FEATURE:
I Knew You Were Trouble…
IN THIS PHOTO: Dr. Julia Shaw will be hosted by The Trouble Club on 29th October at Ladbroke Hall
A Further Call to Those Who Have Not Yet Embraced the Wonderful Club
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THIS is the penultimate feature…
IN THIS PHOTO: The Trouble Club’s CEO and Owner, Ellie Newton/PHOTO CREDIT: Ioana Marinca
of the year relating to The Trouble Club. As I say in every feature, there is some housekeeping to get done. You can check out The Trouble Club here. You can also follow them here. In this feature, I am going to mention future events. I recently interviewed The Trouble Club’s CEO and Owner, Ellie Newton. I am always in awe of her drive and passion! How she has built The Trouble Club up and up and is hosting some incredible women. With a brilliant team around her, membership is growing and widening. Hosting events at these incredible venues and locations across London (events are also held in Manchester), they just hosted Emily Maitlis (on Tuesday) at St Marylebone Parish Church. I will highlight some upcoming events that you will want to attend. For anyone who is not a member but has perhaps been to one event or heard about The Trouble Club, then I hope that this provides some push and interest. An event I cannot attend – because of other commitments -, I still really want to recommend Dr Julia Shaw: Exposing Earth-Killers. Taking place on 29th October at Ladbroke Hall, I have been following Shaw on social media for a while. I have read her brilliant 2023 book, Bi: The Hidden Culture, History and Science of Bisexuality. She is currently coming to the end of a book tour discussing Green Crime: Inside the Minds of the People Destroying the Planet, and How to Stop Them:
“Traffickers. Hit men. Outlaws. Thieves . . .
Our planet is a crime scene - but we can catch the killers?
Enter a world where people are murdered, ecosystems are destroyed, organised criminals terrorise communities and corporate gangsters operate outside the law. And, closely following their every move, are teams of secret agents, vigilantes and scientists who are fighting for our planet's future.
Using insider sources and her expertise as a criminal psychologist, Dr Julia Shaw takes us deep into some of the worst environmental crimes of our time. She reconstructs the minds of the perpetrators in cases like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Dieselgate emissions scandal, and the Shuidong wildlife crime syndicate. From the Amazon forest to South African gold mines she follows the impact of green crimes right to our doorsteps, and meticulously profiles the work of the heroes bringing these criminals to justice.
Dr Shaw asks: how do the Earth's killers think? What makes their crimes so deadly? And how can we stop them from stealing our future?”.
There are six more events that I want to include and highlight. Some may be sold out, whilst others have tickets free. So apologies for anyone who will miss out! The point of this feature is to highlight the range of events held and why it is so rewarding becoming a member. It is not only talks that The Trouble Club hosts. They have some amazing social events and dinners. Their Christmas event in December is going to be a classic example. One that is going to be very busy! Sadly another event I will have to miss – as I am co-hosting an event of my own somewhere else – is Elizabeth Day: Too Big To Fail?. Another event at the beautiful St Marylebone Parish Church (which, like Ladbroke Hall, is becoming a regular venue for The Trouble Club, and is absolutely beautiful!), this is going to be one of the most popular events of thew year. I have started listening to her podcast, How to Fail with Elizabeth Day and her book, One of Us, came out last month. I want to include part of an interview that might be mentioned and discussed when Day joins The Trouble Club on 6th November. Speaking with The Guardian last month, she spoke about how she struggled with infertility and loss for years…until a call with a psychic changed her life:
“I’d spent the previous 12 years failing to have babies. During my first marriage, I’d had two unsuccessful rounds of IVF followed by a “natural” pregnancy, which I lost at three months. I was in hospital for that miscarriage and can still recall seeing the blotted, bloodied remains of my much-longed-for child in a kidney-shaped cardboard tray the nurses had given me.
Some months later, that marriage ended in the throes of a peculiar sadness: simultaneous grief for what was, for what might have been, and for what had never existed. I thought I was dealing with it but, in truth, I was numb. There seemed to be no way of communicating the magnitude of the loss. Not back then, anyway, when miscarriage and infertility were still barely talked about. A loved one advised me to treat it like a heavy period. Another questioned why I’d told anyone I was pregnant before the three-month mark, as if not speaking about it would have made it less real.
