Writing — Lucy Hancock

Longform writing

I keep my eye on culture, but I also write about it. Over the years working a journalist I have written well researched and editorially complex longform articles for a range of publishers. Below is small sample.

Features, humour and lifestyle

Elle: What happens when the cig break goes up in smoke?

The smoking area has never been for sissies. In the darkest of winters, we’ve huddled buttcheek to buttcheek, hands stamped, nipples and knees frozen in the holding pen of a nightclub. This is where some of our species’ most complex mating rituals have taken place.

Penguin: How Gibbon's ancient history helped my dad and I to heal ours

This book has taken us up crumbling ancient paths and one particularly harrowing near-death experience with a coachload of nuns swinging round the mountain to Assisi. On these mini adventures we’ve found a new tenderness. We’ve laughed our heads off to discover Nero’s villa as described was, in fact, a pile of knackered old rocks in a car park. We’ve stood in silent amazement, ice cream dribbling through our knuckles, in front of a Hellenistic mosaic of the Nile in Palestrina.

Elle: Why brat culture is coded female rage

For years the ironic, nihilistic sense of humour that birthed Brat defined and bonded a cash poor, climate-anxious generation. But this summer, it hit different. The chaotic, ugly 'brattitude' captured something that felt truer than ever. As Charli told Rolling Stone in May: You’re only really a true brat 'if you’re acting out against something that’s made you feel a little bit insecure. Right now there’s plenty for women to feel insecure about'

Vice

“For years, the single girl has been suffering from a PR crisis, one that can be traced from Joan of Arc through Elizabeth I to the fourth series of Miranda. Sure, we've stopped being drowned as witches but, female singledom isn't exactly dripping with cachet, is it? It's still "poor Jen," it's Shania Twain, it's still eating a chocolate mousse with your eyes closed. In the eyes of popular culture, all of us are up Jacob's Creek without a paddle.”

Guardian

Liberated from the bottom of a tagine dish (where it has been stoically disappointing vegetarians for decades), this mischievous little thing has leapt into the sexual lexicon of a generation and become the most used vegetable (OK, it’s a fruit) of all emoji time. Sending one is to jauntily pin sex on the mood board, rather than shouting it down a megaphone.

Refinery 29

If you are reading this, it's likely you are a destitute, potentially heartbroken opportunist in desperate need of a tan or (less likely) you dig a lot of contact time with ol' mum and/or dad. It may not feel like it right now, but a holiday with your parents is a true gift. This is your chance to sail uninhibited into your destiny, to read a menu aloud in slow, phonetic Spanish, get off your face on Limoncello and sing "just one Cornetto" at the top of your lungs without fear of judgement.