Audiobook of the week: On Women by Susan Sontag – clear-eyed wisdom

Elsewhere, Sontag makes broader observations about women’s experience that are still pertinent today, pointing out the ways they are undermined and objectified, and dismissed as soon as they start to go grey. In “The Double Standards of Aging” she notes how older men are seen as wise in their autumn years while women are seen as sexless and washed up: “Only one standard of female beauty is sanctioned: the girl.” On Women comes over not as a furious diatribe but a collection characterised by clear-eyed wisdom. And while Sontag offers no easy solutions, her reflections are underpinned by an optimism that things can change for the better.