“Can you tell me, Socrates—is being good something you can be taught? Or does it come with practice rather than being teachable? Or is it something that doesn’t come with practice or learning; does it just come to people naturally? “
– from Plato’s Meno
The good news is that Plato’s dialogues are both accessible and enjoyable to a modern audience, particularly when read as part of a group! They are intricately crafted, dramatic philosophical works and the Meno is an excellent place to begin.
In its opening line, the dialogue gets right to the heart of a matter that could hardly be more relevant today. The title speaker, Meno, asks Socrates whether being ‘good’ (a term sometimes translated as ‘virtue’ or ‘excellence’) is a thing that can be taught. Far from being able to answer, Socrates tells Meno that he has no idea of what virtue even is, and nor does anyone else he’s ever met. As they try to find a solid definition of virtue, Socrates and Meno find themselves confronted by some of philosophy’s most basic and profound questions: what can we know, how can we know it, how can we teach, how can we learn? All of which remain as relevant to contemporary life as to the ancient world.
The Meno offers a multifaceted view of Socrates, Plato’s teacher and philosophical protagonist—at times thoughtful, playful, humble, flirtatious, ironic, and slightly abrasive. To this is added an intriguing demonstration of the Pythagorean Theorem by an untutored slave boy, and a brief encounter with an Athenian politician who will later bring Socrates to trial on charges that will lead to his death.
The Meno offers a classic demonstration of Plato’s chosen philosophical format, the dramatic dialogue, in which the drama is sometimes just as important as the participant’ words and ideas. Our Beginner’s Guide to Plato study starts on 28 February.
Many Salon participants enjoy writing as well as reading. In response, we have been developing a programme of creative writing studies, most recently with Alison Cable’s Writing for Wellbeing series. The primary aim is not necessarily to prepare for publication, but to develop and enjoy a writing practice as part of self-development.
Now we are offering an opportunity to experiment with dramatic writing which, with its emphasis on structure, character and dialogue, is a way of telling stories that can feed into all kinds of literary creativity and appreciation.
Award-winning writer Jeremy Kamps, Professor of Dramatic Writing at New York University and a Guest Professor for the Pratt Institute writing department, explains the design of his eight-week study:
Our workshop will focus on the craft, process and art of dramatic story. You will write either a film short or a ten minute play (your choice), and our time together will include craft study, story de-construction, rumination on process and voice. Or, in other words, how your story meets and moves the world.
We will engage in peer review using the writer-centred Liz Lerman feedback protocol and there will be an emphasis on the idea that “writing is rewriting” (with its attendant joy and pain). The workshop is not about good or bad, but about how you tell the story you want to tell and why it needs to be told, while also providing some tools and ideas to consider along the way. Professional actors will join us for the culminating reading of our work.
Click here for more information and booking details.
Toby reading to crowds gathered outside Shakespeare and Company in Paris, 100 years to the day since the first publication of Ulysses
Founder and Director of the London Literary Salon, Toby Brothers, is in Paris today to celebrate the centenary of publication of Ulysses. Scandalous in 1922, the book – widely acclaimed as a work of genius – remains controversial a century later!
Expect more news of Joyceans en fête in Paris on Toby’s return.
Having just wrapped an incredible study of The Years in St Ives, I am inspired. We encountered a new book (for me and for the Salon). We were a tentative group — some knew some, some knew none — and all were in the wild and constantly changing weather of St Ives.
Our meeting space was in the wonderful Porthmeor Studios, with windows of stained glass made from the sands of the sea below us. This special space was renovated to honour the rich history of artists and fishermen who have worked and created here for centuries. Now the walls also hold the words of Woolf and the thoughts she inspired in us.
To be together after months of isolation and multiple postponements, to be in the surging air and seas of Cornwall, to face and grapple with Woolf’s contemplation of fragmentation, of breakdown (social, political and domestic), of ‘obdurate language’, to find our way through to our own shared epiphanies in the face of her shards: this is what is so deeply satisfying about these retreats.
