On the Mark:A History of Punctuation from Ancient Egypt to the Emoticon

If you only read one book on punctuation, it should be On the Mark: A History of Punctuation from Ancient Egypt to the Emoticon by Florence Hazrat, which was published last week. Previous books have covered the history of punctuation in Western literature (Pause and Effect by M.B. Parkes), and the history of English punctuation (Making a Point by David Crystal), though On the Mark is the history of the subject with the widest scope. (“The first global history of punctuation”, according to its publisher.)

Hazrat discusses the ancient origins of punctuation and its development not only in English but also in other European languages and even in Arabic. She cites some fascinating examples, including an early use of emoticons in the Polish newspaper Kurjer Warszawski (‘Warsaw courier’) that slightly predates a more famous example from Punch magazine. (The Polish emoticons were published on 5th March 1881, and those in Punch appeared twenty-five days later.) The book also includes an excellent bibliographic essay.

Sarit Thanarat

Sarit Thanarat, military prime minister during the Cold War, died in December 1963. After his death, the floodgates opened, and exposés of his love life were rushed into print. His lovenest was a private residence nicknamed the ‘pink palace’ (วิมานสีชมพู; also the title of an unauthorised posthumous Sarit biography), and เมียน้อย 108 (‘108 mistresses’) printed a list of the concubines he entertained there.

Several other books — including อัลบั้มภาพชุดสีชมพู (‘pink album’), วิมานสวาท หลังกองพล ๑ (‘the palace of love behind the 1st infantry regiment’) and the similarly titled รังสวาทหลังพล 1, จอมพลของคุณหนูๆ (‘young ladies of the general’), แม่ม่ายผ้าขะม้าแดง (‘the widow in the red sarong’), and สาวม่ายในวิมานสีชมพู (‘widows in the pink palace’) — featured dossiers of photographs of his alleged lovers. The Daily News (เดลินิวส์) cartoon booklet การ์ตูนชุดแม่ม่ายผ้าขาวม้าแดง (‘the widows in the red sarong cartoon series’) also featured thinly-veiled portrayals of Sarit’s mistresses.

Almost fifty years later, the phrase ‘pink palace’ was censored by Channel 3 when it broadcast the lakorn คุณชายพุฒิภัทร (‘khun Chai Puttipat’) on 5th May 2013. In the third episode, a former military general played by Montree Jenuksorn (who slightly resembles Sarit) discussed his ‘pink palace’, though the sound was muted, presumably to avoid any possibility of a libel suit from Sarit’s descendents. (The novel on which the drama was based refers to Sarit more obliquely.)

Potential defamation also prevented director Banjong Kosallawat from making a semi-fictionalised Sarit biopic in 2002, which was to have been titled จอมพล (‘marshal’). Sarit did feature briefly in the horror movie Zee Oui (ซี-อุย), ordering the swift execution of the murderous title character for political expediency. And Sarit’s statue looms ominously over the characters in Song of the City, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s segment of the portmanteau film Ten Years Thailand.

The newsreel การปฏิบัติหน้าที่เพื่อประเทศชาติในตำแหน่งหัวหน้ารัฐบาลและผู้นำทางทหาร จนถึงล้มป่วยและอสัญกรรมของ ฯพณฯ จอมพลสฤษดิ์ ธนะรัชต์ (‘Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat performing duties for the country as the head of government and military leader until his illness and death’) is a fascinating example of Cold War state propaganda. Screened shortly after Sarit’s death, it provided a counter-narrative to the books that exposed his decadence and corruption. The film depicts Sarit as a tireless and selfless leader, to the extent that he became ill through overwork. Thunska Pansittivorakul’s recent documentary Isan Odyssey (อีสานอำพราง) gives the other side of the story, in a voiceover describing how suspected communists were “brutally murdered” during Sarit’s regime.

After Sarit led a coup in 1957, he was portrayed as a hero by pliant newspaper cartoonists. One example of such propaganda showed Sarit cradling a rescued child in his arms, returning the boy (who represents the Thai people) to his grateful mother. In contrast, a July 1958 cartoon in the liberal ประชาชน (‘people’) newspaper depicted Sarit as a monkey wrapping his tail possessively around Democracy Monument.

