The book review lined up to appear in next weekend's Sunday Times seemed to be, in all respects, suitable stuff for the pages of a quality paper. The… - Joan Smith

Shocking though the Savile revelations are, they have to be seen in a wider context. His behaviour was enabled by a revolution in sexual behaviour that was supposed to liberate both sexes, but actually offered endless opportunities to unscrupulous men. Its effects were far-reaching, creating poisonous attitudes towards victims of sexual abuse that are still being recycled in rape trials today. But it has also prompted a feminist critique that is vital if we’re ever going to understand the context that men like Savile operate in, and stop them at an early stage in their criminal careers.

It's time his double standards were spelled out: Assange has used his hacking skills to turn himself into a worldwide phenomenon, and now he demands for himself exactly the same impunity he excoriates in politicians.

Smith’s book [Different for Girls] is, nevertheless, an acute and enjoyable analysis of misreadings and misrepresentations of women in popular culture. Put simply, her argument is that women are far less different from men than the media, religion, politicians, pundits and the fashion world would have it. And indeed there is a kind of ‘new woman’ abroad: a more androgynous, much tougher creature than the postwar or even Sixties model. The new woman, according to Smith, enjoys her own power, her own money, her own sexuality. She can play with self-image without burning her fingers. She is unimpressed by the ever-after promises of marriage (or of men, as it happens) and the easy seductions of motherhood. Smith has often written on the growing numbers of women – one in five, the most reliable figure – who refuse motherhood, and is particularly scathing on the patriarchal implications of infertility treatment.