Photographs: Janet Minichiello
In The Years, Woolf tries to use fact to find truth in the expanse of fiction, but this is an uneven attempt from a writer who sings so beautifully the realm of interiority. She experiments — and finds a play between — the snapshots of nature at seasonal moments, the movement between light and shadows, between what we say and what we mean. Setting the work to span the twilight of the Victorian era to the ‘Present Moment’ (unspecified, but most agree 1932), we move with a London family through meals, parties, deaths, war and structural change. There are moments of pure lyric flight and moments interrupted — profound thoughts uncompleted, intense connections unrealised, desires frustrated. For the better part of a week, twelve of us lived with this work, the discussions not stopping after the sessions, but seeping into our dinners, walks and swims.
It was an incredible experience to be with a group of hungry minds in a beautiful place, as we dug deeply into the complexity and richness of Woolf’s vision. And then there were moments of hilarity: was that an orgasm on the train? Do we need to comment on the stain on the wall? And what’s the fuss about lavatory vs. bath? There were moments of discomfort as we worked to situate the antisemitism that Woolf portrays — is this her own, or her reflecting a difficult world, or the struggle for the artist against the press to speak politically?
Together, we came to some extraordinary understandings. And then there were rainbows, and Sheila sang . . .
For anyone who fancies joining our next trip to St Ives, we are beginning to plan for Spring 2022. In the meantime, a new study of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway begins on 11 October and there are still places left!
Reflections on Their Eyes Were Watching God by Alison Cable
The Dream Keeper, by Langston Hughes
Bring me all of your dreams,
You dreamers,
Bring me all of your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
Of the world.
I love this prayer-like poem. It’s simple and painful, but it’s more than that. A Black American Harlem Renaissance writer, Hughes knew all too well the “too-rough fingers” of the world, and this poem, like many of his others, exposes the raw fragility of dreams. The idea of wrapping dreams up in a “blue cloud-cloth”– the sky as a vast blanket that protects dreams from the realities that threaten them—is comforting and hopeful, and universal.
Last summer, Toby and I were discussing a salon on Catcher in the Rye, but then came the murder of George Floyd and the BLM protests and we reconsidered whose story we’d rather hear, and really listen to—Holden Caulfield or Janie Crawford? Both coming of age tales, both quests for self-discovery, both written with skill and style, recognized as American classics. But whose voice do we want to hear right now? Need to hear. Janie’s, of course. Their Eyes Were Watching God was the clear choice, and the positive response from participants is a message in and of itself. There was so much to explore, we’ll be running it again in November. It’s in these choices that we can open ourselves up to examination and real change.
We ran a four-hour intensive, in which we looked carefully at the ways in which Zora Neale Hurston empowers Janie, by making her the teller of her own story and placing her within the classic quest structure as hero, unheard of for a mixed-race girl from Florida in the 1930’s. We talked about how Hurston uses the vernacular to subvert the traditional linguistic hierarchy and by extension asserts that Black folk culture is valuable, worthy of “literary fiction” and our close attention (not always the assumption during the Harlem Renaissance). It’s also just a beautiful story, and we delighted in the magic of her descriptions (‘Put me down easy, Janie, ah’m a cracked plate’).
We also talked about the nature imagery in the novel, and Hughes’ ‘cloud-cloth’ reminds me of Hurston’s recurring image of the horizon– from the evocative opening lines (‘Ships at a distance hold every man’s wish on board’) to the final lines, where Janie wraps herself in the horizon, having been there and back.
Toward the beginning of her coming-of-age journey, Janie aspires to fulfilment through love and self-expression, but her grandmother marries her off to a man who will treat her as a servant:
Nanny had taken the biggest thing God ever made, the horizon—for no matter how far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond you—and pinched it in to such a little bit of a thing that she could tie it about her granddaughter’s neck tight enough to choke her. (102)
But two husbands and a hurricane later, Janie has returned home from her quest to tell her story and share the prize with her community:
Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in it’s meshes! She called in her soul to come and see. (221)
While this is not a book overtly about racism, it is a portrait of Black life in a racist society. White readers like myself who attend to it closely are given an opportunity to take a step toward understanding the lived experience of racism. Hurston celebrates the living rhythms of Black communities and cultural expressions, and portrays Black people within their own framework, not simply responding to white people nor the racism white communities perpetrate (e.g. through the use of the vernacular, the absence of white characters). Zadie Smith sums it up better than I can: “It is about the discovery of self in and through another. It suggests that even the dark and terrible banality of racism can recede to a vanishing point where you understand, and are understood by, another human being.”
