In the last few years, as identity politics have taken hold, middle-aged women have found themselves talked and written about as morally inferior beings: the face of bigotry, entitlement and selfishness, to be ignored, pitied or abused.

In Hags, Victoria Smith asks why these women are treated with such active disdain. Each chapter takes a different theme – care work, beauty, violence, political organization, sex – and explores it in relation to middle-aged women’s beliefs, bodies, histories and choices. Smith traces the attitudes she describes through history, and explores the very specific reasons why this type of misogyny is so very now. The result is a book that is absorbing, insightful, witty and bang on time.

Rachel Cooke, Observer

My polemic of the year . . . a book that could not be more necessary (a sword and a shield) in the current climate

Janice Turner, The Times

The greatest joy of Hags is its lively erudition . . . This eloquent, clever and devastating book describes the last remaining acceptable prejudice, one that is now even posited as progress: the loathing of older women

Victoria Smith is a feminist writer with a particular interest in motherhood and intersections of misogyny and ageism. She is a regular contributor to the Critic, and her work has also appeared in the New Statesman, the Independent and Unherd. Her newsletter, The OK Karen, looks at midlife women’s experiences of feminism, and she tweets @glosswitch. She holds a PhD in German literature, with a particular interest in Romanticism and dark fairy tales.

To book please contact the booking office at bookings@nlc.org.uk or call 020 7968 0912.

The two-course lunch in the Lady Violet Room starting at 12:30pm followed by coffee and mints costs £34.00 Please book early and inform the club of any dietary requirements.