Hi there
It was so wonderful to see so many of you for our Christmas Party on Tuesday night; thank you to everyone who came! Also special thanks to our lovely hosts BKL for letting us use their fabulous offices and laying on the gorgeous spread of food.
(Last week 2 BKL experts, including Emma Brown who was at the party, dispensed money insight about how the Budget affects you. We learned how Rachel Reeves’s new rules are affecting income tax, inheritance tax, pensions, business if you’re entrepreneur and more…. I urge you to watch it. The transcript below the video has time codes so you can jump to the sections you’re interested in. The Budget changes are significant and without proper planning you could end up paying thousands more.)
It was such a treat to see so many Queenagers at the party – members from out-of-London Circles as well as many old friends and Circle hosts. Great effort to all of you who got to St Paul’s despite Storm Bram, power cuts and terrible trains.
For many Queenagers the party was their first event after *years* of reading this newsletter. They told me they were so glad they took the plunge!
It was a night full of top conversation, prosecco and delicious food. I feel so humbled and proud when I see you all together like that: Go NOON!
It’s particularly great to meet women who have been reading this newsletter for years but hadn’t attended anything in person…. There were lots of you who’d come along for the first time on Tuesday. I know it can be a bit scary to make NOON real and in-person, but some Queenagers who had taken the plunge told me they were so glad they had turned up for Christmas cheer.
One of the amazing things about our community is the friendliness, the warm welcome and their inclusive and supportive spirit. So if you’ve been thinking about joining us but haven’t yet, we’d love for you to join some of our upcoming activities, below.
(One of our most active members joined a trip on the spur of the moment, as a total newbie, and now she attends events with team, talking about NOON.)
- Our online Twixmas Circle on December 29th
- An in-person Circle
- Our Wasing Retreats in April or September
- Our ski trip in January (yes, there’s still time to join!)
- …and our new Camino walking holiday (scroll down for more)
Live and online events are a great way to launch yourself into 2026 alongside a group of likeminded women, a wider network and more opportunity for fun, support and opportunities. Become a member here.
Limited time only! Give the gift of NOON
If you know a Queenager who could do with NOON in her life, gift her a NOON membership as a Christmas present (or birthday or Chanukah or New Year’s ). We have special packages and rates – you can gift 3 months, 6 months or a full year, and I’ll send a handwritten note welcoming them to the community and letting them know of your thoughtful gift.
Find out how to give a gift membership here.
New trip: Camino Walk in April
I’m also excited to announce that we’ve just launched our NOON Camino Walk 2026. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do and we’ve been discussing it for ages. Thanks to super-Queenager Gail Weigman for the tip-off – she went last year with the same company we are using, so it comes highly vetted!
We’re taking the Portuguese Coastal route, walking by the sea and then up the river valley which forms the border between Spain and Portugal. We’ll be staying in gorgeous local hotels, walking 110km in 6 days and finishing up at the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela with the other pilgrims.
It promises to be a trip full of camaraderie, support and many laughs (if other NOON tours are anything to go by). We’ve got 14 spots, all in twin rooms (come and meet your new best mate…).
This trip is available at a very affordable price point: £1,250 for the week.
We’re leaving on April 12th – the week after Easter. I can’t wait to trek with you all!
We’re already getting a surge of interest, so book today if you’d like to come.
What the witches showed me
The day after the Christmas party I was taken on a birthday treat to see The Coven, an all-female musical about the English witch trials in the 17th Century performed brilliantly at the Kiln Theatre in Kilburn. (Thanks to Cheltenham Circle Host Dr Lucy Ryan for taking me. It was extraordinary and very moving.)
The play told the story of the Pendle Witch Trials in 1612 when 19 women were tried as witches. (The consequences of the 1604 Witchcraft Act was that more than 500 people, mainly women, were executed for this ‘crime’ in the following decades.)
Witchcraft accusations were often levelled at midwives, herbalists, women without husbands, or females deemed were uppity, difficult, or different. Under King James 1st, who was obsessed by witches, local officials were incentivised to find and punish them. To do this, they searched for and extracted from disgruntled neighbours the stories of women who did harm by casting spells, raising and worshipping devils, keeping familiar spirits (in other words, the women who kept cats) and such benign divinations as searching for lost items, healing rites or love charms: All illegal under laws of 1563 and 1604.
Who these ‘witches’ actually were
Most suspects were poor women, frequently beggars or those with physical disabilities or illegitimate children. This was also the time of the enclosures, when what had been ‘common land’ – farmed largely by peasant women to feed themselves – was taken by landowners, forcing the commoners to become wage slaves.
This led to huge displacement and poverty in rural areas, and pitted neighbours against each other.
On top of that, rifts over religion and purges of Catholics (Protestant preachers often accused Catholics of being devil worshippers) were spreading, coupled with the rise to power of Puritanism which would see the Charles 1st beheaded only a few decades later. In turbulent times, it is often women who bear the brunt….
