Germaine Greer
Dark Age of the Steroid
The Pill: The Gap Between Promise and Performance
By Dr Margaret White
The Responsible Society 20pp 75p order from our bookshop
The Bitter Pill: How Safe is the Perfect Contraceptive?
By Dr Ellen Grant
Hamish Hamilton 160pp £7.95 order from our bookshop
In the May issue of Cosmopolitan appeared the following letter:
There's no one I can talk to about this. I've been having a serious relationship with this wonderful guy for about three months. He says he loves me and wants to sleep with me. I'm fifteen and, although I love him very much, I don't want to rush into anything because I'm not on the pill and I can't talk to my parents about this. Don't tell me to wait till I'm sixteen because I don't want to lose him and I'm not at all interested in boys of my own age.
While it would be fatuous to suppose that such a letter is a reliable indication of the plight of the average fifteen-year-old girl in Britain in 1985, or even of the average fifteen-year-old reader of Cosmo, there are some aspects of this cry for help that seem genuinely typical. It
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'It is the ... sketches of the local and the overlooked that lend this book its density and drive, and emphasise Britain’s mostly low-key riches – if only you can be bothered to buy an anorak and seek.'
Jonathan Meades on the beauty of brutalism.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/castles-of-concrete
'Cruickshank’s history reveals an extraordinary eclecticism of architectural styles and buildings, from Dutch Revivalism to Arts and Crafts experimentation, from Georgian terraces to Victorian mansion blocks.'
William Boyd on the architecture of Chelsea.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/where-george-eliot-meets-mick-jagger
'The eight years he has spent in solitary confinement have had a devastating impact on his mental health ... human rights organisations believe his detention is punishment for his critical views.'
@lucyjpop on the Egyptian activist and poet Ahmed Douma.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/ahmed-douma