Simone De Beauvoir - Couverture souple

Lisa Appignanesi is a a former university lecturer and Deputy Director of London's Institute of Contemporary Arts, she co-edited The Rushdie File and initiated and edited the important Documents series, including Postmodernism, and Ideas from France. She has been Executive Producer on a number of programmes for television, including Seductions (four short plays for C4); and England's Henry Moore, and for French television 'co-auteured' a film on Salman Rushdie. At the ICA, she initiated the Writers in Conversation series (both live and on video) as well as conferences, talks, and seminars across a range of disciplines. She was a founding editor of the publishing company, Writers and Readers. As a cultural commentator, she reviews and writes for The Independent and the Guardian, and broadcasts frequently. She has written and presented programmes for Radio 4 including, The Case of Sigmund Freud, as well as presented Radio 3's Night Waves She has a doctorate in Comparative Literature. She has received a Chevalier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres. She is Vice-President of English PEN, a member of the PEN Writers in Prison Committee, sits on the Council of the ICA and has served on the Management Committee of the Society of Authors as well as being a patron of Writers in Exile. She is currently working on a book on Women and the Mind Doctors.

Born in 1908, Simone de Beauvoir was a brilliant scholar and novelist, leading member of the existentialist movement and a committed socialist and feminist. Raised in a stiflingly respectable envitonment, as a young woman she totally rejected her parents' values and embarked on her literary career. With Jean-Paul Sartre she formed a unique relationship, which she described as 'The one undoubted success in my life'. Later in life she was committed to achieving radical social and political change, but it was writing that gave meaning to her life; above everything, she valued her own intellectual audience.