What can history tell us about the lives of women at the time of the Trojan War? Emily Hauser’s new book examines how recent advances in archaeology and science reveal a surprising amount about the real women who made the Greek myths. ‘Myth’. The very word in English appears to mean something that’s not true […]
The Eights by Joanna Miller
Oxford in 1920. For the first time in its 1000-year history, the world’s most famous university has admitted female students. Giddy with dreams of equality, education and emancipation, four young women move into neighbouring rooms on Corridor Eight. They have come here from all walks of life, and they are thrown into an unlikely, life-affirming […]
The Paris Muse by Louisa Treger
“Living with him was like living at the centre of the universe. It was electrifying and humbling, blissful and destructive, all at the same time.” Paris in 1936, and when Dora Maar, a talented French photographer, painter and poet, is introduced to Pablo Picasso, she is instantly mesmerized. Drawn to his volcanic creativity, it isn’t […]
Lady Dorothy Mills, explorer and writer
She was a pioneering explorer, a travel writer writer and novelist, an earl’s daughter who reinvented herself, a woman with a drive to “be something”. So why haven’t more of us heard of Lady Dorothy Mills? Her biographer, Jane Dismore, aims to change that. When Lady Dorothy ‘Dolly’ Mills was a young girl, a female […]
No Country For a Woman by Jane Dismore
Lady Dorothy ‘Dolly’ Mills was a trailblazer, whose larger-than-life personality led her to extraordinary adventures. Born in 1889 into the Walpole family, who were eminent in political and literary spheres, Dolly defied the constraints of her upper-class upbringing by marrying a poor army captain, prompting her disinheritance. From becoming the first English woman in Timbuktu […]
Agent Zo by Clare Mulley
This is the incredible true story of Elżbieta Zawacka, the WW2 resistance fighter known as ‘Zo’. The only woman to reach London from Warsaw during the Second World War as an emissary of the Polish Home Army command, Zo undertook two missions in the capital before secret Special Operations Executive training in the British countryside. […]
Scotland’s Medieval Queens by Sharon Bennett Connolly
Scotland’s history is dramatic, violent and bloody. Being England’s northern neighbour has never been easy. And Scotland’s queens have had to deal with war, murder, imprisonment, political rivalries and open betrayal. They have loved and lost, raised kings and queens, ruled and died for Scotland. From St Margaret, who became one of the patron saints […]
Inspired by Scotland’s medieval queens
Sharon Bennett Connolly was initially inspired to write a book about Scotland’s medieval queens by a request to set the record straight. But the inspiration also came from the women themselves: peacemakers, diplomats, mothers, widows, prisoners, the many Margarets — saint, glamorous but unhappy wife, queen in her own right who died before taking the […]