In the wake of the 2014 coup, Sarit satire was too sensitive, and the Guerrilla Boys self-censored their mural Junta Connection (วิ่งผลัดเผด็จการ), which originally depicted Sarit passing his (literal) baton of dictatorship to Prayut Chan-o-cha. Junta Connection was shown in 2018 as part of Khon Kaen Manifesto (ขอนแก่น แมนิเฟสโต้), a group exhibition that directly addressed Sarit’s contested legacy.

Art and Culture (ศิลปวัฒนธรรม) magazine analysed cartoonists’ caricatures of Sarit (vol. 43, no. 1), and the journal Same Sky (ฟ้าเดียวกัน) examined the lurid books published shortly after his death (vol. 20, no. 2). Thai Cinema Uncensored discusses the portrayal of Sarit in Thai films.

A Sudden Flicker of Light: A Revisionist History of the Movies

David Thomson has been described as the world’s greatest writer on film history, and his Biographical Dictionary of Film has been acclaimed as the greatest film reference book. Whether or not you agree with those opinions (I don’t), Thomson’s reputation means that any new book he writes deserves to be read.

A Sudden Flicker of Light: A Revisionist History of the Movies covers Hollywood, European silent cinema, and various national new wave movements. As anyone familiar with Thomson’s writing will be aware, the book is both authoritative and idiosyncratic. There are digressions of speculative fiction, asides to the reader, and unexpected references (to Tracey Emin, for example).

Thomson has previously written several similar books on the sweep of film history, most notably The Big Screen, a more conventional and satisfying account of the subject. His other books include Television, Have You Seen...?, Moments That Made the Movies, and The Moment of Psycho.

Solid Pictures: Photosculpture and the Making of Modern Likeness

Working in the 1860s, François Willème combined photography and sculpture in a patented process that resembled the camera array used to produce the ‘bullet time’ effect in The Matrix more than a century later. It could even be compared to modern 3D printing, as it builds a model layer-by-layer.

Willème positioned twenty-four cameras in a circle, all focused on a central point. A person standing on this spot would then be photographed in 360 degrees, and the resulting images were traced with a pantograph to produce silhouettes (resembling layers or slices) in wood or clay. These were then combined to create a sculpture that was cast in bronze or plaster, with the entire process taking only a few days.

Willème called his invention ‘photosculpture’, and an exhibition at Stanford University this year has revived interest in this previously overlooked sculpture technique. The exhibition catalogue, Solid Pictures: Photosculpture and the Making of Modern Likeness, edited by Patrick R. Crowley, is the first book on the subject.

Reading Pictures: A History of Illustration

We live in an image-saturated culture, and Reading Pictures: A History of Illustration, by D.B. Dowd, shows how illustrations have been mass-produced and disseminated for more than 500 years. In his introduction, Dowd explains the book’s scope: “Reading Pictures is my attempt to tell a story of how printed images and texts developed, engaged, and sometimes manipulated audiences in North America, Europe, and East Asia from the early modern period to the present day, with greatest emphasis on the era of mass culture during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.”

The first half of the book covers the development of various printing techniques — woodblock printing in Asia, the invention of moveable type, and European etching and engraving — and the relationship between illustration and mass media: illustrated novels, satirical prints, lithographic advertising posters, newspapers, magazines, and comics. Later chapters are more thematic, focusing on the role of illustration in political propaganda, and the media’s formation of visual stereotypes about gender identities, childhood, and race.

The main emphasis is on Europe and America, though each chapter also includes coverage of illustration in China and Japan. Given the book’s stated focus on printed illustrations, there is no discussion of illuminated manuscripts. Illustration throughout the nineteenth century, and in the first half of the twentieth century, is covered in depth. (Fifty Years of Illustration, by Lawrence Zeegen and Caroline Roberts, is a more detailed guide to illustration since the 1960s.)

Reading Pictures is the third book to survey the history of illustration. Steven Heller and Seymour Chwast wrote a visual history of the subject in 2008, a concise introduction rather than an in-depth study. On the other hand, History of Illustration, published in 2018 and edited by Susan Doyle, remains the definitive work.

Doyle’s book is more global in its coverage than Dowd’s, with chapters on Indian, Latin American, African, and Islamic illustration. It also has more than twice as many images: 900, compared to Dowd’s still-impressive 400. Doyle’s more comprehensive book also finds space for histories of the major illustration genres — anatomy, natural history, and fashion — which are absent from Reading Pictures.