And so, like many women who experience misplaced shame, I readily set about internalising the failure as my own. The doctors told me my infertility was “unexplained” – a diagnosis so blank that I could quite easily shade it with my own self-loathing. It was, I determined, all my fault.
PHOTO CREDIT: Alice Zoo/The Guardian
In my late 30s, I did a cycle of egg freezing at a different clinic. Once again, I was told my results were disappointing: two eggs, where most women my age could have expected about 15. By the time I met Justin, I was 39 and he was 43, with three children from a previous relationship. I decided I would try to be happy without a baby of my own. But then we got pregnant naturally just after my 41st birthday. That ended in miscarriage at seven weeks. We were both so devastated we realised we wanted to try again. We travelled to Athens, to a new clinic and a new set of protocols, and I had an operation to remove a uterine septum. Within a month, I was pregnant again. At seven weeks, we had a scan and saw and heard a heartbeat. At eight weeks, the heartbeat had gone. By now, the UK was in the grip of its first national Covid lockdown. I took pills to trigger a miscarriage at home. The pain was horrendous. Of my three miscarriages, this was the worst to get through.
‘The doctor made it seem straightforward. All we had to do was find a suitable donor, for which he recommended hiring a “fertility consultant”’
I took a few months off the ceaseless trying in order to feel my way back into my own body, to reconnect with who I was when I wasn’t riding a wave of pregnancy hormones, or having my insides prodded and scanned and examined by unfamiliar hands. When Covid restrictions started to lift, I was allowed to book a sports massage at home via an app. The masseur was Polish and when he began working on the left-hand side of my lower stomach, I gasped. He had pressed the exact point where I felt the aching, yawning tenderness of pregnancy loss. It was a very specific sensation, starting in the womb, then spreading through my synapses. I thought I might faint.
“You have a lot of sadness here,” the masseur said.
“Yes,” I replied, eyes closed, trying not to cry.
Lockdowns lifted, vaccinations rolled out, and fertility clinics resumed their normal business. We had been recommended a place in LA by friends. This clinic, we were told, was at the forefront of fertility medicine (“Because lots of Hollywood stars get to their late 40s and the acting parts dry up and then they decide they want a child,” said one of my more cynical acquaintances).
The clinic’s website looked impressive and claimed to offer several cutting-edge procedures that weren’t available anywhere else. In October 2021, Justin and I joined a Zoom call with one of the leading consultants, who apparently had a legion of celebrity children to his name. He was robotic in manner, listing all the ways in which he could ensure higher than average success rates. He advised egg donation”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Elif Shafak
An event I definitely will be attending – and have booked a half-day at work so I can get there – is Margaret Atwood & Elif Shafak: Words Like Fire. At Fairfield Concert Hall, it is going to be an amazing afternoon and evening. The main guests have not been united before at Trouble Club. Both have spoken with them – Atwood before I became a member in 2024, and Shafak has appeared a couple of times I think, as I have seen her twice – and there is also Fantastic Women & Fantastic Stories preceding the Margaret Atwood & Elif Shafak that welcomes incredible panellists, Bolu Babalola, Lucy Foley and Emilia Hart:
“This conversation will never happen again. Margaret Atwood and Elif Shafak have never sat across from each other, live on stage and discussed their collective body of exceptional work.
Neither author requires an introduction, but for the record: Margaret Atwood is the Booker Prize-winning author of The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments, Oryx and Crake, Alias Grace, and dozens more works that have defined and defied the boundaries of literature for over half a century.
Elif Shafak is the acclaimed author of The Bastard of Istanbul, The Forty Rules of Love, 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World, and The Island of Missing Trees. She is a fearless writer and public thinker who has even faced trial in Turkey for the words of her fictional characters.
This will be an unscripted exchange between two of the most vital literary voices of our time. Together, they have written across continents, invented new forms of fiction, and spoken boldly on the world’s most urgent issues: authoritarianism, gender, freedom, silence, climate, and the power of the story.
One night. Two legends. No repeats.
IN THIS PHOTO: Bolu Babalola
Fantastic Women & Fantastic Stories
Our evening will begin with a panel including some of the finest authors in Britain today. We will discuss the phenomenal worlds they have created and the female characters that glue us to the page.
