Kate Figes

Kate Figes was the daughter of the feminist writer Eva (née Unger) and John George Figes. Her brother is the historian Orlando Figes. Their mother's Jewish family fled from Nazi Germany in 1939.{{cite news|last=Tucker|first=Eva|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/sep/07/eva-figes |title=Eva Figes obituary|work=The Guardian|date=7 September 2012|access-date=11 December 2019}} Figes's parents divorced when she was aged five, both relating different accounts as to what happened.{{cite news|last=Abrams|first=Rebecca|url=https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/jan/16/relationships-couples-kate-figes|title=The naked truth about couples|work=The Guardian|date=16 January 2010|access-date=20 December 2019}} She left home at 17 after a row with her mother; the relationship between the two women remained difficult for many years.{{cite news|last=Billen|first=Andrew|url=https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/article/kate-figes-cancer-felt-like-being-hit-by-a-train-now-i-want-my-life-back-86jb9lg3t|title=Kate Figes: 'Cancer felt like being hit by a train — now I want my life back'|work=The Times|date=1 March 2018|access-date=11 December 2019}} {{subscription required}}

After graduating in Russian and Arabic from the Polytechnic of Central London (now the University of Westminster), Figes became a sales representative for the Pandora feminist publishing house (an imprint of Routledge Kegan Paul{{cite journal |last1=Young |first1=Elizabeth |title=The Business of Feminism: Issues in London Feminist Publishing |journal=Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies |date=1989 |volume=10 |issue=3 |pages=1–5 |doi=10.2307/3346431 |jstor=3346431 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3346431 |access-date=18 June 2021 |issn=0160-9009|url-access=subscription }}), later a publicist and editor for the same firm.{{cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2019/12/27/kate-figes-author-whose-books-explored-relationships-happiness/|title=Kate Figes, author whose books explored relationships, happiness, motherhood and the trials and tribulations of growing up – obituary|work=The Daily Telegraph|date=27 December 2019|access-date=7 January 2020}} Figes followed her mother's profession, although she only became a full-time writer in her thirties. "It’s not easy to believe you can when your own mother is one too", she once said.{{cite news|url=https://www.thetimes.com/uk/obituaries/article/kate-figes-obituary-gf0skrwpt?ni-statuscode=acsaz-307|title=Kate Figes obituary|work=The Times|location=London|date=20 December 2019|access-date=20 December 2019}} {{subscription required}} Following a part-time job as fiction editor for Cosmopolitan, leading to newspaper commissions and her appointment in 1996 as the books editor of You magazine (a supplement of The Mail on Sunday), a post she retained for the rest of her career. She wrote seven books of non-fiction and two novels.

According to Melissa Benn, Figes wrote "several books on women's most profound experiences".{{cite news|last=Benn|first=Melissa|authorlink=Melissa Benn|url=https://www.newstatesman.com/books/2010/02/women-couples-figes-marriage|title=Couples: the Truth|work=New Statesman|date=28 January 2010|access-date=11 December 2019}} Her first book, Because of Her Sex: The Myth of Equality for Women in Britain, was published in 1994, and concerned sexism.{{cite news|last=Maguire|first=Sarah|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/book-review-still-down-trodden-after-all-these-years-because-of-her-sex-kate-figes-macmillan-pounds-1416500.html|title=Still down-trodden after all these years|work=The Independent|date=27 July 1994|access-date=20 December 2019}} Life after Birth (1998) drew on interviews with several hundred interviews with new mothers and was a best-seller in the UK.{{cite news|last=Anderson|first=Hephzibah|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/26/books/kate-figes-dead.html?login=smartlock&auth=login-smartlock|title=Kate Figes, Feminist Author on Family Life, Dies at 62|work=The New York Times|date=26 December 2019|access-date=26 December 2019}} Rebecca Abrams wrote in The Independent on Sunday, "combines personal opinion, anecdote, medical information, social history and (a few) statistics."{{cite news|last=Abrams|first=Rebecca|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books-mums-the-word-on-feminism-1149126.html|title=Mum's the word on feminism

|work=The Independent on Sunday|date=8 March 1998|access-date=20 December 2019}} A decade later, Abrams described it as "taboo-busting" in laying "bare the secret ambivalence and confusion at the heart of many women's experience of motherhood."

