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Irish Times
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Esther Freud: ‘My sister always wants me to be harder, be meaner, be tougher. To cut through'
I meet Esther Freud in a north London cafe in advance of the publication of her 10th novel, My Sister and Other Lovers. It's 30 degrees outside so we order orange juice, and sit under a slow ceiling fan. The atmosphere in the cafe is charmingly chaotic: bright yellow walls, books and plants overspilling the shelves, the sound of chatter and cutlery clinking layered with Classic FM and the occasional burst of a passing car radio. Freud speaks with quiet assurance and pauses to consider her answers. Her demeanour is warm and curious. My Sister and Other Lovers marks a return to the highly autobiographical terrain Freud first mined in Hideous Kinky (1992), her breakout debut about a girl's unconventional childhood in Morocco with her sister and their bohemian mother. The father, an artist in London, is notable mainly for his absence. The author is the daughter of the artist Lucian Freud and Bernardine Coverley. Her sister is the fashion designer Bella Freud. READ MORE More than three decades later, she revisits this material from a different angle, looking at a different chapter in their lives. It is also a return to Ireland , where her mother was from and where Freud continues to draw from the painful, rich well of familial and national history. Her 2021 novel, I Couldn't Love You More , tackled the trauma of Ireland's mother and baby homes . This time around, though, the book emerged uncertainly. Freud describes a period of drifting after her last novel, coinciding with the start of the Covid pandemic. She turned to short stories, feeling they required less commitment. 'Almost before realising it,' she says, 'I had a book of short stories, and I wasn't that excited. I just felt quite pleased with myself in a slightly childish way, like, oh, that was easy.' That ease, she admits now, was a sign. 'Books do need to be quite hard to be good. Books have to be so good to touch you.' When she looked at the collection more closely, what stood out were the sisters: their communication, their lives, their deep connection. The stories were all titled after songs or albums – the first, called Desire, after the Bob Dylan album, was meant to be the title story. But something didn't feel right. The book wasn't about desire, not really. It was about love. It was about the sisters. And so, the title changed: My Sister and Other Lovers. At that moment, Freud realised she would need to begin again. Two more years passed as she reworked the short stories into a novel with a clear narrative arc. It was becoming a sequel of sorts to Hideous Kinky. At first, she resisted this idea, changing the characters' names, pushing them away. But eventually, she gave in. 'I used my own life and filled out the stories,' she says, 'and formed them into more of a narrative arc.' Freud has always been open about drawing from her own experiences, though she is rarely included in discussions around autofiction, a label often applied to contemporary women writers. 'I suppose because I always want to create a more traditional novel,' she reflects. But she is always up front about drawing from life. 'Maybe I out myself more readily than another writer might.' Esther Freud as a young girl Memoir and autofiction, she notes, come with a particular intensity. She has a great deal of respect for a lot of recent books that confuse the distinction between fact and fiction, but she isn't drawn to experimentalism in her own writing. 'Often those books can be quite academic. I'm not really so interested in that. What I'm interested in is story.' Still, she admits she worries about writing from life. 'Anything recognisable, I worry that someone will be offended,' she says. 'But the alternative is not writing something that will work in the book.' At a certain point in the process, a cold determination takes over: 'that famous splinter of ice in the heart'. The story becomes everything. Nothing else matters. 'It's terrible not to be able to write what you want to write.' Childhood remains one of her richest themes. Writing from the perspective of a child comes more naturally, she says. 'There's an ease to it. I love describing things seen for the first time.' Writing from the point of view of an adult woman, she finds more difficult. Perhaps it's related to another of Freud's themes: freedom. I've noticed that many of her characters seek to free themselves from familial or social constraints, and become trapped in other ways. She had never quite framed it that way herself, she says, but the observation resonates. 