The high price of being a female City Slicker

Shocked by the antics on BBC TV’s bank drama Industry? The real Square Mile was even WORSE in the 80s, says one survivor IT was 1985 and the Big Bang was transforming the Square Mile from a cosy gentlemen’s club of bowler-hatted Home County-dwellers who caught the 4pm train back to Tunbridge Wells, into aContinue reading “The high price of being a female City Slicker”

The perfect crime

An afternoon well spent in an office tailor made for intrigue By Linda Davies It was a dull day on the trading floor. Business was thin. The clients were like reticent fish. The atmosphere was brooding. Pasty faces tinged green by the flickering of hundreds of computer screens glowered at each other. The big swingingContinue reading “The perfect crime”

Merchants of menace

The Goldman Sachs scandal, which cost three traders their jobs, may have shocked the world at large. To Linda Davies, who worked for seven years in the City, it comes as no surprise at all. To outsiders, the Goldman Sachs sex case must seem mystifying: three foreign exchange traders, each reputed to earn $1m, firedContinue reading “Merchants of menace”

Lady Killers

Long a genre dominated by men, thrillers are increasingly being written by – and about – women. Novelist Linda Davies reports on four such page-turners. Many people become squeamish when women conjure evil, as if it might rub off on them. Yet more and more, women are writing thrillers that feature female protagonists: characters whoContinue reading “Lady Killers”

Empowering girls. It’s not what you look like, it’s what you do!

Forging an independent identity is one of the biggest challenges many of our teens will face. It can be tough figuring out who you are, especially if the idealised identity on sale in our cultural bazaars requires a level of apparent perfection that is dispiriting rather than inspiring and relates to a static idea ofContinue reading “Empowering girls. It’s not what you look like, it’s what you do!”

Ark Storm letter to The Mail on Sunday

As I write this, California is suffering a life changing drought. Here’s a letter I wrote which The Mail on Sunday published last week. While it may amuse us that Cameron Diaz is not flushing the loo as regularly as she used to in order to conserve water in drought-stricken California, those wishing for rainContinue reading “Ark Storm letter to The Mail on Sunday”

Greed and ‘Women Beware Women’

By Linda Davies Programme note for the 2010 revival of Women Beware Women by Thomas Middleton at the National Theatre, London, directed by Marianne Elliott “Three great forces rule the world; stupidity fear and greed.” Einstein could have been describing the murky urges underlying Middleton’s play nearly four hundred years ago, and equally the forcesContinue reading “Greed and ‘Women Beware Women’”

Fraud: A Class Act

By Linda Davies Programme note for the 2006 revival of The Voysey Inheritance by Harley Granville Barker at the National Theatre, London, directed by Peter Gill “If dishonesty can live in a gorgeous palace with pictures on all its walls, and gems in all its cupboards, with marble and ivory in all its corners, andContinue reading “Fraud: A Class Act”

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