Orientalism:Between Fact and Fantasy

Orientalism: Between Fact and Fantasy opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York this month, and runs until next year. With almost 200 items on display, it’s probably the largest survey exhibition of Orientalist art. It’s also significant for its focus on Orientalist decorative arts in addition to the familiar paintings of Jean-Léon Gérôme and his contemporaries. The Met’s scholarly exhibition catalogue, written by Deniz Beyazit, Maryam Ekhtiar, and Asher Miller, features full-page images and an essay on Orientalist design.

Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump

During Donald Trump’s first term as US President, Maggie Haberman at The New York Times was the Trump reporter par excellence, breaking numerous exclusive stories based on unique access to senior White House sources. Since Trump’s return to the presidency last year, Haberman has been on book leave, working with fellow NYT reporter Jonathan Swan on a sequel to her earlier Trump biography Confidence Man. Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, Haberman and Swan’s definitive account of the first year of Trump’s second term, will be published on 23rd June.

Incredibly, the research for Regime Change included interviews with more than 1,000 sources. The authors also interviewed Trump for an hour in the Oval Office. He told them: “I know your book will be critical, but remember this: People are tired of your bullshit.” (Swan’s interview with Trump for Axios in 2020 is widely regarded as the most forensic on-camera Trump interview.)

Extracts from the book have already been published in The New York Times, including detailed accounts, with extensive quotes, of Benjamin Netanyahu’s pitch for an Iran war and other meetings in the Situation Room. According to a 14th June report on the Axios website, Trump administration officials believe — based on the veracity of the book extracts — that unauthorised recordings from inside the Situation Room were leaked to Haberman and Swan, in an unprecedented breach of White House security.

Regime Change is the twenty-third Trump tome on the Dateline Bangkok bookshelf. The others are: Confidence Man, Lucky Loser, TrumpNation, War, The Divider, Betrayal, Fire and Fury, Too Much and Never Enough, Fear, Rage, Peril, I Alone Can Fix It, A Very Stable Genius, Inside Trump’s White House, The United States of Trump, Trump’s Enemies, The Trump White House, The Room Where It Happened, Team of Five, American Carnage, The Cost, and the audiobook The Trump Tapes.

Mob Type:An Archive of the People’s Fight through Typography

The design studio PrachathipaType — a pun on prachathipatai, the Thai word for ‘democracy’ — specialises in pro-democracy typefaces. Working with some of the organisations leading the 2020–2021 anti-government protests, PrachathipaType effectively created the visual identity of the reform movement.

PrachathipaType’s type specimens and logos were published in 2022 as Mob Type. That Thai-language book was translated into Korean and English last year, in a dual-language edition titled Mob Type: An Archive of the People’s Fight through Typography (몹타입: 태국의 타이포그래피 민주화 투쟁 아카이브).

A detailed timeline of recent Thai politics — The Lost Decade — has been added to the new edition of Mob Type, to contextualise the protest movement for readers outside Thailand. PrachathipaType previously published a 2021 calendar in collaboration with Headache Stencil, and แบบเรียนพยัญชนะไทย (‘Thai consonant textbook’) in collaboration with Rap Against Dictatorship.

PrachathipaType and Rap Against Dictatorship have also collaborated on several other projects, including the music videos Homeland (บ้านเกิดเมืองนอน) and Budget (งบประมาณ). Most recently, PrachathipaType created an animated music video for the band’s single คุณหนูประเทศไท้ย กับกกต.ทั้งเจ็ด (‘little miss Thailand and the ECT members’), released after this year’s election.

Linocuts:A History

Last year, Thames and Hudson, in collaboration with the Victoria and Albert Museum, published Screenprints by Gill Saunders, the first in an annual series of books covering the histories of individual printmaking techniques. Saunders has also contributed to the second title in the series, Linocuts: A History, though its lead author is Ella Ravilious.

Both books are elegantly designed and typeset, and beautifully illustrated. (Most of their illustrations are from the V&A’s extensive prints collection, supplemented by works from private collections and other institutions.)

In her introduction, Ravilious explains that “although there are hundreds of ‘how-to’ books on making linocuts, little has been published on the history of this striking medium.” Linocuts is therefore the first comprehensive history of its subject, and similarly Screenprints is the only complete history of the screenprint.