“There is one peculiarity which real works of art possess in common. At each fresh reading one notices some change in them, as if the sap of life ran in their leaves, and with skies and plants they had the power to alter their shape and colour from season to season. To write down one’s impressions of Hamlet as one reads it year after year, would be virtually to record one’s own autobiography, for as we know more of life, so Shakespeare comments upon what we know.” — Virginia Woolf
As the Salon season wraps up for August, I am celebrating the amazing discussions that I have witnessed—and, as Woolf comments above, the sap of life that renews my mind as I revisit these great writings. The current Invisible Man study, for example, continues to offer insights to a work I thought I knew inside out…and of course, this book illuminates the moment of change in awareness of systematic and daily racism that Black people and people of colour experience. We are living this now. The Hamlet study that I co-facilitated with the actor Jane Wymark—who KNOWS Ophelia from having played the role to Derek Jacoby’s Hamlet—offered participants a rare opportunity for one-on-one coaching with Jane towards a final presentation of a reading from the play. This was so appreciated that Jane and I are offering another Hamlet in September.
We have posted new studies—and there are more to come. I am thrilled to be working with such a talented group of facilitators—our styles and areas of expertise offer a diversity of approaches but the ethos of the Salon: an open, dynamic exploration of the literature—is the constant in the Salon approach. Basil Lawrence is offering a 10-week study on Nabokov’s Pale Fire. He says: “Pale Fire is a great work of 20th Century literature, and a deeply humane novel. It’s a personal text borne out of Nabokov’s own suffering: a meditation on love and loss; a contemplation of his physical and linguistic exile. Although the story’s humanity is often hidden by elaborate linguistic games, its tenderness is forever present.”
Alison Cable and I are offering a Salon-Intensive study on Zora Neale Hurston’s exquisite novel, Their Eyes were Watching God. Mark continues to illuminate readers in the classical realm with a coming study on Herodotus and Women in Greek drama…Geoff Brown and I will be running a short study on Henry James (Daisy Miller, The Europeans) with an eye towards more James studies in the future—including the weekend in Rye that has one space available. We also offering Absalom, Absalom!,Hamlet and Ulysses—those studies are filling up! There are two spaces available for the Woolf retreat in St Ives studying her final work, The Years. Coming soon: Marcy Kahan will be announcing another study, and I am running a Middlemarch study starting mid-October…keep an eye on the website.
We all continue to adjust to the strangeness of this time: in the midst of a pandemic whose end is not knowable; ever-changing daily rhythms adjusting to the safety needs of ourselves and those around us—a loss of jobs, travel and the pleasures of community gatherings—and of course, the awful reality of suffering that the disease causes its victims and those who care for them. I hope the experience of the Salon continues to offer a respite from the anxiety and struggle of this time. By going global, we have opened up to folks all over the world and that has strengthened our audience in bringing diverse perspectives. If you would like to enrol in a Salon but are experiencing financial hardship, please email the facilitator—we can often offer a subsidized place. The Salon is committed to supporting its members.
Sue Fox is a Salon member who has added her good mind and passionate reading to studies on Invisible Man, Hamlet, Faulkner– just to name a few….this article first appeared in the on-line magazine JewThink. Thanks to Sue for letting us publish here as well.
I can vividly remember reading Philip Roth’s novel when it was published in 2004 and being completely gobsmacked that Charles Lindbergh was the American President. We were on holiday in Portugal in the same place we’d gone back to every year since who knows when, for a week of walking, Scrabble and reading. I can still hear myself saying to dearly beloved ‘When was Lindbergh the President? ‘He wasn’t,’ came the reply from a sun lounger…’But it says here …. blah blah blah…’ So taken was this naive reader by Roth’s imagination that for a while I was disorientated. I seriously questioned my memory/history/cognitive abilities.
