How To Be A Heroine

All books should be this much fun to read. In How To Be A Heroine, playwright Samantha Ellis revisits all of her favourite novels to answer the pressing question of who really was the best heroine – Jane Eyre or Catherine Earnshaw?

Anyone who’s spent their formative years with their faces buried in the pages of novels like Gone With The Wind, Anne of Green Gables, Pride and Prejudice and Lace will simply love How To Be A Heroine… which has even earned its own online quiz (Samantha and I are both Petrova Fossil from Ballet Shoes, by the way).

Part memoir of growing up in London with Iraqui-Jewish refugee parents, and part celebration of many of the most wonderful literary characters ever, How To Be A Heroine is a pure joy to read. It’s also made me compile a long list of novels I’ve yet to read (Riders, Franny and Zooey, Twilight…) that I can’t wait to get stuck into.

The idea of using well-loved novels to shape an autobiography is a lovely idea and works so effectively. Samantha clearly knows her subjects inside out and loves the characters dearly… those who propped her up during different times of her life and helped her sort out various dilemmas – surely, something all bookworms can identify with (I’m quite sure I’d be nowhere if I hadn’t had Judy Blume at my teenage elbow).

You’ll race through How To Be A Heroine as quickly as you raced through Valley Of The Dolls – and that’s no bad thing, simply a testament to how enjoyable and warm a book Samantha Ellis has written.

The Mystery of Princess Louise

Being one of Queen Victoria’s children can’t have been a pleasant experience. The starchy monarch was famous for her dislike of children, and wanted them to only uphold the strict values that came to typify the Victorian era. But her rebellious daughter Princess Louise somehow managed to escape that mould.

Princess Louise, born in 1848, was the sixth child and fourth daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Following a particularly agonising birth, Queen Victoria had already developed a dislike for her ‘difficult’ daughter… and the feeling grew to be fairly mutual. However, with dignity and grace Princess Louise managed to develop into the bohemian princess with a mind of her own: she was a talented sculptor and artist, a passionate woman who loved to travel all over the world, and who was fiercely devoted to supporting the emancipation of women in society.

Scandal was never too far from Princess Louise. And Lucinda Hawksley’s excellent and gripping new biography of the princess (The Mystery of Princess Louise) suggests that Louise gave birth to an illegitimate son as a teenager, and he was promptly adopted by a family known to the royals. It also suggests Princess Louise’s loveless marriage to the Marquess of Lorne was doomed to fail from the off, not least due to his homosexuality - which grew so frustrating for her that she had the windows of Kensington Palace bricked up to keep him from creeping off for assignations. Add in the confusing details surrounding the untimely death of Princess Louise’s long-term lover Joseph Boehm, and in The Mystery of Princess Louise you have a deeply exciting book – far more engaging than any novel I’ve read recently.

Lucinda leaves no stone unturned in her quest to find out every last scrap of information about the bohemian princess, rigorously travelling from England to Scotland to Canada and beyond to search archives and interview anyone who might shed some light on Queen Victoria’s rebellious daughter. But in most instances Lucinda is met with closed doors… as she discovered the royal team had locked down every last shred of information in all the archives relating to Princess Louise and everybody who knew her. It’s testament to Lucinda’s research skills that she has still produced such a richly detailed and informative biography, despite the inevitable frustrations. What were the royal family so desperate to hide about this princess, who died in 1939 and is sadly barely remembered by most people today?

This secrecy makes it easy to believe Lucinda’s thoughtfully posed assertions about Louise’s big secrets… as well as to see past the myth that Queen Victoria was a respected monarch. Looking back on a time we don’t have any memory of, it’s easy to believe the picture painted for us that Queen Victoria was adored by her citizens, but The Mystery of Princess Louise proves that was far from the case. Princess Louise comes across as a figure as adored by the public as Princess Diana was more recently. 

Rachel Cooke – Her Brilliant Career

Think of a woman in the 1950s and chances are you’ve conjured up a mental image that combines Betty Draper and a wasp-waisted woman in a pinny and a headscarf. There’s a daft belief that all women in the 1950s ever did was wave their husbands off to work, bake cakes and clean the house, and then make sure the kids were out of the way when hubby got home again.

Well, Rachel Cooke’s excellent new book Her Brilliant Career is here to stick two fingers up to that idea. In it, Rachel has handpicked ten wonderfully diverse women from the 1950s and celebrates each of them with a potted biography cataloguing their achievements in the face of a society that wanted women to be seen and not heard.

From chef Patience Gray to architect Alison Smithson, film director Muriel Box and archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes… Rachel has collected together some truly inspiring women who, in many instances, have been sadly forgotten under the weight of their many male counterparts. But no more!

Her Brilliant Career is deliciously readable and engrossing, and Rachel guides us through the highs of these ten women’s achievements… while recognising that, at times, these were flawed women, or not always likeable women. (In my experience, the most interesting women are rarely the most well liked ones!)

