Saturday linkerama
Zoe Williams interviews the two doctors who wrote that BMJ article about the perils of women delaying childbearing.
***
Disturbing article on homophobic bullying in schools. There are underdeveloped hints that this is not unrelated to other forms of resistance to diversity and nonconformity - I'd like to know, for example, if there is correlation with negative attitudes to female sexuality ('slags', etc). I was also interested to note the remark that
The deputy... blames the head teacher, who blames the school governors, who argue that the parents would likely go berserk if the school were to tackle the issue. In the end, it boils down to the tyranny of one parent who is vocal and a bully over sex education issues, and who believes that kids can catch or somehow be taught homosexuality.
This phenomenon - the aggressive parent with an agenda wielding an influence far out of proportion to the general support their views command - has haunted UK sex education generally for decades.
***
The published version of the Guardian includes extracts from responses to that article about female orgasm and evolution but I can't find an online link, which is annoying, as it includes one comment from the discussion about this on shiv5468's lj.
***
Plus, intriguing review by Kathryn Hughes on John Charmley's The Princess and the Politicians, about Princess Lieven, a significant player in early C19th European politics.
Since her diplomatic tools were pillowtalk and tea cups, she has tended to be marginalised or even written out of the standard accounts of early 19th-century diplomacy, which mainly involve men with maps.
Not that Professor Charmley is going to indulge any readerly desire for heaving Regency cleavage (Lieven didn't have any anyway, being as flat as a board, with sticky-out ears and bad teeth to boot).
This didn't stop her from having numerous lovers including Metternich, Wellington, Canning, Castlereagh and Guizot.