Figes' non-fiction book on adolescence, The Terrible Teens (2002), was followed by two novels, What About Me? The diaries and emails of a menopausal mother and her teenage daughter and its sequel What About Me Too? The Big Fat Bitch Book For Girls (2008) is partly a self-help book for teenagers, while Our Cheating Hearts – Love and Loyalty, Lust and Lies (2013) considered infidelity.

For Couples: the Truth (2010), Figes interviewed 120 men and women in a relationship, both heterosexual and gay, about all aspects of their lives. Cassandra Jardine in The Daily Telegraph wrote that it is "a book that lingers in the mind, with a fundamentally upbeat message".{{cite news|last=Jardine|first=Cassandra|authorlink=Cassandra Jardine|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/6989012/Couples-the-Truth-by-Kate-Figes-review.html|title=Couples: the Truth by Kate Figes: review|work=The Daily Telegraph|date=15 January 2010|access-date=11 December 2019}}

Figes married Christopher Wyld in 1988; Wyld was then a foreign news editor for the BBC. The couple had two, now adult, daughters.{{cite news|last=Groskop|first=Viv|authorlink=Viv Groskop|url=https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/official-marriage-is-good-for-your-health-6795229.html|title=Official: Marriage is good for your health|work=London Evening Standard|date=20 January 2010|access-date=11 December 2019}} Figes said in 2010 that her experience of her parents divorce left its mark on the early years of her own marriage: "I still spent the first 10 years of our marriage wondering when my husband was going to leave me!" Following the birth of her first daughter, Figes suffered from postnatal depression for a few years; diagnosis was somewhat delayed.

With her brother, Figes received naturalisation papers from the German embassy in June 2017. Figes wrote: "We were holding out our hands in forgiveness to shake those of younger Germans, who also bore no responsibility for the past at a time of growing nationalism and suspicion of 'the other' in Europe. All of this had contributed to the making of the decision".{{cite news|last=Figes|first=Kate|url=https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/mar/10/my-family-after-the-holocaust-reclaim-german-nationality-kate-figes|title=My family after the Holocaust: 'The urge to draw a line under the past is strong'|work=The Guardian|date=10 March 2018|access-date=11 December 2019}}

Figes was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer in September 2016 which had metastasised.{{Cite news|last=Figes|first=Kate|url=https://www.independent.ie/life/health-wellbeing/cancer-is-sneaky-theres-no-pain-until-its-too-late-writer-kate-figes-36687842.html|title='Cancer is sneaky. There's no pain until it's too late' – writer Kate Figes|work=Independent|location=Eire|date=13 March 2018|access-date=10 December 2019}} She wrote about her terminal illness in On Smaller Dogs and Larger Life Questions which was published by Virago in 2018.{{cite news|last=Chandler|first=Mark|url=https://www.thebookseller.com/news/kate-figes-dies-cancer-aged-62-1131216#|title=Kate Figes dies from cancer, aged 62|work=The Bookseller|date=10 December 2019|access-date=10 December 2019}}

Figes died from cancer at home in London on 7 December 2019.

{{reflist}}

• {{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20100218011255/http://www.katefiges.co.uk/index.html Official website]}}
• [https://www.theguardian.com/profile/katefiges Kate Figes] articles for The Guardian
• [https://www.independent.co.uk/author/kate-figes Kate Figes] articles for The Independent

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Figes, Kate}}

Category:1957 births

Category:2019 deaths

Category:20th-century English women writers

Category:21st-century English women writers

Category:English people of German-Jewish descent

Category:20th-century English journalists

Category:21st-century English journalists

Category:Deaths from cancer in England

Category:Alumni of the Polytechnic of Central London