On the other hand, the next two books in the series, on etchings, and woodcuts (forthcoming over the next two years), will not be the first histories of those printmaking techniques. There have already been several books on woodcuts — most recently, Anne Desmet’s Scene Through Wood — and Arthur M. Hind’s A History of Engraving and Etching is the standard history of etchings.

The Story of Printmaking:A Global History of Art

It has been thirty years since the last general history of artists’ prints — The Print in the Western World, by Linda C. Hults — was published. The Story of Printmaking, a new book on the subject by Holly E.J. Black, explains the major printmaking techniques and celebrates the artists who mastered them.

Black writes about the development of etching, mezzotint, aquatint, woodblock printing, lithography, and screenprints. She credits Jules Chéret as “the forefather of lithography,” Andy Warhol as the “one name that is truly synonymous with screenprinting”, and Francisco de Goya as the “artist who harnessed the possibilities of the [aquatint] medium like no other”. She argues that Sumida Hokusai’s The Great Wave (神奈川沖浪裏) is one of “a handful of artworks in existence that have become so utterly imprinted on the public consciousness that they deserved to be called ‘iconic’.”

The Story of Printmaking also highlights “the lesser-known players who have been deliberately or erroneously overlooked.” Many of these are female artists and printmakers, some of whom are relatives of more famous male figures. The book covers an extensive timeline and geographical range, though it’s quite episodic — with entire chapters on Mexico and South Africa, for example — rather than being a comprehensive history.

The Print in the Western World was almost 1,000 pages long, and an earlier history, The Art of the Print by Fritz Eichenberg, was similarly monumental at 600 pages. In contrast, at around 250 pages The Story of Printmaking feels less substantial than its subtitle (A Global History of Art) implies.

The first complete history of printmaking, Six Centuries of Fine Prints by Carl Zigrosser, was published in 1937. This was followed in the 1950s by Prints and Visual Communication (by William M. Ivens) and 500 Years of Printing (by S.H. Steinberg).

There are also authoritative books on specific printmaking techniques:

Woodcuts

• A History of Wood Engraving (Douglas Percy Bliss)
  
• A History of Wood Engraving (Albert Garrett)
• Scene Through Wood (Anne Desmet)

Screenprinting

• Screenprints (Gill Saunders)

Mezzotint

• The Mezzotint (Carol Wax)

Aquatint

• Aquatint (Rena M. Hoisington)

Engraving and etching

• A History of Engraving and Etching (Arthur M. Hind)

Linocut

• Linocuts (Ella Ravilious)

Lithography

• A History of Lithography (Wilhelm Weber)
• Lithography (Domenico Porzio)

Monotype

• The Painterly Print (Margaret Aspinwall)
• The Monotype (Carla Esposito Hayter)

Woodblock

• Images from the Floating World (Richard Lane)

Lady C: The Long, Sensational Life of Lady Chatterley’s Lover

When the obscenity trial of D.H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover made headlines in the UK in 1960, the press dubbed it the ‘Lady C’ scandal. As Guy Cuthbertson says in his new book about the novel, also titled Lady C, the nickname “suggests the controversy regarding Lawrence’s use of ‘the c-word’”, and Cuthbertson’s first chapter is therefore titled The C-Word.

Cuthbertson’s book, subtitled The Long, Sensational Life of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, discusses the novel’s publication history, and gives an exhaustive account of its cultural impact. His source materials include newspaper coverage of the Lady C controversy from the 1950s onwards. He also describes the obscenity trial, or rather the trials, as Lady Chatterley was tried for obscenity in Japan and the US before the more famous Old Bailey trial.

On the fiftieth anniversary of Lady C’s acquittal, I wrote about the British court case, commenting that “the most notorious moment of the trial came at the beginning,” when prosecutor Mervyn Griffith-Jones asked the jury: “Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?” I also listed the “many outdated assumptions” inherent in that question, and pointed out the hypocrisy of Griffith-Jones telling the jury to avoid adopting a Victorian attitude when “his moral objections to the novel were themselves somewhat Victorian”.

Similarly, Cuthbertson writes: “The most remarkable and memorable moment of the trial came near the start,” and itemises the “various implied statements” in the Griffith-Jones question to the jury. He also highlights the prosecutor’s hypocrisy: “He had asked the jury that they should not act ‘in any priggish, high-minded, super-correct mid-Victorian manner’, but that was a manner that he himself seemed to have adopted.”