'I like to write about people who go on journeys to try to find a life that suits them better. I'm always dreaming of escaping. I love moving. My parents both lived life as they wanted to, and I think they understood that I had every right to do the same.' Freud moved often as a child, and Hideous Kinky was, in part, a testament to that instability and its unexpected gifts. When it was published in 1992, she recalls, many readers, particularly single mothers, expressed gratitude. Here, at last, was a child's perspective on a mother who didn't have many resources but still managed to prioritise adventure. 'There's so much criticism of those women who thought to do something differently,' she says. 'I thought the book was non-judgmental, but people didn't see it that way. I think if I wrote it now, as a mother, I'd be more careful. But when I wrote it I wrote it as if I was a child. That's what made the book work.' [ From the archive: Lucian Freud painting of teenage Irish lover seeks up to £10 million Opens in new window ] Male critics at the time were particularly ungenerous. 'They described the plot as this feckless hippie mother dragging her kids around. Well, she wasn't dragging us. Things then were really hard. There was no support. But she saved herself. And she gave me an enormous amount of inspiration.' With My Sister and Other Lovers, she returns to her family story from a more nuanced perspective. The novel investigates the undercurrents of sisterhood, the tensions that pull at relationships beneath the surface. 'I wanted to write about sisters and the complicated relationship sisters have with each other,' she explains. 'The tug of war that happens underneath every family story. Times when someone has a very different worldview and they want you to agree with theirs. You're trying to convince each other of the validity of the way you see things.' It's not nostalgia, exactly, though she admits to a remarkable memory for the small details of the past. 'Not for anything that useful,' she laughs. She can remember whole conversations. 'I spent quite a lot of time making life into stories when I was young, which probably helps keep memories alive. I think some people are less interested in that; in being reverent about what happened, turning it into a story. Maybe they live more in the present.' Writing, for her, involves bravery and curiosity. She believes a subject is worth pursuing only if it contains something mysterious. 'Often when I write I don't know how it's going to unravel,' she says. 'I really didn't know how the sisters' journey would go, I only knew a few stepping stones. A few scenes I really wanted to write. But I was saving them, as a reward for getting there. To be a good subject, you have to be really interested in it and you have to not know everything. I always want to be brave enough to go down into a subject that's close to me, to give myself permission to focus for however many months or even years on the thing that's interesting to me.' In this book, that mystery was the heart of the relationship between the sisters. To write it compellingly, she had to draw on her own deep and complex bond with her own sister. Has her sister read the book? 'Yes, she's one of my earliest readers. She's a very good reader. A very, very good editor. She has no time for superfluous or soft descriptions. She always wants me to be harder, be meaner, be tougher. To cut through. With each book, there's someone sitting on your shoulder, and with this one it was definitely her.'
Times
28-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Why the A-list love Bella Freud's couch
Bella Freud is a fashion designer, the daughter of a famous portraitist (Lucian) and the great-granddaughter of the founding father of psychoanalysis (Sigmund). Her podcast Fashion Neurosis with Bella Freud knowingly draws on this background. In each episode she invites a well-known guest to sit for her — or actually, lie on her couch, as if in a therapy session — then asks them about their lifelong relationship with clothes as a way into bigger themes. It is a strong format, instantly conferring structure and intimacy. Clothes can offer our first shot at self-expression and have a transformative, talismanic effect. But outfits can be what we hide behind too. Even celebrated beauties, you learn here, lack confidence and have complex relationships with their bodies. Freud, who has been in analysis for years, makes tongue-in-cheek nods to the therapy process. This is a visualised podcast, one of the few that might merit watching over just listening: Freud sets her stage stylishly, with precise attention to details like lighting. Each episode begins with the client being buzzed into Freud's consulting room. A metronome or old-fashioned clock ticks. Moody piano music plays. The camera lingers over arresting black-and-white portraits, among them a teenage Bella with her father.
