Natasha Walter

Writer - Fiction and Non-fiction

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Natasha Walter is a writer of both fiction and non-fiction, a journalist and human rights campaigner.

She is a graduate of Cambridge and Harvard, and has worked as a columnist, reviewer and feature writer for the Guardian, Vogue and the Independent. Natasha is the founder of the charity Women for Refugee Women, where she was the director for 15 years.

Her most recent book, Before the Light Fades: A Memoir of Grief and Resistance, is published by Virago in August 2023. It explores Natasha's grief following her mother's suicide, and her family's legacy of political resistance.

Her first book, THE NEW FEMINISM (Virago), was published in 1998. In 2010 she published LIVING DOLLS: THE RETURN OF SEXISM (also Virago), which examines the resurgence of sexism in contemporary culture. Her first novel, A QUIET LIFE, loosely based on the life of Melinda Marling, the wife of Cambridge spy Donald Maclean, was published by Borough Press in 2016.

She has been a judge on the Booker Prize and the Women's Prize for fiction.

In 2015 Natasha was Humanitas Visiting Professor of Women's Rights at Cambridge University.

Praise for BEFORE THE LIGHT FADES (2023):

'Walter's wise, thoughtful memoir is both deeply affecting and unexpectedly inspiring. A fascinating story of courage, doubt and defiance across three generations, it's the perfect read for daunting times.' Sarah Waters

'An eloquent, piercing, gloriously humane memoir on the wonders of life in the most difficult of moments. It touched me very much.' Philippe Sands

'An important and beautiful memoir about how a daughter's feelings for the loss of her beloved mother changes and evolves through grief... dark, painful but also illuminating and healing.' Julia Samuel 

Praise for A QUIET LIFE (2016):

‘As well as having a gift for cool, elegant phrasing, and a fine sensitivity to psychology reminiscent of Elizabeth Jane Howard, Walter proves to be a hardworking and accomplished storyteller… [She] is terrific, too, at capturing the tense, bleached-out dreariness of the cold war in London and Washington, easily competing with the claims of such experienced novelists as Sebastian Faulks and William Boyd to the territory, and bringing to it a unique perspective that resonates long after the novel is laid down’ Guardian

‘Fans of spy fiction have been waiting a long time for a top-quality female-centred thriller… [A Quiet Life is] a globetrotting adventure of coded messages, secret cameras and exchanged passwords with strangers on the street. Historical details add convincing colour, as Laura dashes between air-raid shelters, plush hotels, Edward’s country pile, and Washington and Geneva… It is in the detail of Laura’s anxiety over performing womanhood correctly that Walter will steal the hearts of her female readers… On the agony and delight of motherhood, the secret awfulness of pregnancy and dinner parties, and the morphing of young love into an old habit, Walter shows herself to be a writer of game-changing skill and sensitivity. Few novelists can combine serious feminism with romance and adventure and make it work… Moreover, [Walter] knows how to write a literary page-turner with quite a lot of sex that is never embarrassing. If Jane Smiley wrote Smiley’s People, it still wouldn’t be as good as this’ Melissa Katsoulis, The Times

It was with a huge dose of awe that I became acquainted with the double life of Laura Last in Natasha Walter’s whirlwind of a debut novel A Quiet Life… this [is a] thrilling tale of sacrifice, love, secrets and identity…Walter’s Laura leaps off the page and pulls you into her underworld. And while other characters are left in the dark, as readers we’re in on it and it’s brilliant. Turns out, A Quiet Life is too good a secret to keep to myself’ Stylist ****

‘On the thriller scale, this sits at the spy fiction end, but it’s too good not to recommend. Inspired by the story of Melinda Marling, the wife of Cambridge spy Donald Maclean who leaked secrets about the development of atomic bomb to the Soviet Union, all the while he was British diplomat in Washington. No on ever suspected that Melinda might be complicit. But unlike, Melinda, Natasha’s protagonist Laura is a fully-fledged spy’ Vogue, ‘Best Thrillers of 2016’

‘An utterly fascinating novel which gives an entirely new perspective of the WWII time period. It’s a wholly immersive and wonderful read about a compelling character’ Lonesome Reader, ‘Best Books of 2016’

 

Non-Fiction

Publication DetailsNotes

BEFORE THE LIGHT FADES

2023

Virago

From the acclaimed writer and thinker, a moving memoir about losing her mother to suicide as well as honouring the legacy of a family whose members struggled bravely against some of the worst crises of the twentieth century.

