Dr Sarah Lonsdale
Contact details
Personal links
About
Overview
Dr Sarah Lonsdale was a journalist for thirty years, training on the Reading Chronicle before joining the Observer newspaper in 1990. She has written for a wide variety of publications including: Observer, Financial Times, Evening Standard, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph, Daily Mail, Independent on Sunday, Country Homes and Interiors Magazine, Observer Food Monthly, National Geographic Green, and the Sunday Times. She was a weekly columnist for the Sunday Telegraph 2006 - 2014 writing about environmental issues, particularly the threat of climate change. She now mainly writes book reviews and essays for the Times Literary Supplement (https://www.the-tls.co.uk/authors/sarah-lonsdale)
Dr Lonsdale holds a BA (Hons) and MA from the University of Cambridge in Modern and Medieval Languages (French and Italian). She completed her PhD, 'The Representation of Journalists and the Newspaper Press in British Literature 1900 - 1939' at the University of Kent in 2013. She holds a Post Graduate Certificate in Higher Education (PGCHE). She joined City University London in 2013.
Research interests:
Press history; journalists in fiction; food and lifestyle journalism; journalism and gender
Books
The Journalist in British Fiction and Film: Guarding the Guardians from 1900 to the Present (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016)
Rebel Women Between the Wars: Fearless Writers and Adventurers (Manchester University Press, 2020)
Wildly Different: how five women reclaimed nature in a man's world (Manchester University Press, 2025)
Forthcoming:
History for Journalists (Routledge, 2027)
Qualifications
- PhD, University of Kent, Canterbury, United Kingdom, 2009 - 2013
- PGCHE, University of Kent, Canterbury, United Kingdom, 2010
- MA, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom, 1984 - 1987
Languages
French (can read, write, speak, understand spoken, peer review) and Italian (can read, write, speak, understand spoken, peer review)
Teaching
- BA journalism
Research
Research interests
- The history of journalism especially around the advent of the era of the mass press (1880 - 1920)
- The relationship between journalism and literature
- The depiction of journalists in other media including film, television and novels
- The coverage of environmental issues, particularly climate change.
PhD supervision
Dr Lonsdale currently supervises a PhD student on the coverage of climate change since the Copenhagen Summit. She welcomes enquiries from potential post graduate students in the areas of environmental journalism and journalism and literature.
Publications
Publications by category
Books (3)
- Lonsdale, S. (2025). Wildly Different: How five women reclaimed nature in a man's world. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
- Lonsdale, S. (2020). Rebel Women Between the Wars: Fearless Writers and Adventurers. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 9781526137111.
- (2016). The Journalist in British Fiction and Film : Guarding the Guardians from 1900 to the Present. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 9781474220538.
Chapters (8)
- Lonsdale, S. (2025). Political and proprietorial interference in the food coverage of popular British newspapers between two world wars: A historical perspective. In Hanusch, F. (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of LIfestyle Journalism London: Routledge. ISBN 9781032500546.
- Lonsdale, S. (2023). Patriotic Hens, Tomato Turbans and Mock Fish: The Daily Mail Food Bureau, Rationing and National Identity During the First World War. In Fakazis, E. and Fursich, E. (Eds.), The Political Relevance of Food Media: Beyond Reviews and Recipes (pp. 183-198). London: Routledge. ISBN 9781032250502.
- Lonsdale, S. (2023). "The Woman Business" Dorothy Pilley's Climbing Days. MOUNTAIN AND THE POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION (pp. 151-167). ISBN 9781837645060.
- Lonsdale, S. (2020). 'Grub Street and Fleet Street: Literary and Review Journalism'. In Conboy, M. and Finkelstein, D. (Eds.), History of Newspapers and Periodicals in Britain and Ireland 1650-2011 Volume Three 1900 - 2011 Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
- Lonsdale, S. (2017). 'The Sheep and the Goats': Interwar Women Journalists, the Society of Women Journalists and the Woman Journalist. In Clay, C., DiCenzo, M., Green, B. and Hackney, F. (Eds.), Edinburgh Companion to Women’s Print Media in Interwar Britain (1918-1939) (pp. 463-476). UK: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9781474412537.
- Lonsdale, S. (2017). 'Arnold Bennett, Journalism and the Press Barons'. In Shapcott, J. (Ed.), An Arnold Bennett Companion Volume II Leek, UK: Churnet Valley Books.