The Old Bailey trial was covered in more detail by C.H. Rolph in The Trial of Lady Chatterley, published only three months after the verdict was announced. Cuthbertson compares Rolph’s book to a “witty, well-crafted... courtroom crime novel.”

Abstract Art:A Global History

Pepe Karmel’s Abstract Art: A Global History was first published in 2020, followed by an expanded edition last year. Karmel begins with a close analysis of major paintings by “the three best-known creators of abstract art” — Vasily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrain, and Kazimir Malevich — and identifies apparent figurative origins within their abstract compositions. He then applies this revisionist methodology to later abstract artists: “If these key examples from the history of abstraction reveal concealed subject matter, perhaps the same is true of all abstract art.”

This informs his central thesis, that abstract art is the culmination of a creative process involving the transformation of figurative imagery: “The argument of this book, in brief, is that abstract artists always begin with a visual theme or archetype combining abstract forms with meanings generated by associations with the real world.” Note his use of words such as “all” and “always”: these are bold claims.

Karmel also rejects a chronological approach to art history, explaining that it’s not possible to cover each of the various movements and ‘isms’ that influenced the development of abstract art: “There is no narrative thread that could hold all of these together.” Nevertheless, previous histories of the subject, beginning with Michel Seuphor’s Dictionary of Abstract Painting and Abstract Painting, had a more traditional chronological structure.

Instead, Karmel’s book is organised thematically, into five broad categories: bodies, landscapes, cosmologies, architectures, and signs and patterns. Again, this imposes figurative origins onto abstract images, and despite the book’s subtitle, the result is a selective survey rather than a comprehensive history. (“I have chosen the artists who most clearly illustrate the arguments I want to make. Other, equally wonderful artists have been omitted.”) But it’s still the first major study of abstract art in more than thirty years, and it has an extensive bibliography.

When discussing the origins of abstract art, Karmel cites František Kupka’s 1912 painting Amorpha as a precursor to the Kandinsky/Mondrain/Malevich triumvirate. He is also among several writers in recent years who credit Hilma af Klint as a previously unsung pioneer of geometric abstraction. But there are two even earlier abstract artists who go unmentioned: Arnaldo Ginna and Victor Hugo.

Ginna’s 1908 painting Nevrastenia (‘neurasthenia’) has been described as “probably the first abstract painting in the history of Western art” (in Giannalberto Bendazzi’s Cartoons). Hugo’s fascinating stain-paintings were created from random splashes of ink, one of which was even titled Abstract Composition. (The work is undated, though it was produced in the 1860s.)

The Spiritual in Art, the 1986 exhibition that first rediscovered af Klint, was also arranged according to five themes, though only one of which (cosmic imagery, like the cosmologies chapter in Karmel’s book) was related to figurative images. Its extensive exhibition catalogue, edited by curator Maurice Tuchman, featured chapters covering artists and movements rather than visual classifications.

ฤดูกาลประชาชน(‘the season of the people’)

ฤดูกาลประชาชน (‘the season of the people’), published in 2022, features interviews with political campaigners including Arnon Nampa and Somyot Prueksakasemsuk, with portraits of each interviewee by Khai Maew. The interviews were conducted by Thiti Meetam.

Arnon, whose picture appears on the cover, is a lawyer and protest leader, and the author of books on poetry and politics. Somyot was editor of Voice of Taksin magazine. Both men were convicted of lèse-majesté, and the Somyot interview starts on p. 112. (Lèse-majesté is article 112 of the Thai criminal code.)

Making a Point:The Pernickety Story of English Punctuation

David Crystal is perhaps the foremost authority on the history of the English language, and his Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language is the best single-volume book on the subject. He has also written Making a Point: The Pernickety Story of English Punctuation.

The book is described by its publisher as “the first history of English punctuation with a complete guide on how to use it.” Although Pause and Effect by M.B. Parkes is a comprehensive history of punctuation in Western literature, Making a Point is indeed the first history of English punctuation.

Crystal’s main purpose is in providing a detailed guide to punctuation usage, though fortunately he avoids the prescriptivist approach adopted by Lynne Truss in her inexplicably popular Eats, Shoots and Leaves. As Crystal says, “it is not possible to be zero tolerant about a linguistic system that contains so much uncertainty.”

