Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome was first written for the August 1959 issue of Esquire magazine, then swiftly released in book form to capitalise on the fame of both author and subject. This UK paperback edition, printed by Four Square in 1962, sets de Beauvoir’s evocative prose against black-and-white photographs of Bardot.

Almost a prototype of the cultural criticism that now fills Substack, de Beauvoir reads Bardot not as an actress but as a sign of changing times – youth, sex, and freedom distilled into a single star image.