Kate Kirkpatrick - Becoming Beauvoir: A Life Becoming Beauvoir: A Life Simone de Beauvoir famously wrote ‘one is not born a woman, but becomes one’. Kate Kirkpatrick is a lecturer in religion, philosophy and culture at King’s College London. In her ground-breaking new biography she charts how the writer of The Second Sex not only became a woman but also herself. Using never-before-seen diaries and letters the author tackles the many distortions that plagued de Beauvoir during her lifetime and after her death, including those revolving around her relationship with the intellectually domineering Jean Paul Sartre. Booking for this event has now closed.