All articles in Women in History
14th August, 2025 in Military, Women in History
Ask the author: Dermot Turing on the codebreaking women of Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is perceived as a world of male intellectuals supported by a vast staff of women in menial roles – a place where men helped sway the course of the Second World War. But women were not just typists and clerks. They had serious, full-on codebreaking roles. And not ju…
29th May, 2025 in History, Society & Culture, Sport, Women in History
Tracing the history of the Women’s Football Association
I like to think that there is a symmetry between my query of myself in 1967 – ‘why don’t girls play football?’ – with my thought over fifty years later that the history of the Women’s Football Association needed to be written down. As I was pretty sure that I was the only survivi…
3rd March, 2025 in Biography & Memoir, History, Society & Culture, Women in History
From cocktails to cannibals: The adventurous life of Lady Dorothy Mills, explorer and writer
When Lady Dorothy Mills was a young girl, a female relative told her she would never be beautiful so she had better be interesting – and she was. Yet extraordinarily, this is the first book about this fearless woman who became the best-known female explorer of the 1920s and 30s,…
17th February, 2025 in Biography & Memoir, History, Women in History
Ask the author: Catherine Hanley on Joanna Plantagenet
Dr Catherine Hanley holds a PhD in Medieval Studies (Sheffield, 2001), is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and is the author of historical works in several genres. Lionessheart is her latest book which follows the story of Joanna Plantagenet – princess, pioneer, captive a…
5th December, 2024 in Local & Family History, Military, Women in History
Women’s Land Army in Hampshire
John Lander author of new book Don’t Delay – Enrol Today highlights the importance of the women’s land army in Hampshire during both World Wars. World War I The Women’s Land Army was established by the British government to recruit women and girls to work in Britain’s agriculture…
14th October, 2024 in Biography & Memoir, History, Women in History
Ask the author: Emily Murdoch Perkins on rewriting royal history
Emily Murdoch Perkins discusses her new book Regina: The Queens Who Could Have Been, a feminist ‘what if’ history looking at what would have happened if firstborn daughters had been crowned instead of firstborn sons. Where did the idea for the book come from? It all started…
19th September, 2024 in History, Women in History
The rebellious Tudor princess you should know about
Henry, the king who was married six times and started his own church. Mary, the first regnal queen. Elizabeth, the queen who refused to marry. These are the Tudor royals that we all know about – but there’s one who has slipped through the history books and yet is, in my opinion,…
6th September, 2024 in Society & Culture, Women in History
The dark side of Bohemia
By the beginning of the 20th century, a new generation of women had begun to turn the idea of Victorian respectability on its head. Not for them the conventional, stultifying lives of their forebears. They rejected the traditional family hierarchy and fashioned new identities thr…
27th August, 2024 in Biography & Memoir, Entertainment, Women in History
The music behind ‘Where Madness Lies’
Author of Where Madness Lies Lyndsy Spence, has provided the soundtrack to the fascinating, but also tragic, life of film star Vivien Leigh. The complete playlist is available on Spotify below. Happy listening… Track 1: Il cielo in una stanza by Mina The dreamy orchestration evok…
5th July, 2024 in Biography & Memoir, Women in History
The Women Who Went Round the World
Humans have been great travellers for thousands of years. Famous early male explorers like Magellan, Sir Francis Drake and Captain Cook, are household names. Women, with their restricted positions in society and their traditional roles of looking after the house and children, had…
5th June, 2024 in Military, Women in History
‘I held his hand, he grasped it gratefully’
‘I remember one particularly badly injured pilot amongst the others being brought in. Because of his multiple injuries he was taken straight to the consultant surgeon for examination and treatment, but he was still conscious as he was taken to surgery. There was nothing anyone co…
30th May, 2024 in Biography & Memoir, Women in History
The Invention of Charlotte Brontë
Brimming with lies, hagiography and exaggeration! Elizabeth Gaskell’s sensational 1857 biography of her friend Charlotte Brontë continues to divide historians, critics and Brontë fans over 160 years after its first publication. Some see it as a unique first-hand insight into the…