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“... managed to escape, and in this collection of lively and thought-provoking biographical essays Rachel Cooke considers the careers of ten who made their names in the decade. By 1950 change was coming. Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex was published in English in 1953. There were increasing opportunities for women who were bold and determined enough ...”

“... a short step to that holy refuge, the ‘centre ground’. After watching Rory and Alastair live, Rachel Cooke noted in the Observer ‘how often they tend to agree’ and obligingly described them as the ‘centre ground … in human form’. People are said to be sick and tired of politics. We’re told they’re disengaged and dangerously ...”

“... glints like shards of glass. ‘Does that girl strike you as having been unnervingly wise?’ Rachel Cooke asked Rose. ‘Unnerving,’ Rose agreed, ‘is a good word for it.’ How else to describe the certainty, the cutting elegance, of these formulations?Gossip may be the beginning of moral inquiry, the low end of the Platonic ladder that leads to ...”