Overview

'Pacy, witty and authoritative' Jonathan Freedland A superb and illuminating history of Imperial Rome's most important women – dispelling the myths and misogyny that have distorted their reputations for over 2000 years. Writer, activist and journalist Joan Smith has worked for years to raise awareness of violence against women and girls, and has been instrumental in bringing the innate misogyny of the police to public attention. Unfortunately, She Was a Nymphomaniac reinterprets the bloody, violent story of twenty-three women closely associated with the Julio-Claudian emperors of Rome. Fewer than half a dozen of them can be said with any confidence to have died of natural causes. These were the wives, mothers and daughters of the emperors from Augustus to Nero, via their ‘mad’ relative Caligula. They were the most privileged women of their time, but their lives were overshadowed, dominated and controlled by these men. Raped, killed, ripped apart from their children and mostly airbrushed from history, Joan Smith brings their extraordinary and tragic stories back into focus. There are no nymphomaniacs here. Instead, the book pieces together the human stories, showing how they struggled for control of their lives at a time when both the law and culture were stacked against them. These women shared in a spirited, inspiring and sometimes reckless resistance to male authority. Smith brings to this history not only a fresh interpretation of the original texts but also an understanding of what we know now about the mechanics of domestic abuse. The way these women have been misrepresented for two thousand years speaks volumes not just about ancient misogyny but the origin and persistence of attitudes that continue to blight women’s lives today.

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9780008638818

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Reviews

Praise for Home Grown: 'Scaldingly describes the failures of police, counterterrorism agencies, social services and others. It also challenges our tendency to tidy our memories … Readers will enjoy Smith's feminist, polemical style … Powerfully written’ The Times ‘Two-thirds of U S gun deaths are suicides. We know, too, as Joan Smith has documented brilliantly in her book … that a lot of these shooters have a history of terrorising the women in their lives’ Guardian ‘Smith, a feminist and human rights campaigner, contends that if victims were believed, domestic abuse were better recognised … then numerous acts of terrorism … could and can be avoided’ Observer ‘The revelation of Joan Smith's book is the danger it poses. If we are scared of terrorism, she argues, the smart way to keep safe would be to pay much more attention to domestic violence … The similarities are so relentlessly consistent, the only puzzle is why it has taken this long for anyone to notice’ Sunday Times 'A chilling indictment and an urgent call to action. Joan Smith's meticulous, shocking book offers irrefutable evidence that many men who commit public atrocities have already practised their terrorism at home. Powerful … Smith proves again and again that this refusal to accept the evidence and recognise what domestic violence actually means as a force within society, also means that we are vulnerable to other types of male violence, including suicide bombings, terrorist attacks and mass shootings’ Irish Times

Author Information

Joan Smith is an author and journalist. She has written columns for most national newspapers and reviews crime fiction for the Sunday Times. One of her earliest successes was the feminist classic Misogynies, and two of her novels were made into films by the BBC. She was Co-chair of the Mayor of London's Violence Against Women and Girls Board from 2013 to 2021. Her book Home Grown drew on that experience, revealing the links between domestic violence and terrorism. She has also worked extensively on free speech, chairing an English PEN committee that campaigned on behalf of imprisoned writers, and advising the UK Foreign Office on free expression. She lives in London.

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