Reliving the novel through the medium of TV in the American film adaptation currently on Sky Atlantic, Roth’s The Plot Against America is terrifying. I keep asking myself what I would have done if I was raising a young Jewish family in Newark in 1941? Would I, like Bess Levin, who is not from a Jewish ghetto like her husband, Herman, have put our names on the list to emigrate to Canada? Would I have been captivated by the oily, insincere, ridiculous but, some think charismatic, Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf (played by John Turturro), and seen Lindbergh as anti-war rather than antisemitic? Would I be persuaded by Bengelsdorf’s nonsense about his Just Folks programme being a fine opportunity for young Jews to assimilate with good Christian American folks in Kentucky and middle America. Assimilate in farm states where most of the natives had never seen a Jew before? Could I have bought into the Rabbi’s vision of a kind of utopian Habonim Kibbutz but with pigs? Even more worryingly, when this utopian dream turns into the ‘Homestead‘ project – basically a way of relocating Jewish families to these same redneck wilderness towns – what would I have done? Canada being less and less possible, antisemitic attacks becoming a daily news item, Ribbentrop invited to a White House dinner – do I pile the family into the car and hit the highway?
Bess is a fighter, her husband, Herman is weak, gullible and basically a good man who believes in Roosevelt. His heart is in the right place, but his brain refuses to see what is happening to the country he loves. As a father, his power gradually collapses so that the two Levin sons, Philip and Sandy, see – like we all have to do one day – that parents don’t have the answers, they can’t protect their children from everything, they are not all powerful. They are only – as Bruno Bettelheim the distinguished child psychotherapist wrote, ‘Good Enough Parents’.
The most chilling of many moments in the TV adaptation was the White House dinner when the oleaginous rabbi and his fiancée, Evelyn (Bess’s gullible sister), mingle with the great and the good, the Daughters of the American Revolution and their husbands. In their formal, swanky attire, they reminded me of the song, ‘We’re a Couple of Swells’.Of course, Bengelsdorf and Evelyn were not a couple of swells, they were two token Jews – visibly snubbed by President Lindbergh.
In 2004, Roth’s book struck me as a brilliant read and not much else. Yes, it worried me, but it didn’t ruin a holiday, keep me up at night or make me think I needed to run for the hills. Today, with the whole world going to hell in a handcart, everything is up for grabs. No, I don’t see Nazis around every corner, and I have always called out when confronted, however unintentionally, by someone saying an unpleasant and unjustified comment about Jews. And yes, I do agree when the Jew in question – usually someone prominent – does something shameful and embarrassing, etc., etc. No need to name names. We all have our own list. But and there is always a but, I get nervous around North West London Jewish bakeries on Friday mornings, when the queue is long. Which is why I tend to go on Thursday night. Yes, I’m a coward.
In 1941, my mother and sister – who was then aged seven – accepted a family decision to evacuate to America from Manchester in order to escape the bombs, shortages and horrors of the war. Like my father, who was in the Home Guard, husbands were not able to evacuate. So, my mother joined the exodus of lucky mothers who left for Canada and the US where their lives would inevitably change.
Mine went to stay with wealthy relatives in California. They were family they had never met who provided papers and sponsorship. This great act of kindness was based on another act of kindness by my maternal grandfather (he died before I was born). Grandpa had left Rostov on Don in Russia at the turn of the century because of the antisemitic attacks. The California relatives – his first cousins – left later and were stuck for months in Constantinople in one room. The jewellery sewn into blankets when they left Russia just about kept them alive. My grandfather sent them money to continue their journey to New York. Eventually, they all settled in California. The cousins, who had owned a big factory in Rostov on Don – fulfilled their American Dream and were very successful, as well as philanthropic, within the local, the Jewish and the Black community.
In 1941, when my mother and sister crossed the Atlantic in convoy from Liverpool on board The Baltrova, they spent seventeen days in life jackets which they never took off, vomiting into buckets. One convoy boat was torpedoed. My mother and sister must have been terrified. They finally arrived in Boston where the unknown cousins met them for the first time at the incredibly grand Statler Hotel.
As it turned out, my mother loved her time in the San Fernando Valley in her house with the picket fence on Pickford Street. It was a Jewish neighbourhood. She could pick oranges from the trees. At least that’s how I imagine it. She never really talked about it much – she just looked sad. I always wanted to go to the place where my mother had been happy. She had to leave eventually, return to North Manchester early in 1944 and start again in the winter, with rationing, ruin and learning that her beloved father was dead. I found immigration papers allowing my mother and sister to enter America anytime during the following year (1945). But she never went back. Neither did my sister.
