Pop and rockObituaryHelen Reddy obituaryAustralian singer who enjoyed huge success with her 1972 feminist anthem I Am WomanEvery social movement has its definitive song, and feminism got its anthem in 1972, when the Australian singer Helen Reddy released the single I Am Woman. In three elegant minutes, it hewed a portal through which schoolgirls and their mothers saw an empowered future. Reaching No 1 in the US and selling 1m copies there, it also established Reddy, who has died aged 78, as one of the top-selling female vocalists of the decade. Read More...
WomenInterview‘I could not get out of Britain fast enough’: Amanda de Cadenet on tabloid bullies, teenage fame and making it in the USHadley FreemanShe was dubbed ‘the wild child’ in the UK when she presented The Word in the early 90s – and left scarred by the experience. After fleeing across the Atlantic, she reinvented herself, as a feminist activist, photographer, talkshow host and now a podcaster
Amanda de Cadenet. If you are of a certain vintage, that name will probably bring back a Proustian rush of sensory memories: Impulse Vanilla Kisses body spray, the feel of a Primal Scream Screamadelica cassette in your hands, the taste of Hooch on your tongue – all the greatest hits of 1990s Britain. Read More...
History booksReviewRavensbrück is a camp relatively unknown because it doesn’t fit the Holocaust narrative. The hundreds of survivors’ stories in this account bear witness to the terrifying heterogeneity of Nazi crimesEarly in 1938 Heinrich Himmler began to plan a concentration camp for “deviant” women: prostitutes, abortionists, “asocials” and socialists, habitual criminals, communists and Jehovah’s Witnesses, among others. He chose a site near the village of Ravensbrück in the picturesque Lake District of Mecklenburg, an hour away from Berlin, where one of his best friends in the SS had a country house. Read More...