Divorce
The fresh hell of Dorothy Parker’s Hollywood
Though well paid as a screenwriter, Parker lampooned Hollywood’s moguls, dubbing MGM Metro-Goldwyn-Merde as she slipped further into alcoholism
The shame of being an alcoholic mother
Julia Hamilton and her daughter Arabella Byrne share their experiences of an addiction that seemed ‘baked into them like a curse’, and the special stigma they felt attached to them
Hands off my empty plastic bottles!
‘Where are my empty plastic bottles?’ I ran around the house screaming, after discovering my stash had disappeared. The government…
The Christian view of sex contains multitudes
Lower Than the Angels (that is the condition of man, according to the psalmist and St Paul) is a book…
Letters: you can have a ‘good’ divorce
Splitting the difference Sir: Hannah Moore’s article ‘Split personalities’ (27 July) is brutal. ‘There’s no such thing as a kind…
Letters: Why marriage matters
Pretender to the crown Sir: Kate Andrews combines detail and analysis with a sprinkling of satire to devastating effect in…
Absinthe and the casual fling: Ex-Wife, by Ursula Parrott, reviewed
A sensational bestseller, first published anonymously in 1929, centres around the adventures of a bright young American divorcée, seizing love wherever she can
The rise of the ‘divorce influencer’
On Woman’s Hour recently, Anita Rani and her guests set out to celebrate the positive sides of a woman’s midlife.…
A sea of troubles: The Coast Road, by Alan Murrin, reviewed
The sudden return of the liberated Colette Crowley to the Donegal fishing village of Ardglas stirs fear and resentment in the closed community
At last we see Henry VIII’s wives as individuals
Specialist knowledge of Tudor portraiture, book bindings, music and jewellery enables us to see each woman anew, possessed of a distinct life and afterlife
Second life: Playboy, by Constance Debré, reviewed
Having abandoned her marriage and her career as a lawyer, Debré re-emerges as a lesbian, a writer, and a seducer equal to Casanova
A mother-daughter love story
In her latest memoir, Leslie Jamison describes her pregnancy, experience of childbirth and devotion to her baby, returning repeatedly to the dilemmas of a working mother
‘We are stuck like chicken feathers to tar’: Elizabeth Taylor’s description of the fabled romance
The Burton-Taylor relationship was either one of the greatest love stories of all time or a suicide pact carried out in relentless slow motion
Howard Jacobson superbly captures the terrible cost of becoming a writer
Howard Jacobson, who turns 80 this year, published his first novel aged 40. Since then he has produced roughly a…
How many people still send letters?
Borderland Few countries can have passed through as many kingdoms and empires as Ukraine — the ‘borderlands’. These are just…
Reassess every relationship you’ve ever had before it’s too late
‘Reading is a celebration of the mystery of ourselves,’ according to Elizabeth Strout, who writes to help readers understand themselves…
The disappearing man: who was the real John Stonehouse?
Craig Brown describes his various encounters with the MP who notoriously faked his own death in 1974
Abandoned by Paul Theroux: the diary of a sad ex-wife who sadly can’t write
When I interviewed Paul Theroux 21 years ago at his home in Hawaii, there were already rumours that his ex-wife…
Detailed and devastating: Marriage Story reviewed
Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story is a drama about the breakdown of a marriage and it is, at times, devastatingly painful.…
Marriage is becoming more like it was before Christianity
The Christian church ordained that marriage, a sacrament imparting divine grace, was for life. In 1857, the state enacted its…
Is it Islamophobic to disagree with Baroness Warsi?
In his famous speech to both Houses of Parliament in March 1960, General De Gaulle praised Britain: ‘Although, since 1940,…
Dear Mary: how can I stop my husband from hijacking my punchlines?
Q. A woman I’ve known for years is getting divorced and rings me every day to talk about it. I…
Saul Bellow: love the work, if not the man
Boxing writers sometimes try to make comparisons across weight groups. They used to say, for example, that Floyd Mayweather was…
Rod Liddle: In defence of marriage
I took part in a debate organised by the Times this week about reform of our divorce laws. Well, I…
Ignore Lily Allen’s sub-adolescent politics – her new album is brilliant
Grade: B+ Here we go again, then, I thought — another gobbet of self-referential, breast-beating respec’ me bro sputum against…
