I am 80 this year and my feminism goes back about 70 years when I was upset at the treatment given to my aunt, my father’s sister, whose life had been one of servitude and bullying as a single daughter left at home to care for ageing parents. Not long afterwards she committed suicide. My chapter here, which was given as an introductory talk as an ‘old feminist’ at the conference this volume commemorates, records in outline my life as it moved through four phases of feminist engagement.