Our Panellists:
Bolu Babalola writes stories of dynamic women with distinct voices who love and are loved audaciously. Her short story collection, Love In Colour, was published in 2020, became a Times bestseller and was shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year. Her debut novel, Honey and Spice, was published in July 2022, was a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick and won the inaugural TikTok Award for Book of the Year. The sequel, Sweet Heat, is publishing in Summer 2025.
Lucy Foley is a No.1 Sunday Times, New York Times and Irish Times bestselling author. Her novels, including contemporary murder mystery thrillers, The Hunting Party, The Guest List and The Paris Apartment have sold over 5 million copies worldwide. The Guest List was a Waterstones Thriller of the Month, a Reese’s Book Club pick, one of The Times and Sunday Times Crime Books of the Year, and it won the Goodreads Choice Award for best mystery/thriller. It was announced in March 2025 that Lucy will be penning the first-ever new Miss Marple mystery, due to be published by HarperCollins in autumn 2026.
Emilia Hart’s first novel, Weyward, was an instant New York Times bestseller, the winner of two Goodreads Choice Awards, and has sold over 700,000 copies worldwide. Her latest novel, The Sirens, was an instant Sunday Times bestseller, an instant New York Times bestseller and a Good Morning America book club pick. Emilia lives in London with her partner, a black cat called Luna and far too many books.
Event Schedule
5:00pm: Doors Open
5:30pm: Fantastic Women & Fantastic Stories
6:30pm: Break
7:00pm: Margaret Atwood & Elif Shafak: Words Like Fire
8:30pm: Book signing for those with tickets.
TICKETS:
Members: Live Ticket £35, Live Ticket & Book Signing £50, Virtual £0
Non-members: Live Ticket £85, Live Ticket & Book Signing £110, Virtual £20”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kristina O’Neill and Laura Brown/PHOTO CREDIT: Cass Bird
An event I am really excited about is Cool Girls Get Fired! Laura Brown & Kristina O'Neill. Taking place on 17th November at The Ministry Borough, this is one you will want to get to! As they explained to Grazia, in their new book, All the Cool Girls Get Fired, getting canned (their word) was the best thing that could have happened. It will be amazing to hear them talk about the book when they are hosted by The Trouble Club:
“Kristina O’Neill’s first and last meeting with her new boss was the moment she was told her role would no longer be filled by her. The former editor of the Wall Street Journal magazine soon found herself navigating the uncertainty of unemployment—a challenge shared by Laura Brown, who 14 months earlier had been told via Zoom that InStyle magazine’s US print edition (where Brown was editor-in-chief) would cease publication, ending her entire team’s tenure.
Both O’Neill and Brown were casualties of a turbulent media landscape marked by constant change in ownership and leadership. Instead of quietly moving on as many in their glamorous, high-status industry might, they decided to tell the truth. After meeting up for drinks post-firing, the two friends—who first met at a Marc Jacobs show in 2001—posted a selfie captioned, “All the cool girls get fired.”
“For me, it was ownership, and for Kristina, shock ownership,” says Brown. “We had no desire to spin it. We knew we were really good at our jobs.”
The response was overwhelming. Their very public dismissals prompted an avalanche of supportive messages from other women sharing their own experiences—including Monica Lewinsky, who commented, “I got fired. And transferred to the Pentagon, where I became friends with Linda Tripp.”
Recognizing the power in what they’d started, O’Neill called Brown the next day and said, “This is a book.” That idea led to All The Cool Girls Get Fired: How To Let Go Of Being Let Go And Come Back On Top, a part-memoir, part-practical guide. The book covers everything from whether you need a lawyer, to managing your finances, safeguarding your mental health, and how to update LinkedIn—along with inspirational contributions from high-profile achievers like Oprah and Jamie Lee Curtis.
“Getting fired is part of a lot of successful men’s lore and legends,” says Brown, pointing to Steve Jobs and Mike Bloomberg. “For a lot of people, getting fired was the moment that unlocked Apple or Bloomberg. We want more women to be part of that type of storytelling. It was really important for us to put a few women up on that Mount Rushmore of getting fired too.”
When you're pushed off that rung yo worked so hard to climb, it hits you harder.
Why are women perhaps more susceptible to the feelings of shame and inadequacy that job loss can bring? “It took us so much longer to get here, because men have run everything for so long,” Brown explains. “When you’re pushed off that rung you worked so hard to climb, it hits you harder.”