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Iconic Rocker, 60, Makes Bold Statement About Having a 'Friend With Benefits'
Iconic Rocker, 60, Makes Bold Statement About Having a 'Friend With Benefits' originally appeared on Parade. Courtney Love is doing 60 in style. The legendary rocker, who rose to stardom as the lead vocalist and guitarist for the rock band Hole, opened up about her romantic life in a new episode of Fashion Neurosis with Bella Freud. Lying down on the couch like all of Freud's guests, Love discussed her casual sexual relationship by referring to "the person I do most of my romantic crap with." She said this person "is also a libertine, so we really are also more friends with benefits sometimes." Love, who was previously married to Nirvana icon Kurt Cobain until he died in 1994, declined to mention her love interest's name publicly. "I don't like talking about them," she noted, "because there's jealousy around that person." Honing in on her own feelings of jealousy, Love went on to say that she doesn't "really get it." 🎬 🎬 "I don't know if I'm being in denial here, but I have a friend, and I made friends with him when he was on the up in the art world, and he's done astonishingly well, and I could not be happier for him," she told Freud. "I have another friend who I met on her come up and now she's bigger than I'll ever, ever be and I'm really happy for her." Love has been living in London since 2019. She's even in the process of becoming a British citizen, PEOPLE reported. Back in March, she told Todd Almond at London's Geographical Society that she loves living across the pond. 'I'm really glad I'm here. It's so great to live here. I'm finally getting my British citizenship in six months. I get to be a citizen. I'm applying, man! Can't get rid of me,' she Rocker, 60, Makes Bold Statement About Having a 'Friend With Benefits' first appeared on Parade on Jun 12, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Jun 12, 2025, where it first appeared.
Telegraph
10-06-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
M&S fashion is back online – these are the nine must-buy pieces
Lovers of Marks & Spencer fashion, rejoice – after six long weeks, we can finally shop its clothing, shoes and accessories online once more. The retailer has resumed service on its e-commerce site after it was forced to cease online trading due to a cyber attack in April. 'Select fashion ranges are now available to buy online' for customers in England, Scotland and Wales, according to a notice on the M&S website. The company says more of its fashion, home and beauty products will be added to its online shop each day, with deliveries in Northern Ireland to restart in the coming weeks. And if you can't order what you want? 'For products that are not available online, customers can add them to their 'wish list' and when they come back into stock we will let them know,' the retailer says. 'Our full range remains available in store.' Cotton one-shouldered dress, £49.90, Marks & Spencer For high street fashion fans, this news will be particularly welcome. While the M&S clothing department has always been popular for basics such as underwear and hosiery, its fashion offering, lead by head of womenswear design Lisa Illis, has improved significantly in recent years, delivering (until the cyber attack) sustained growth. It's not just the well-received collaborations with Sienna Miller and Bella Freud; before online shutdown, M&S revealed that it sells 10 pairs of jeans every minute, thanks to 'It' styles such as the barrel and palazzo, and prices starting at just £25. 'M&S finally seems confident about what it's doing and who its customer is, and is no longer patronising her with shapeless dresses and frumpy patterns,' The Telegraph 's head of fashion, Lisa Armstrong, wrote last year. Cotton embroidered blouse, £55, Marks & Spencer Certain trend-led fashion items have sold out rapidly, with lengthy waiting lists for the restock – among them a pair of brown suede loafers bearing a close resemblance to a pair by Saint Laurent, and a bow-front sequin top that was a viral hit last Christmas. Of course, there's been no issue with in-store sales in the intervening weeks, and new-in collections have been available to buy across the UK – but brick-and-mortar stores don't always carry the full offering. The cyber attack has served as an indicator of just how dependent the fashion consumer has become on the retailer's e-commerce site. So now that we can shop online again, which are the new-in pieces we should add to basket? Well, get excited, because the new drop is very strong indeed – but I feel I should preface this with the warning that we should always be prepared to receive something that looked great online but is disappointing in real life. A colleague who visited an M&S store this weekend complained of cheap, synthetic-looking knitwear (those viscose/polyamide blends) and 'insipid blouses' (beware items such as a lace tie-front blouse which does not boast enough fabric to pass muster as a grown-up evening look). My personal pet fashion hate is wishy-washy floral midi dresses – but, thankfully, I don't see any online today. As for the best buys, scroll on for The Telegraph fashion team's edit…
