Mary Chamberlain’s new novel, The Lie, exposes the truth about the stark choice faced by pregnant unmarried women before contraception was widely available. It’s all so different now, we think. But, she asks, will the rolling back of abortion rights in America revive the stigma of illegitimacy — and the practice of forced adoptions — […]
Henry VIII, impotence and the thorny question of male heirs
Henry VIII died 475 years ago, on 28 January, 1547. To mark the occasion, we asked the author Carol McGrath to draw upon her new book, Sex and Sexuality in Tudor England, to examine the king’s notoriously turbulent sex life. She focusses on the driving force behind his many marriages: his obsession with fathering a […]
A charmed life: childbirth and superstition
Eagle-stones, holy girdles, cheese and cake and a coral rattle: all were meant to aid childbirth and keep the newborn baby safe. Quaint superstitions to us, perhaps, but sensible approaches when facing the danger of giving birth, Martine Bailey, author of The Prophet, argues. “When a woman conceived she was launched on a roaring wave […]