One of their key messages: “The sooner you own what’s happening to you, the sooner you can move on.” Brown calls it the “kettlebell of shame and spin that no one asked you to carry—and no one really cares.” They encourage readers to tell their friends and family, as new opportunities often come from unexpected places.
Their advice for anyone recently unemployed? Don’t hide it—let people help. Use the opportunity to reflect: What made you happy in your career? What didn’t? Give yourself the space to explore, and you may find a new—and possibly better—path forward”.
At the beautiful The Hearth over in Queen’s Park, Bishop Rose Hudson-Wilkin: The Girl from Montego Bay will be held on 24th November. Showing the sheer range of women that are invited to cause trouble, this is going to be special: “From a childhood in Jamaica to the heart of the British establishment, The Rt Revd Rose Hudson-Wilkin, CD, MBE, has lived a life defined by courage, conviction and change. Britain's first black woman bishop, the first woman to serve as Chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons and now Bishop of Dover, Bishop Rose has spent over three decades tackling racism and sexism in the Church and reimagining faith as a force for justice in modern society”. I want to source from an interview that Keep the Faith recently published with The Rt Revd Rose Hudson-Wilkin:
“Bishop Rose Hudson-Wilkin is a woman, whose ministry as a Christian leader has been both impactful and historical.
Her landmark appointments include being appointed as Chaplain to the late Queen Elizabeth II in 2007; becoming the first woman to be appointed as Chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons in 2010; and being the first Black woman to be appointed as a Bishop in the Church of England – and first woman as Bishop of Dover in 2019.
Her ministry continues to make waves. Earlier this year, her book The Girl from Montego Bay: The Autobiography of Britain’s First Black Woman Bishop was published. Bishop Rose says the response to it has been “overwhelmingly positive” – so much so, that the book won the award for Autobiography of the Year at the Christian Resources Together (CRT) Awards 2025. “I went to America this August, travelling to different cities in both Florida and in New York, and the number of people who would come up to me after book signing or during the book signing to tell me that my story resonated with them was moving.”
She continued:
I think people have resonated with my upbringing. Although it happened in Jamaica, it’s the story, it’s the life experiences, the things that you did as children, and sadly also, some of the abuse.
The book also chronicles her life in Britain, her ministerial appointments, and her role in some of the pivotal spiritual moments in the history of the nation.
Born in Jamaica and raised in Montego Bay, Bishop Rose was called to ministry at a young age. She recalled: “I just knew I was being called to serve the Church, but, at the time, women were not allowed to be priests in church. I remember one of my bishops in Jamaica saying: “Rose, we’re Anglicans. We don’t do that.” In my heart, I thought: ‘You may not do that, and the Church might not do that, but I know that God does that.’ So, for me, it was making a promise to God that I would remain faithful until the Church heard the Spirit and moved with the Spirit. It took a long time. I was 33 when I was ordained as a priest.”
Since answering the call, Bishop Rose has slowly risen up the ranks. She came to the UK as a young woman to do her ministerial training. Ordained as a deacon in 1991, and as a priest in 1994, serving at St Matthew’s Church, she was later ordained as an associate priest at the Church of the Good Shepherd in the Diocese of Lichfield. She then became the vicar of two churches in the London Borough of Hackney (Holy Trinity with St Philip’s Dalston and All Saints Haggerston) for 16 years. It was during this time that she was appointed as a Chaplain to Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth ll, before her major appointment as Chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons.
Bishop Rose’s early years growing up in Jamaica have deeply influenced her approach to her faith and ministry. She explained: “The motto of Jamaica is ‘Out of many one people’, so I had the sense that, although we might be different, have different upbringings, cultures or ethnicities, as I was accustomed to seeing in Jamaica, we are all one people, made in God’s image. I also saw trust and dependence on God, particularly in the older generation. God was not some faraway being; He was right there in their midst, and I saw that being lived. It definitely made an impression on me and is something that I have patterned.”
As a trailblazer, Bishop Rose fully recognises that she is a role model to many. “There is a weight of responsibility that comes with being the first. You can’t let the side down and you’ve got to do 100% your best all the time. There’s no resting on the job, because others must come after me.
