Journalist, feminist and campaigner Natasha Walter features on second episode of Souvient

“Don't try and pre-judge your future: try to connect with your passions and your values that's going to be what carries you through, that's going to be what brings you happiness. Enjoy - find what you love.”

St John’s is launching the second episode of new podcast series Souvient, featuring a conversation with the journalist, feminist and campaigner Natasha Walter.

In each episode of the podcast, host Heather Hancock, Master of St John’s, is joined by a notable person from across the College’s community for lively and thought-provoking discussions about their life and work. ‘Souvient’ is taken from 'Souvent me Souvient', the medieval French motto of St John’s Founder, Lady Margaret Beaufort. usually translated as ‘I often remember’, or ‘remember me often’.

Walter who gained a double first in English when she was a student at St John’s, began her career at Vogue magazine, before moving into arts journalism. Her two powerful books on feminism, The New Feminism (1998, Virago) and Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism (2010, Virago), chart a trajectory from positive hope for change in women’s lives at the dawn of a reforming Labour government to a warning that the feminist movement was being repackaged, commodified and sold back to women in narrow and hypersexualised form.

After launching and running a charity to support and campaign for the rights of refugee women, Walter has returned to writing with the forthcoming publication in August 2023 of Before the Light Fades, a memoir exploring her mother’s suicide and the efforts of members of her family to campaign for justice and a better world.

To mark the 40th anniversary of the admission of women as members of St John’s College, the first guests to be interviewed on Souvient are pioneering female alumnae of the College.

The first guest was the rower Annamarie Phelps, St John’s’ first female Olympian 

Listen to the episode featuring Natasha Walter

Published 20/02/2023

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