Into this febrile atmosphere came so-called witch hunters. Essentially the easiest way to get rid of someone in your community who annoyed or bothered you was to denounce them as a witch. Many women were convicted on the flimsy hearsay evidence of children – sometimes their own (the plot of The Coven). The play explores what this meant for women.
Seeing the horror of what they went through and the unfairness of so-called ‘justice’ is chilling. Tears actually streamed down my face. I wasn’t the only one – there was scarcely a dry eye in the packed theatre.
Who are the modern-day ‘witches’
Lucy and I talked about how Donald Trump the other day called a woman ‘a witch’. The institutional misogyny and injustice these women endured and the legacy of women informing on other women still haunts us today. (Something I write about in my book Much More to Come.)
Watching this play made me realise why I do what I do; I’ve been writing about and campaigning for women’s rights for the last 35 years, throughout my entire journalistic career and now at NOON. We need to know our history and remember these periods, when the establishment has pitted women against each other and punished those who did not fit in or who stood out and challenged others.
This is why it is so important for us as women to support each other.
I wondered: Are our Circles full of witches?
Even our Queenager Circles – a source of support, laughter, insight and friendship – in the past could have been condemned as covens or punishable by death. (After all, we frequently ruffle feathers and some of us even – gasp – have cats).
All of us might have ancestors who were affected (maybe a great great great great great great great great great great grandmother), brought into line by threat of being hung or drowned for speaking out, being authentic, helping heal other women.
That fear still exists now. Just look at the prevalence of trolling and rape threats to women online – Amnesty International reports that 1 in 5 women online has suffered online abuse and harassment. When author Caroline Criado-Perez campaigned to get Jane Austen on the £10 note – something so positive and innocuous – she received rape and death threats. How dare we women have opinions and share them publicly and vocally?
After seeing The Coven, Lucy and I walked out extra-committed to do our bit to make the world a fairer place for women.
The charity we’re partnering with this Christmas
That is also the thinking behind the selection of our NOON Christmas charity: We’re supporting the Born Perfect Eradication Caravan Christmas Appeal which works to end FGM (female genital mutilation) in Africa.
This campaign, set up by a true super-Queenager the journalist Maggie O’Kane, tackles this continuing problem with a grassroots approach.
Born Perfect’s caravan goes to villages with religious elders, survivors, celebrities and activists to talk to the cutters, the women from the families who have carried out this practice for centuries to make girls ‘marriageable’. They inform these women that the practice of cutting out clitorises and sewing up the genitalia of their daughters is not a requirement of their religion.
These respected female figures, from these communities, explain to the cutters that girls are ‘born perfect’: that in 2025 we shouldn’t be mutilating them. They also talk about the 44,000 girls a year who die from complications after the cutting. This community-led activities involves fathers, too – many of whom sign a pledge promising not to cut their daughters.
At the Christmas party, Maggie told us the story of 4 girls who would have been cut last week (one girl is cut every 10 seconds) but for the arrival of the Born Perfect FGM caravan bus. These visits are accompanied by an intense local media. The money we are raising goes directly to the women on the ground.
I saw how FGM can hit close to home
Maggie and I both had daughters at the same school in Kentish Town where around half the intake were Somali. We both began to worry about girls we knew being taken home on ‘special vacations’. So while FGM affects up to 90% of the population in Sierra Leone. Guinea Bassau, Egypt, Liberia and Somalia, I saw that FGM isn’t only something happening far away but also right under our noses.
As a journalist I campaigned on this issue passionately, writing about it and kicking off a major Sunday Times campaign to stop it. However despite governmental action, cutting is on the rise.
A charity that has real results
The wonderful thing about Maggie’s current END FGM caravans is that they really work, changing lives in real time (she showed us a picture of girls who were saved just last week). I can’t think of a better cause for us Queenagers to support – paying it forward for the next generation so they can have fulfilling lives in all aspects. If you’d like to donate here is the link.
This is something we could all help to end, in our lifetimes. Let’s do it!
What a year it’s been
NOON has donated £1,000 to the cause and I am so proud to be able to do that this year.
Last year we launched a crowd funder at Christmas to help NOON through a lean time. I’d like to thank again everyone who supported our fundraiser last year – we wouldn’t have survived without you.
Now we’ve had an amazing 12 months, doing major research projects for HSBC and Mishcon de Reya, launching our Rebrand Yourself course and expanding memberships. The result of all of this is that we’re heading into 2026 planning how we can grow and improve – as a thriving business, as the premier network for Queenagers supporting you and as an online presence that amplifies worthwhile causes like this one. I hope you will follow suit and support Born Perfect … or another cause that is close to your heart.
Next week will be our last Queenager newsletter before Christmas, then we’ll quickly be rounding the corner to the new year. I’ll be sharing more of our 2026 plans soon. Until then…
Much love –
Xx
Eleanor
