Sophie Mackintosh

Margaret Drabble

Esther Freud

Combining personal reminiscence with reflections on the history of the place over the years and through the seasons, for the first time this collection brings together writers' impressions of the Pond.

Swimming at the Hampstead Ladies' Pond

At the Pond

Celine Nguyen ✿

A lovely, leisurely collection of essays about the joys of the Hampstead Heath ladies’ pond (and filled with tender details about living in London more generally). The essays are pleasantly varied in voice and topic; there are writers I love (Jessica J. Lee, Nina Mingya Powles, Leanne Shapton, Lou Stoppard) and writers I discovered through this book (Ava Wong Davies, Nell Frizzell, Eli Goldstone, Deborah Moggach). Lots of beautiful meditations on aging with joy and gratitude, the serenity of being unselfconscious and physically present in your body in women’s spaces, the thrilling shock of entering cold water…

At the Pond Swimming at the Hampstead Ladies' Pond

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