Sadly, a lot of what passes for feminism these days is just moaning about men, congratulating ourselves on nothing in particular, and mocking them for being big kids while doing everything we can to keep them that way.

Knowing that the 'Sex and the City' chicks now rack up almost two centuries between them, why do some of us fuss and hiss about a bit of retouching on their forthcoming film poster?

As a precocious teen I dreamed of being Graham Greene. Well, as it turned out, I never wrote a great novel, sadly, and I never converted to Catholicism, happily, but I did do one thing he did. That is, in middle age I moved to a seaside town and got into a right barney with the local powers-that-be.

Some say that Cusk has no sense of humour, but expecting giggles from this writer would be akin to expecting sonnets from Benny Hill.

Now the whole dizzying and delirious range of sexual possibilities has been boiled down to that one big, boring, bulimic word. RELATIONSHIP.

When did women whose looks are not their living start conducting themselves like the simpering inmates of an Ottoman empire seraglio?

It's received wisdom that the English are uniquely child-unfriendly.