The Joyce of Everyday Life

At university, I wrote a dissertation on the cultural history of the c-word, which I later updated and published online. My work has been quoted by numerous other writers over the years, most recently by Vicki Mahaffey in The Joyce of Everyday Life, her prize-winning study of James Joyce.

In her book, Mahaffey cites me as a source: “Matthew Hunt argues that...” But, very strangely, she also writes: “Since Hunt’s death, the essay originally accessed has been taken down.”

This is really bizarre. Needless to say, I am still alive. I took my c-word research offline a few years ago, because it was being copied without authorisation, but I didn’t die. (I have now put my work on the c-word back online, and emailed Mahaffey to say that I’m not dead.)

Japan's Anime Revolution!Twenty Animated Films That Changed the World

Japan’s Anime Revolution! Twenty Animated Films That Changed the World, by Jonathan Clements, will be published in June. The book analyses twenty classic anime films “that help narrate and explain the history of Japanese animation”, including milestones such as Spirited Away (千と千尋の神隠し) and Akira (アキラ).

Clements is the leading anime authority outside Japan, and has worked on anime translation and distribution for many years, so he discusses each film from an industry insider’s perspective. He also surveys the latest Japanese-language anime scholarship.

Clements wrote the definitive history of anime in 2013. (A more concise book on the subject, 100 Years of Anime, was published last year.) He also co-wrote The Anime Encyclopedia, a uniquely comprehensive guide to thousands of anime titles. His co-author Helen McCarthy wrote Anime!, the first English-language book on the subject.

“หมอ ฟ้องภาพนี้เพราะเหมือนการ์ตูนชายรักชาย”(‘I’m pressing charges because it looks gay’)

One of the strangest lèse-majesté cases began yesterday, when a dentist from Chiang Mai announced on Facebook that she had prepared a dossier of evidence to prove that a cartoon book published last year defamed King Naresuan. Yuwathida Poopunhong argues that the cover of Amulin’s Ayothaya Ayeyarwady vol. 1 (อโยธยา เอยาวดี เล่ม ๑) shows a man — who she presumes to be Naresuan — surrounded by flowers, which makes him seem overly effeminate and therefore gay (“หมอ ฟ้องภาพนี้เพราะเหมือนการ์ตูนชายรักชาย”).

Why is the case so odd? There are many reasons. Yuwathida admits that she hasn’t read the book (“หมอยังไม่ได้อ่านเนื้อเรื่องเลยค่ะลูก”). She even confesses that she herself has previously insulted Rama X (“เหตุการณ์เกือบตายที่หมอไปด่า ร.10 & ต้นตระกูลจนเกือบ ตาย”). Most bizarrely, she says that she is filing the lèse-majesté charge because Naresuan appeared in her nightmares and told her to do it (“พระองค์น่ากลัวอยู่เด้อ ชอบมาเข้าฝันหมอ ฝากให้หมอแช่ง”).

The comic is homoerotic — it falls within the BL (‘boys’ love’) genre — but it isn’t sexually explicit. In any case, although the main character was clearly inspired by Naresuan, he has a different name: the character is called อำดง (‘forest lurker’), which is almost a phonetic anagram of Naresuan’s title องค์ดำ (‘black prince’). A disclaimer from the publisher stresses that all names have been changed, and the comic is a work of fiction.

In one of her Facebook posts, Yuwathida apologises to Amulin for the necessity of filing the lèse-majesté charge (“หมอขอโทษล่วงหน้า”). But later in the same paragraph, she also says callously: ‘whether you go to jail or not is your problem’ (“จะติดคุก มันก็เรื่องของหนู”).

Naresuan died more than 400 years ago, in 1605, though a modern lèse-majesté case involving him is not unprecedented. The respected public intellectual Sulak Sivaraksa narrowly avoided a conviction in 2014 after he questioned the historical accuracy of Naresuan’s legendary elephant duel.

Harpy: A Manifesto for Childfree Women

In Harpy: A Manifesto for Childfree Women, Caroline Magennis argues that woman need not feel guilty for not having children. After searching for an appropriate description of herself as a woman without children, she settled on ‘harpy’: “I had tried on different words, and none of them stuck until Harpy.”