I’ve lost count of the times I’ve worked and had holidays in America. I also loved being in the US until one day, I stopped loving it. When the current incumbent tarnished the office with his horrible orange face. There’s no way I want to go back – not in this new New World.
Would I have had the courage to go in 1941? I honestly have no idea of my answer. In the year when we can’t go anywhere, and there’s no one left to sponsor anyone when Israel is definitely not the Promised Land, and there is no longer an American Dream, I feel blessed not to have to make a choice – yet. I may need more than my mother’s courage.
Sue Fox is a freelance journalist who has been interviewing famous people for the Sunday Times, Times Magazine, and many magazines since she was 18. She has also been associate producer on TV documentaries and a film archive.
The London Literary Salon has always been committed to using literature to combat prejudice. I have been leading discussions on literature by Black Americans for 30 years- and continue to find the study of the passionate writing by Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin opens my mind, helps me peel back layers of inherited racism and celebrate Black literature. The coming studies on Invisible Man and A Mercy offer reflective space to understand the lived experience of racism and the roots of a white supremacy. As a white person, it has never been more important to listen and actively attempt to understand what it is to experience racism(though I know I will never truly understand) and use my learning of history and lived experience to energise this welcome battle against this most virulent oppression. There are many ways to dismantle racism-thanks to all who have participated in these discussions with honesty and humility.
Here is a participant reflecting on a recent study of Invisible Man:
“Thank you for guiding us through such a challenging and difficult book. What an overwhelming time we are living in, full of a similar chaos to when the book was written, with those struggles just continuing – and brought into such stark relief by the current administration in the US. To have racism (and misogyny) entrenched and promoted, at the very top of government, seems to me a truly terrible thing, and one that makes me feel powerless. So that’s where I am with this book – incredibly worthwhile but also harrowing… I guess that is what great literature is for, to really make you think and feel and burn.” R.T., 6.2020
Alison Cable and I are preparing a study of Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston for July 22nd. For those planning on joining Ulysses in 2021, the coming study of Hamletwill provide a good grounding– the brilliance of this play comes alive in our exploration– and speaks to our times as we watch a mind in battle with corruption.
In the coming weeks, we will be announcing the fall offerings. Let us know if there are studies you are interested in…
MEDIA RELEASE – 8 APRIL 2020 (for immediate release)
KEEP CALM, READ ULYSSES AND CARRY ON . . .
The impact of COVID-19, which initially threatened disaster, has resulted in one London business going global almost overnight. The Kentish Town-based London Literary Salon, originally established in Paris in 2004 before moving to London in 2008, gathers together small groups of readers to study and discuss outstanding works of fiction, philosophy, poetry and drama by writers ranging from James Joyce and Marcel Proust to Socrates and Homer. In normal times studies range from one-meeting intensives to six-month and two-year odysseys, all based in London, and brief travel retreats to locations around the UK and Europe.
Founder Toby Brothers, who has over 25 years of teaching experience in France, the USA and Japan as well as in the UK explains, “at first I thought that coronavirus spelled the end of the salon, with no prospect of gathering people together for weeks or months ahead. After the initial panic, I took a deep breath and realised I could try to make the studies available online and the virtual salon was born within days.”
The Salon uses the video conferencing app Zoom to link salon participants for sessions that, like the in-person meetings, typically last two to three hours with up to twelve people involved in the discussion. Although initially concerned that remote links would make it difficult to facilitate and respond to individuals, she says the virtual meetings are different but equally effective, with the bonus that they are now accessible to people from all over the world. “The sessions seem slightly more formal, but people are also less likely to talk over each other. We learn from sharing ideas and responses – I get new insights from every study – and the opportunity to include readers from anywhere opens up the experience to many more people. So far, we’ve had participants from the USA, New Zealand, Canada, Sweden, Germany and France as well as those of us here in London and the wider UK.”
Brothers insists that the only qualification for joining her studies is a curious and open mind, she promises that even the most daunting books – forthcoming studies include famously challenging reads such as Ulysses and The Essential Socrates – become more accessible when tackled as part of a supportive group. “Extraordinary times invite extraordinary responses, when asked ‘What did you do during the pandemic?’ some people want to answer ‘I read Ulysses’. We can help them to do that.”
For details of forthcoming courses and costs, see: https://www.litsalon.co.uk. For more information contact toby@litsalon.co.uk.
