Anthologies

These stories are aimed at readers of 'Good Housekeeping' magazine - primarily women aged 25 to 55 - and deal with the myriad issues facing women today. Each story is a generous bite size of well-written, self-contained fiction perfectly suited to holiday reading.

Seven writers, including Joanne Harris, Marie Phillips, and Irvine Welsh, spent time with a charity promoting the development of women and girls—and were inspired to write an extraordinary array of stories and essays that statistics cannot convey Irvine Welsh tells a story of prostitutes in the Dominican Republic, while Xiaolu Guo tells of a policeman with a Khmer Rouge past. Marie Phillips takes on the sexual abuse of Ugandan schoolgirls—and the outcome of the abuse. Seven authors have visited seven different countries—Brazil, Togo, Sierra Leone, Cambodia, Uganda, Ghana, and the Dominican Republic—and spoken to young women and girls about their lives, struggles, and hopes. The result is an extraordinary collection of writings based on the girls' true stories, about prejudice, abuse, and neglect, but also about courage, resilience, and changing attitudes.

Tucked away along a shady path towards the north-east edge of Hampstead Heath is a sign: Women Only. This is the Kenwood Ladies' Bathing Pond. Floating in the Pond's silky waters, hidden by a canopy of trees, it's easy to forget that you are in the middle of London. On a hot day, thousands of swimmers from eight to eighty-plus can be found waiting to take a dip before sunbathing in the adjoining meadow. As summer turns to autumn and then winter, the Pond is still visited by a large number of hardy regulars in high-vis hats, many of whom have been swimming here for decades. In these essays we see the Pond from the perspectives of writers who have swum there. Esther Freud describes the life-affirming sensation of swimming through the seasons; Lou Stoppard pays tribute to the winter swimmers who break the ice; Margaret Drabble reflects on the golden Hampstead days of her youth; Sharlene Teo visits for the first time; and Nell Frizzell shares the view from her yellow lifeguard's canoe. Combining personal reminiscence with reflections on the history of the place over the years and through the changing seasons, At the Pond captures fourteen contemporary writers' impressions of this unique place.