Essays/criticism


I wrote about my three year old's fears during lockdown for A Garden Among Fires: A Lockdown Anthology, edited by Marina Benjamin and published by Dodo Ink. You can buy the ebook here.



I wrote a preface for Amber Reeve's A Lady and her Husband, published by Persephone books. Buy the book here.

My preface for the Vintage edition of Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey is here. You can buy the book here.







Latest book reviews:


Where to start with the Brontës
Sharon Wright's The Mother of the Brontës
Isabel Greenberg's Glass Town


Some writing about heroines
Girls, pick your bedtime reading with care
Can men write good heroines?
What Elizabeth Bennet taught me about romance
Can a good book actually change our personalities?
Anne of Green Gables and the power of the imagination
Unsung literary heroines
Bad girls gone good: Angelina as Maleficent
Cottage loaf for Virginia Woolf
When Meryl becomes Emmeline
How to be a new year heroine
Top 5 literary heroines every young girl should meet
Seven fictional women whose life stories inspire us
Sophia Kingshill's Mermaids
Rachel Cooke's Her Brilliant Career
RIP Doris Lessing
Caitlin Moran's How to Build a Girl
Nina Stibbe's Man at the Helm
Patricia Duncker's Sophie and the Sibyl
Five best novels about spinsters
Why The Hunger Games's killer Katniss is a great female role model


Writing about life
You can take the girl out of Baghdad....


Writing about theatre

Picture by Charlie Surbey