Feedback on Zooming the Salon—Virtual Reality March 2020
Proust Tour Four Zooms 19.3.20
“Thanks Toby, I wish everyone stuck at home had such an uplifting and entertaining group to spend time with each week. Looking forward to next time—”
(CD, Finnegans Wake)
“Thanks for yesterday, it seemed to go quite well, and I’m sure we’ll settle into it. There is something of ‘The Decameron’ about it, as we sit in our (virtual) ivory tower and talk about high culture while the world outside slowly winds down…It is certainly going to important to us if we are more and more confined to home.”
(JC—Proust tour 4)
Thanks so much for setting up last evening, I thought it worked brilliantly.
The only comment I have is that it is may be more difficult to have quite the same level of enthusiastic discussion we have had previously. I know I am guilty sometimes of jumping in and this form of interaction needs some space around it.
I love Proust so much. So here we are, looking at ourselves, where we’re all sitting, how we’ve set ourselves up, talking about the book while at the same time another dialogue is running through our heads! Of course, the man’s a genius!
Just beginning to start on next part and know it’s going to make me cry. I’m very close to my 16-year-old grandson in Brighton and will miss him dreadfully over the next however many months. However, I have devised myself a schedule including exercise, meditation, watching movies, texting and calling family and friends and of course the wonderful on line Salon!
(EW, Prost Tour 4)
Thanks again for last night. I really enjoyed it. It was interesting how we all settled into it quite quickly and it seemed to get up and running well pretty fast. Yay! I’m so grateful we can keep on with our work. As John said, it’s so important to us, and I think it’s going to keep us sane in our cork-lined rooms… I realised it must be quite intense for you though! Hope you enjoyed it too.
Thanks again for thinking of it and getting it all organised. You’re a star.
(RB, Proust Tour 4)
Positive Statements:
— It’s a wonderful way of continuing to be connected in these hard times
— in some ways, it makes it easier to concentrate on what one person is saying
— I love the individualities of our background scenery (Paul’s Bridge gets my prize this week, closely followed by Michelle’s lamp and those great shadows)
Mookses and Gripes:
— I do miss the ‘group-ness’ of people gathered together in one room
— I wonder if there is a way of presenting the page of text on screen? (We can argue about which text, later on, of course)
— And/or if we can figure out ways of sharing photos etc on the screen, as illustration (there MUST be a way!)
(RE, Finnegans Wake)
Thank you so much for letting me re-join the Wake. It was very grounding to be able to join all of you in Toby’s virtual salon. I was so inspired, I am attempting to set up a book group with my London expat friends who are now scattered to the four winds. It will be a lighter read than FW, however.
(MM, Finnegans Wake)
I’ve not done anything like Zoom before, and it will take a few goes before I get used to it. However, I definitely think it is a good thing to do and thanks for setting it up.
During the session, while people were talking, I kept wondering what we imagine we see, when we stare at the computer? We have an illusion of eye-contact, but the other person’s face is a faulty mirror; we can cue into body language in a reciprocal way, when we are a dyad, but not a group. In the session, we become a group who is blind to everything except the mis-cued image on the screen. How very Proustian!
(NvF Proust Tour 4)
That was wonderful – really worked well and such an interested group – it worked perfectly – gt to listen to everyone and plenty of time to talk and think. Very special afternoon in this very odd way of life. Looking forward so much to more……. Let me know if you want more takers as I have a few friends who might be interested…….
(SF– Faulkner, Yellow Wallpaper)
Yes, it was hard for me to not imagine everyone else was together somehow in Toby’s living room!
I think we can manage the decibel level better if we all wear headphones with little mics.. then you can speak at a natural level.. even using the cheap sets that come free with your mobile.Otherwise utterly marvellous to concentrate on something this crazy. As regards meetings, given the semi lock-down I would certainly give serious consideration to continuing the work on the book for now.
(MD, Finnegans Wake)
“Thanks for the session tonight. It was really great to be able to do it. I found it easier then I thought I would!”
Reflections on Their Eyes Were Watching God by Alison Cable
Sue Fox is a freelance journalist who has been interviewing famous people for the Sunday Times, Times Magazine, and many magazines since she was 18. She has also been associate producer on TV documentaries and a film archive.