Although a harpy is generally depicted as a winged monster, Magennis embraces these physical characteristics as a metaphorical means of escape from criticism: “Through the harpy I want to find a way to turn both the passive-aggressive and direct stigma into something that felt like it had a terrifying power... The harpy came to mean, to me, all the ways in which we had been depicted but also a way out, even if we had to fly away and use our claws to get there.”

Magennis shows how childfree women are demonised by popular culture (specifically, tabloid newspapers and Hollywood films). She cites Lady Macbeth as “the epitome of the ruthless childless monster”, though she also highlights negative cultural archetypes such as wicked stepmothers.

Mary Daly, in Gyn/Ecology (1978), sought to reclaim ‘harpy’, along with similar terms such as ‘witch’, ‘hag’, ‘crone’, and ‘spinster’. Harpy is one of a handful of recent feminist books whose titles refer to misogynistic insults. Other examples include Hags by Victoria Smith, Bitch by Karen Stollznow, Slags on Stage by Katie Beswick, In Defence of Witches by Mona Chollet (which includes a chapter on The No-Child Option), Bimbo by Ashley James, and several books that tackle the word ‘slut’ (I Am Not a Slut, This Is What a Feminist Slut Looks Like, Wordslut, and Sluts).

Hags:The Demonisation of Middle-aged Women

Hags, as its subtitle makes clear, is a study of The Demonisation of Middle-aged Women. Author Victoria Smith explains that her purpose is not to reappropriate the word ‘hag’, nor to self-identify with the characteristics it evokes: “This book is not a celebration of our hag status.” (In contrast, Sharon Blackie — who trademarked the portmanteau word ‘hagitude’ — and fashion designer Batsheva Hay are self-proclaimed hags.)

Smith opposes the concept of linguistic reclamation, arguing that the process is impossible, as some men continue to use the contested terms as pejoratives: “call yourself what you like, but when others call you a witch or a slut, they mean it. We can act as though the words can be fully reclaimed, but they can’t. Those who dislike and fear us are using them too.” Karen Stollznow made a similar observation in her book about about another misogynistic term: “Unfortunately, the ways women try to reclaim bitch do not diminish its stigmatizing power in the hands of others, and especially men.”

Smith’s book shares its theme with The Crone, written by Barbara G. Walker in 1985, and the two books also have similar chapter headings. Mary Daly, in Gyn/Ecology (1978), sought to reclaim ‘hag’, along with related terms such as ‘witch’, ‘harpy’, ‘crone’, and ‘spinster’.

Hags is one of a handful of recent feminist books whose titles refer to misogynistic insults. Other examples include Harpy by Caroline Magennis, Slags on Stage by Katie Beswick, In Defence of Witches by Mona Chollet (which includes a chapter on Shattering the Image of the ‘Old Hag’), Bimbo by Ashley James, and several books that tackle the word ‘slut’ (I Am Not a Slut, This Is What a Feminist Slut Looks Like, Wordslut, and Sluts).

Slags on Stage: Class, Sex, Art and Desire in British Culture

Katie Beswick’s Slags on Stage: Class, Sex, Art and Desire in British Culture, published last year, “offers a personal and cultural history of the word ‘slag’,” a misogynistic slang term that implies both promiscuity and worthlessness. Beswick discusses the representation of female characters in popular culture (such as the self-defined “total slag” Kat Slater in EastEnders) and female artists (such as Tracey Emin, whose tent installation Everyone I Have Ever Slept With exposed her sexual history). The book’s cover illustration is from Kelly Green’s performance art production Slag.

Beswick briefly considers the reappropriation of ‘slag’, arguing that this is not yet possible: “We are not at the stage of reclaiming slag... or even being able to weaponise it effectively as resistance — and yet its complexities must be acknowledged in any reckoning with the term.” She conducted a survey of 169 people’s attitudes towards the word, and only two respondents “expressed a sense of reclamation”. A more common response was that “unlike other offensive sexist words, such as ‘slut’ and ‘cunt’, ‘slag’ was unable to be reclaimed, and therefore felt worse as an insult.”

Slags on Stage is one of a handful of recent feminist books whose titles refer to misogynistic insults. Other examples include Bitch by Karen Stollznow, Harpy by Caroline Magennis, Hags by Victoria Smith, In Defence of Witches by Mona Chollet, Bimbo by Ashley James, and several books that tackle the word ‘slut’ (I Am Not a Slut, This Is What a Feminist Slut Looks Like, Wordslut, and Sluts).