Harriet Marsden

Journalist

harriet1marsden@gmail.com

Freelance journalist, editor and author. Current recipient of Local Trust's 12-month journalist-at-large fellowship. Based in London but open to international and collaborative work.

Beat: politics, social affairs, arts and culture — the quirkier, the better. Trained sub-editor and experienced broadcaster available for speaker commissions. My first novel, a feminist account of the six wives of Henry VIII, is available here.

Follow me on Twitter for trite takes, Instagram for vapid narcissism or TikTok for attempted relevance.

Recent favourites

The Times • 11th October 2021

‘Every single woman I know has a story of being threatened or harassed by a tradesman’

Before the internet, it was all about word of mouth. What holiday you booked, what restaurant you ate at, what builder you used… personal recommendation was all that stood between you and the Yellow Pages — or a collapsed roof. Now, in an age of online reviews and smartphone convenience culture, asking a neighbour to recommend a handyman seems quaint.

The Telegraph • 11th October 2021

007 may be a misogynist, but the ‘Bond girls’ are his secret weapon

To make the feminist case for a series that stars a woman named Pussy Galore seems like folly. I might as well beg Twitter to punch the living daylights out of me – especially considering that Cary Joji Fukunaga, director of the finally upcoming No Time To Die, just effectively called OG Bond a rapist.

The Telegraph • 11th October 2021

Sorry Madeleine, Vesper Lynd will always be James Bond’s one true love

In No Time To Die, the audience bids farewell to someone they’ve known and loved since 2006. No, I’m not talking about Daniel Craig. Four films since we met her, we say goodbye to Vesper Lynd.

The Telegraph • 11th October 2021

How Darling Buds of May unleashed hell on Catherine Zeta-Jones

The name Catherine Zeta-Jones conjures images of smouldering glamour, Zorro–slashed dresses and Jazz-era stockings – not Yorkshire tea and the sod of God’s own county. The Hollywood star nevertheless had her breakthrough not, as we might remember now, in the 1998 swashbuckler hit The Mask of Zorro, but in more humble territory: early Nineties ITV comedy-drama.

The Independent • 21st January 2021

The Birdman of the Tower of London and the missing ravens

Nothing in Edgar Allan Poe’s majestic poem The Raven prepares you for their smell. But Christopher James Skaife, Yeoman Warder and Ravenmaster of the Tower of London, knows it only too well. “Ravens are quite smelly, especially babies, it’s quite pungent, and I only have a small house tucked into the walls of the Tower of London … the ravens like to walk around our house, and they poo everywhere. That was the first thing my wife moaned about.”

Foreign Policy • 8th January 2021

As Britain Gawps at U.S. Chaos, Violence Could Cross the Atlantic

Ever since a reality TV personality was elected president of the United States, British political journalists have gotten into the habit of staying up all night to gawk. Elections, by-elections, Twitter storms, impeachment proceedings—thanks to the time difference, we wake up and predict what might happen across the pond and then fight sleep to watch events unfold.

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