Mary Chamberlain’s vivid social and oral history of an isolated village in the Cambridgeshire Fens was the first book ever published by Virago. Told through the voices and lives of women, whose memories span over one hundred years, it provides a unique portrait of a working-class, rural community where intermarriage was common, most inhabitants lived […]
Grub Street: The Origins of the British Press by Ruth Herman
Love it or loathe it, the British press is a remarkable institution. Sometimes referred to as the fourth estate and accused of wielding power without responsibility, it has often been a channel for the dissemination of information that those at the top of the pyramid of power would rather stayed hidden. It has also delighted […]
Review: Elizabeth Heyrick by Jocelyn Robson
Rachael Tearney reviews the first biography of Elizabeth Heyrick, Quaker, campaigner and abolitionist. The women of the Abolitionist movement are far less well-known than the men, and this timely book highlights one whose advocation of ‘immediate’ rather than ‘gradual’ abolition of slavery put her at odds with better-known figures such as William Wilberforce. The Abolition […]
Doors of London by Melanie Backe-Hansen and Cath Harries
Walk down any street in London and pause for a moment. To your left and right is an array of doors in different styles and colours. Craftsmen across the centuries have sought to impress you with elegant designs. Owners have added their own finishing touches, a hand-painted pattern here, a Shakespeare door knocker there. The […]
The Sugar Girls of Love Lane by Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi
For over a hundred years until it closed in 1981, Henry Tate’s flagship sugar refinery at Love Lane dominated the Liverpool skyline – and was the beating heart of the local community. More than 10,000 workers passed through the doors of the factory during its lifetime, with some families counting four or even five generations […]
Uncovering Jersey’s wartime resistance
79 years after the occupation of the Channel Islands ended, novelist and journalist Kate Thompson writes about visiting Jersey, where she uncovered an island full of stories about wartime resistance. I fell in love with Jersey on a trip to the Jersey Festival of Words in September 2019. I defy anyone who visits not to. […]
Edinburgh’s New Town and the 200-year history of 10 Scotland Street
Leslie Hills looks back at what intrigued her about her house, and how it set her off on a decades-long search for the history of 10 Scotland Street in Edinburgh’s New Town — the subject of her newly-published book. When finally I paid off the mortgage on my home, number 10 Scotland Street, a Georgian […]
Researching rural Devon in the 1920s and 1930s
You’d think setting your interwar years novel where you live, in rural Devon, would make research easier. Not necessarily so, as Vanessa de Haan found out; the lives of ordinary people in the 1920s and 1930s hadn’t seemed worth recording. Walking the country lanes and talking to people was an important part of her research, […]