Writer, president of English PEN and author of Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800 (Virago/Little Brown, 2008).
Writer, novelist and president of English PEN, she is one of the most influential figures on the British cultural scene. She was deputy director of the London-based Institute of Contemporary Arts for ten years. She has written eleven novels, including The Memory Man (2005). Her non-fiction includes Freud's Women (with John Forrester, 2005), Simone de Beauvoir (2005), Losing the Dead (1999) and Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800 (2008). As a cultural commentator, she has written for The Guardian and The Independent and broadcasts frequently for BBC radio.
