Is the right to be angry and miserable the best that modern feminism can do? Or is it possible, while acknowledging that things are far from perfect, also to recognise that women in the West today are the luckiest ever to live?

On the surface, one of the most fortunate women of our times is Lena Dunham. She is revered, famous, rich, apparently in control of her voice and her dramas. Her breakthrough TV series, Girls, which she wrote and starred in, profoundly shaped how young women have been seen since the beginning of this century. Now she has published a bestselling memoir, Famesick, which has put her again at the heart of the debate over the travails of modern women.

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I am delighted that Dunham has once more managed to turn out a blockbuster. But I want women to recognise, celebrate and enjoy the freedom our liberal, democratic, semi-capitalist society gives them. And while I do not doubt the reality and horror of her experience, I am depressed that Dunham has used her skilful artistic voice to make misery, sickness and despair the leitmotifs of modern feminist struggle.

I have just published a book called Good Slut, which is about how western women have all to play for, if only they would stop insisting that they are physical and mental wrecks. Dunham’s book, alas, makes the opposite case.........

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