“I feel quite honoured by the number of people who have said to me: ‘Because you are there, we know that we could do that.’ I hear that repeatedly. That gives me joy, because that is precisely what I want people to be able to say: ‘If she can do it, I can do it too.’”
The Church of England (CofE) is currently discerning a new Archbishop of Canterbury, following Justin Welby’s resignation last year amidst an outcry about his failure – and those of other church leaders – to report a prolific child abuser to the police. Bishop Rose admits leading the CoE is a tough position. “I think it was Rowan Williams, a previous Archbishop, who is quoted as having said: ‘You need the skin of a rhinoceros to be in this role.’ It is a challenging role in many ways. You’re trying to hold together people who don’t always want to be held together.
“People say the good thing about the Church of England is that we’re a broad church. We have people whose actions reflect that of the Pentecostals, and then right at the other end there are those who try to pattern Roman Catholicism, and then there’s much more diversity in the middle. The person appointed to the role of Archbishop of Canterbury has to hold together a church that has all these various views and practices, and it has become more difficult now, because I think, sadly, we have spent so much time nurturing labels, and being identified with certain camps and groups within the Church, and that’s been a disadvantage”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Julia Ioffe
I am going to wrap up and mention the Trouble Christmas party. However, I will get to one more event. Julia Ioffe: The Motherland That Ate Its Daughters takes place on 4th December at The Hearth. I love events at larger venues like St Marylebone Parish Church, though equally great are more intimate spaces like The Hearth. This event will be fascinating: “In 1990, seven-year-old Julia Ioffe and her family fled the Soviet Union. Nearly twenty years later, Ioffe returned to Moscow only to discover just how much Russian society had changed while she had been living in America. The Soviet women she had known growing up: doctors, engineers, scientists - had seemingly been replaced with women desperate to marry rich and become stay-at-home moms. How had Russia gone from portraying itself as the vanguard of world feminism to the last bastion of conservative Christian values?”. It will definitely stir debate. Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy is a brilliant book:
“Award-winning journalist Julia Ioffe tells the story of modern Russia through the history of its women, from revolution to utopia to autocracy.
In 1990, seven-year-old Julia Ioffe and her family fled the Soviet Union. Nearly twenty years later, Ioffe returned to Moscow—only to discover just how much Russian society had changed while she had been living in America. The Soviet women she had known growing up—doctors, engineers, scientists—had seemingly been replaced with women desperate to marry rich and become stay-at-home moms. How had Russia gone from portraying itself as the vanguard of world feminism to the last bastion of conservative Christian values?
In Motherland, Ioffe turns modern Russian history on its head, telling it exclusively through the stories of its women. From her own physician great-grandmothers to Lenin’s lover, a feminist revolutionary; from the hundreds of thousands of Soviet girls who fought in World War II to the millions of single mothers who rebuilt and repopulated a devastated country; from the members of Pussy Riot to Yulia Navalnaya, wife of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, she chronicles one of the most audacious social experiments in history and how it failed the very women it was meant to liberate—and documents how that failure paved the way to the revanche of Vladimir Putin.
Part memoir, part journalistic exploration, part history, Motherland paints a portrait of modern Russia through the women who shaped it. With deep emotion, Ioffe shows what it means to live through the cataclysms of revolution, war, idealism, and heartbreak—and reveals how the story of Russia today is inextricably tied to the history of its women”.
There will be further events added to the Trouble Club calendar before the end of the year. However, the ones I have written about are so varied and exciting. If you can get a ticket to them (or one or two), then I can guarantee it will be well worth it! Such a great community of brilliant women (and men), one of the big rewards is great social events. At Dear Grace on 13th December, A Troublesome Christmas Party!!! will be awesome. I am looking forward to eating, drinking and speaking with existing and new Trouble Club members. Go and book your ticket. I know it sounds premature to talk about Christmas, but it will come around quick enough! Led by the brilliant Ellie Newton and her fabulous team, The Trouble Club is going from strength to strength! I write about them because I have loved being a member for over two years now. I am excited to see what 2026 holds in store. Newton, in her interview, said there are plans and there will be changes. A hugely hard-working woman in her twenties, there will be times when she wants to step back or focus on her personal life. However, she is CEO of something more than a club. It is a community and sense of friendship and connection for its thousands of members! If you are not a member already, then I think Trouble Club membership would be…
A perfect early Christmas present!