Daily Mail
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Artist who had multiple orgasms in public museum reveals the 'exhausting' effect it had on her
An artist who had multiple orgasms in public gallery revealed the 'terrible' effect it had on her in the following years. Marina Abramović, from Serbia, is a performance artist who spent over five decades pushing the limits of art through controversial performances, including switching places with a prostitute in the red light district in Amsterdam in the 70s. Among her controversial stunts is a performance in the 2005 series, Seven Easy Pieces at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, in which she masturbated for eight hours straight. The series, which comprised of several performances, took place across a number of days at the museum and was dedicated to the artist's late friend, Susan Sontag. But the performance that stood out was the second, in which she recreated another famous performance piece from 1972 by Vito Acconici, and masturbated underneath a stage for several hours. Reflecting on the controversial performance several years on, Abramovic told fashion designer Bella Freud it had been an 'exhausting' experience. Speaking on the Fashion Neurosis podcast, the artist said: 'I had to do this for seven hours, I think I had more than five orgasms. It was really difficult because the next day I had do another performance. I was exhausted.' Marina took inspiration from another artist named Vito Acconci, who developed a performance called 'Seedbed' where he hid underneath a ramp at the Sonnabend Gallery in NYC and masturbated while speakers played him talking about his fantasies of people walking above him. She said she wanted to recreate 'Seedbed' from the perspective of 'female energy', which prompted her to add the performance into the Seven Easy Pieces series. Her conversation with Bella Freud follows comments Abramovic made to New York Magazine in which she said she'd 'never concentrated so hard in my life'. 'The problem for me, with this piece, was the absence of public gaze: only the sound. But I heard that people had a great time; it was like a big party up there! I ended with nine orgasms,' she said. 'It was terrible for the next piece - I was so exhausted!' The Seven Easy Pieces series isn't the only work of Abramovic's to have made waves in the art industry - after her 1970s stunt shocked the world. However the 79-year-old is most famous for her 'Rhythm 0' piece, a now notorious six-hour performance which tested her will - and the self control of audience members. Carried out in 1974, Abramović lay prone on a table surrounded by 72 objects which included matches, saws, nails and a gun loaded with a single bullet. As audience members interacted with her, they were invited to use the objects in any way they desired. She'd been stripped of her clothes and had her skin slashed with blades, one person even held a loaded gun to her head and put her finger on the trigger. She later said she was 'ready to die' if that was the consequence of that performance. In the 1970s Marina swapped places with a prostitute in the red light district in Amsterdam for six hours for a performance called Role Exchange. She said: 'I asked her to go to the gallery at be me and I sit in the window and become her. 'It was pretty scary stuff to do, but this was in 1975, I did it for six hours, it was so fascinating. 'It was my first time in Amsterdam and my first time to do a performance there. 'This was logical for me to do because in that time my education was always that being a prostitute was the lowest thing to be and my mother would just die when found out I done this work, so all the reason to do it.' On her website, she spoke about the exchange, saying: 'She give me only the instruction that I should never go below her price because I will ruin her business. 'So I had the two customers; one asked about her, and the second one didn't want to pay the price. 'She said to me that I would starve if I will be prostitute because I don't have any talent for that role.' One of her most celebrated artistic performance, known as The Artist Is Present, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 2010. The exhibition featured Marina's performance piece, where she sat at a table in the atrium gallery and invited visitors to sit opposite her for silent contemplation. The performance lasted for 736 hours, and over 1,500 people sat opposite her during the show. She said: 'Anything I do before I start I have enormous fear, I have cramps in my stomach, I got the bathroom, I just sit there, but if I don't have fear I will panic that I don't have fear. 'Fear is incredible, it is an indication that I am here 100 percent, but the moment that I am in front of the audience it disappears. 'Then I just there with them, I have to be with my mind and my body and the public, they feel the fear, they feel the insecurity, they feel everything so you really have to be present for them.