- Lonsdale, S. (2017). 'Imprisoned in a cage of print': Rose Macaulay, Journalism and Gender. In MacDonald, K.F. (Ed.), Rose Macaulay, Gender, and Modernity (pp. 57-74). London: Routledge. ISBN 9781138206175.
- Lonsdale, S. (2012). Environmental Journalism. In Turner, B. and Orange, R. (Eds.), Specialist Journalism (pp. 59-68). Abingdon: Routledge. ISBN 0415582849.
Journal articles (20)
- Lonsdale, S. (2026). "Towards the Outlines of a Field". Anglica. An International Journal of English Studies
- Lonsdale, S. (2024). Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: the reporters who took on a world at war Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: the reporters who took on a world at war , by Deborah Cohen, London, William Collins, 2022, 592 pp., £25.00 (hardback), ISBN-13: 978-0-008-305864. Social History, 49(1), pp. 106-108. doi:10.1080/03071022.2024.2279846
- Lonsdale, S. (2023). BETWEEN FRIENDS Letters of Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby. TLS-THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT, (6256), pp. 8-9
- Lonsdale, S. (2023). ELAINE AND ENGLISH SHOWALTER, EDITORS. TLS-THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT, (6256), pp. 8-9
- Lonsdale, S. (2022). The history of British literature on film 1895–2015. Studies in European Cinema, 19(2), pp. 184-186. doi:10.1080/17411548.2020.1741132
- Lonsdale, S. (2022). The ‘awkward’ squad: British women foreign correspondents during the interwar years. Women's History Review, 31(3), pp. 387-407. doi:10.1080/09612025.2021.1925429
- Lonsdale, S. (2019). COLD WARRIORS Writers who waged the literary Cold War. TLS-THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT, (6084), pp. 10-11
- Lonsdale, S. (2019). MID-CENTURY GOTHIC The uncanny objects of modernity in British literature and culture after the Second World War. TLS-THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT, (6081), pp. 27-27
- Lonsdale, S. (2019). The woman war correspondent, the US military, and the press: 1846-1947. Journalism, 20(5), pp. 688-689. doi:10.1177/1464884919842954
- Lonsdale, S. (2019). VIOLENT MINDS Modernism and the criminal. TLS-THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT, (6053), pp. 31-31
- Lonsdale, S. (2019). THRESHOLD MODERNISM New public women and the literary spaces of imperial London . TLS-THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT, (6050), pp. 46-46
- Lonsdale, S. (2018). The War that Won't Die: The Spanish Civil War in Cinema. CINEJ Cinema Journal, 7(1), pp. 272-276. doi:10.5195/cinej.2018.208
- Lonsdale, S. (2018). TELLING STORIES The craft of narrative and the writing life. TLS-THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT, (5992), pp. 30-30
- Lonsdale, S. (2016). 'He Hath Sold His Heart to the Old Black Art': Kipling and his early Journalism. Kipling Journal, Septem(365), pp. 32-49
- Lonsdale, S. (2015). “Roast Seagull and other Quaint Bird Dishes”. Journalism Studies, 16(6), pp. 800-815. doi:10.1080/1461670x.2014.950474
- Lonsdale, S. (2015). Man of Letters, Literary Lady, Journalist or Reporter? Media History, 21(3), pp. 265-279. doi:10.1080/13688804.2014.991384
- Lonsdale, S. (2014). 'Visions of Modern Journalism in Rudyard Kipling's short story 'The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat'. Kipling Journal
- Lonsdale, S. (2013). ‘The Emergence of the Press Baron as Literary Villain in English Letters 1900 – 1939’. Literature and History, 22(2), pp. 20-35. doi:10.7227/LH.22.2.2
- Lonsdale, S. (2012). ‘We Agreed that women were a nuisance in the office anyway: The portrayal of women journalists in early twentieth-century British fiction’. Journalism Studies, 14(4), pp. 461-475. doi:10.1080/1461670X.2012.718572
- Lonsdale, S. and Lonsdale, S. (2011). ‘A Golden Interlude: Journalists in Early Twentieth Century British Literature’. Parliamentary Affairs, 64(2), pp. 326-340. doi:10.1093/pa/gsq059
Professional activities
Online articles (2)
- 'A More Eco-Friendly Way of Life' - weekly column. (2006). Sunday Telegraph This is a weekly column, with several hundred being published since March 2006
- General Contributions.Sunday Times Regular Contributions to Sunday Times Features pages