One day in December, Natasha Walter's mother Ruth took her own life.

At first, the grief and guilt that Natasha felt were overwhelming. As the author of feminist books and the founder of the charity Women for Refugee Women, Natasha had always been active in movements for social justice. But in the aftermath of her mother's suicide, her personal grief intertwines with a sense of political despair.

Gradually, she starts to search back through Ruth's history, trying to understand how her life led to this death. She explores Ruth's own involvement as a young woman in the nuclear disarmament movement of the 1960s. Even though Ruth had been brought up to be a conventional young woman, she chose to take huge risks and break the law in order to stand up for what she believed was right. This was where Ruth met and fell in love with Natasha's father, the anarchist writer Nicolas Walter.

Natasha also explores the history of Ruth's parents, particularly the story of her grandfather Georg. He was involved in anti-Nazi resistance in the 1930s in Germany, was imprisoned for three years and then went on the run across Europe. Eventually he got to safety, and never spoke again about his experiences.

In thinking back through the years, Natasha comes to a deeper and more hopeful understanding of the legacy that her parents and grandparents leave her. No longer overwhelmed by grief, she comes to value the courage of past generations. She steps back into activism, and values the beauty of everyday life once again.

Without false hope, this book explores why it is always important to stand up for what you believe is right, even when success is far from assured. This is a memoir that is honest about loss, but also searches for what is valuable in the legacy of one family that lived through some of the great crises of the twentieth century. It will resonate with those grappling with the loss of hope in these challenging political times, as well as those who are living in the shadow of bereavement.

1999

Virago

Where has British feminism gone? Has it retreated into the academy, did it burn out at Greenham Common, has it emigrated to the United States? Natasha Walter discovers that there is a new feminism right here and now in Britain. It is alive and kicking and speaking in the voices of young British women. In defining this new feminism, Natasha Walter celebrates women's growing power, casts aside the dogma of previous generations, and argues that the old adage 'The Personal is Political' does more harm than good. Because above all, this new feminism is frankly materialist. Who cares about how women dress, how they talk, how they make love? First, feminism must deliver political power and economic equality.

With tremendous wit, verve and intelligence, THE NEW FEMINISM marks out fresh ground in feminist debate.

2010

World Rights: Virago

Empowerment, liberation, choice. Once the watchwords of feminism, these terms have now been co-opted by a society that sells women an airbrushed, highly sexualized and increasingly narrow vision of femininity. While the opportunities available to women may have expanded, the ambitions of many young girls are in reality limited by a culture that asks them to see consumerism and self-decoration as their only proper occupations, and their bodies as their only passport to success. At the same time we are encouraged to believe that the inequality we observe all around us is born of innate biological differences rather than social factors.

Drawing on a wealth of research and personal interviews, the author of THE NEW FEMINISM and one of Britain's most incisive cultural commentators gives us a straight-talking, passionate and important book that makes us look afresh at women and girls, at sexism and femininity - today.

Fiction

Publication DetailsNotes
2016

The Borough Press

Wife.
Mother.
Spy.

A double life is no life at all.

Since the disappearance of her husband in 1951, Laura Leverett has been living in limbo with her daughter in Geneva. All others see is her conventional, charming exterior; nobody guesses the secret she is carrying.

Her double life began years ago, when she stepped on to the boat which carried her across the Atlantic in 1939. Eager to learn, and eager to love, she found herself suddenly inspired by a young Communist woman she met on the boat. In London she begins to move between two different worlds – from the urbane society of her cousins and their upper class friends, to the anger of those who want to forge a new society. One night at a party she meets a man who seems to her to combine both worlds, but who is hiding a secret bigger than she could ever imagine.

Impelled by desire, she finds herself caught up in his hidden life. Love grows, but so do fear and danger. This is the warm-blooded story of the Cold War. The story of a wife whose part will take her from London in the Blitz, to Washington at the height of McCarthyism, to the possible haven of the English countryside. Gradually she learns what is at stake for herself, her husband, and her daughter; gradually she realises the dark consequences of her youthful idealism.

Sweeping and exhilarating, alive with passion and betrayal, A Quiet Life is the first novel from a brilliant new voice in British fiction.