum

How the war on Roe was won

25 June 2022 4:00 pm

When did it become certain that American women’s abortion rights would fall? The Supreme Court’s ruling that ‘Roe was egregiously…

A flawed utopia: The Men, by Sandra Newman, reviewed

4 June 2022 9:00 am

The problem for feminism is men. Not, specifically, in the sense that men are the source of women’s problems, although…

Margaret Atwood seems embarrassed by the sheer volume of her output

26 February 2022 9:00 am

Margaret Atwood is among the major writers of English fiction of our time. This is a very boring way to…

Who’s to blame if Britney Spears has been ‘devoured’ by celebrity?

11 December 2021 9:00 am

All the questions around Britney Spears can be condensed into this one: who should we blame? For a long time,…

First love: The Inseparables, by Simone de Beauvoir, reviewed

28 August 2021 9:00 am

‘Newly discovered novel’ can be a discouraging phrase. Sure, some writers leave works of extraordinary calibre lurking among their effects…

Lucy Ellmann is angry about everything, especially men

7 August 2021 9:00 am

Is Lucy Ellmann serious? On the one hand, yes, very. The novel she published before this collection of essays was…

The man who made Manhattan: The Great Mistake, by Jonathan Lee, reviewed

24 July 2021 9:00 am

What makes a city? The collective labour of millions packed into its history; the constant forgetting of incomers who arrive…

Joan Didion’s needle-sharp eye never fails

27 February 2021 9:00 am

Most collections of journalism are bad. There are two reasons for this: one is that they are usually incoherent and…

Claire Messud helps us see the familiar with new eyes

21 November 2020 9:00 am

The title of this collection of journalism is a problem. Not the Kant’s Little Prussian Head bit, which, though opaque,…

From bashful teenager to supermodel: Susanna Moore’s fairytale memoir

27 June 2020 9:00 am

There’s a kind of writing about LA that I am a sucker for. Gossipy, lyrical, with a surface of affectless…

We don’t talk of a ‘working father’ — so why do we still refer to a ‘working mother’?

9 May 2020 9:00 am

The phrase ‘working mother’ ought to be as redundant sounding as ‘working father’ would be if anyone ever said that:…

Annie Ernaux looks back at her teenage self – and sees a stranger

4 April 2020 9:00 am

How can you recover the teenage girl you were? Not just recall the memories and recount the events — this…

The director of Persepolis talks about her biopic of Marie Curie: Marjane Satrapi interviewed

21 March 2020 9:00 am

The director of Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi, talks to Sarah Ditum about her new biopic of Marie Curie, exile from Iran and her fears for the future of democracy

Patti Smith had a bad year in 2016

12 October 2019 9:00 am

In the Chinese zodiac, 2016 was the year of the monkey, a trickster year full of the unhappy and the…

A New York state of mind – Doxology reviewed

14 September 2019 9:00 am

Doxology covers five decades and a spacious 400 pages, with all the subplots and digressions you would expect of a…

The trail-blazing women writers of the 1960s were quite different from the male Angries

17 August 2019 9:00 am

The accepted story of mid-20th century culture in Britain belongs to the boys: the British Invasion, Beyond the Fringe and…

A fallen woman in a vicious world: Jack the Ripper’s last victim, depicted in Le Petit Parisien

Why are we so obsessed with Jack the Ripper, but care so little for his victims?

23 March 2019 9:00 am

Before she was the subject of true-crime mythologising, Catherine Eddowes made her living from it, selling ballads based on real-life…

Caryl Phillips’s new novel manages to make Jean Rhys boring!

14 July 2018 9:00 am

The problem with writing about writers — and a particular blight on the current vogue for autofiction — is that…

Kitty Marion: too radical even for the suffragettes

28 April 2018 9:00 am

The suffragettes are largely remembered not as firestarters and bombers but as pale martyrs to patriarchy. The hunger artists refusing…

Who is Sylvia – what is she?

7 October 2017 9:00 am

In May 1956, three months after meeting Ted Hughes, one before they will marry, Sylvia Plath writes to her mother…

Inside the mind of a murderer

6 February 2016 9:00 am

For one week in July 2010, the aspiring spree killer Raoul Moat was the only news. ‘Aspiring’ because he didn’t…

Poet Laureate Ted Hughes (Photo: Getty)

In Crow’s dark shadow

26 September 2015 8:00 am

A dead parent, the interrogation of a literary inheritance, and over everything, a bird: Max Porter is apparently unafraid to…