The book also contains a selection of photographs illustrating our ten women and the decade that shaped them, many of which are little known to most people and bring a welcome extra dimension to these mini biographies. The photo of Iris Murdoch looking wildly purposeful beside her bed is easily my favourite – conjuring up a much more impressive figure than the genius author we’ve sadly come to remember as a fading fragile flower after her husband John’s posthumous biography of her mental decline.

It’s important that we remember the women who went before us and celebrate their achievements, which allow us to do the things we take for granted today. With the announcement in December 2013 from the Fawcett Society that this year, for the first time in five years, the pay gap between women and men has further widened, books such as Her Brilliant Career are a stark reminder of what has been achieved, but also how far we still have to go to achieve equality.

“Sylvia Pankhurst: Suffragette, Socialist and Scourge of Empire”

Despite engendering mixed feelings in many who have studied her, Sylvia Pankhurst was undeniably a woman who got things done. Perhaps most well remembered for her hugely significant role in helping to win UK women the vote, Sylvia was also a dominant campaigner against oppression and injustice further afield.

As part of Pluto Books’ Revolutionary Lives series, Katherine Connelly has produced a fantastically readable and informative biography and study of Sylvia – which refreshingly doesn’t simply focus on her suffrage activities, but also devotes a lot of time to her less well-known activism. And for all the reading around the Pankhursts that I’ve done in recent years, Connelly’s book - Sylvia Pankhurst: Suffragette, Socialist and Scourge of Empire - taught me plenty of things I didn’t previously know. Confirming that there is still more to be said on the fascinating and important character of Sylvia Pankhurst.

Most people are acquainted with Sylvia’s role as a suffragette. As the middle daughter of Emmeline Pankhurst (Christabel was elder, and Adela was younger), Sylvia for a long time lived in the shadow of the much adored Christabel. Ultimately, this was to be in Sylvia’s favour as she was more free to go in her own direction without such a close watch from her mother.

When the suffrage campaign simmered down during wartime, Sylvia became separated from her family as she disagreed with their support for the war. Instead, Sylvia opposed the war and set to work to support the women left behind and help those who found themselves in poverty because of the war – particularly fighting for the rights of soldiers’ wives.

In later years. Sylvia became involved with communism and soon evolved into an important figure in the movement, speaking at events worldwide. Finally, Sylvia moved to Ethiopia, where she adopted an anti-British attitude, which led her to be under surveillance by MI5.

Even Sylvia’s son Professor Richard Pankhurst has given this new book his seal of approval, stating: “Katherine Connelly has written an important work on my mother.”

Sylvia Pankhurst: Suffragette, Socialist and Scourge of Empire is neatly arranged in hugely informative chapters covering Sylvia’s various different campaigns, and the whole package is gripping and compulsive. It’s an absolute must for anybody looking to find out more about this significant lefty campaigner.

You can listen online to a fascinating talk with Connelly, which she gave at the Bishopsgate Institute about the book. Follow this link. 

Click here for more information on the excellent Revolutionary Lives series, which covers some truly remarkable people. One to particularly watch out for is the publication of Ellen Wilkinson’s biography next February. 

Enid Bagnold - The Squire

Enid Bagnold’s 1938 novel The Squire is apparently the only novel ever published about birth. By which the publishers Persephone mean that although there have been plenty of novels about women who have given birth, none have covered the days before and after the birth in such fine detail as The Squire.

Although there is no defined narrative arc in The Squire – rather, it is a series of interlocking events surrounding the act of birth – there is still a drive throughout the novel to hold the reader’s attention. Some critics have claimed the book is reminiscent of Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, and you can indeed see the almost stream of consciousness style throughout.

Enid Bagnold’s novel is written extremely closely – there is so much detail that you feel almost claustrophobic within the pages. This is surely intentional, to mirror the building pressure the squire of the title must be feeling in the final days of her pregnancy when she wants everything to be just so. And there is also a strong sense of the British spirit of ‘just getting on with things’, which is surely what the squire was thinking.

For instance, throughout chapter six there is a debate between the squire and her friend Caroline about plants, and those they like and dislike. Which is a loose way to discuss things ending and beginning, with plants being a metaphor for the existing children and the imminent baby, as well as the frustrations for the squire of her servants.

What struck me as particularly interesting about The Squire is the way it approaches the intricacies of household management between the wars. The squire is consumed with handling her frustrating staff and the difficulties of replacing them with suitable people. And there is the constant anxiety and irritation for her of dealing with the problem of people who she pays to make her life easier. The minutiae of the middle classes is apparent on every page, and that in itself is a fascinating opportunity to glimpse into a bygone age.

DE Stevenson – The Two Mrs Abbotts

The news that the third instalment of the Miss Buncle trilogy was being reissued by Persephone was very welcome information. The first two books (Miss Buncle’s Book and MissBuncle Married) have both been reissued by Persephone in the last few years, and proved enormously popular with fans.

For readers who love the homely warmth of a Dorothy Whipple or Frances Hodgson Burnett (two more much-loved Persephone authors), reading the country cottage concerns of Barbara Buncle are like being enveloped in a big woolly hug by a favourite granny.

Barbara Buncle originally lived in a sleepy English village, until she ruffled the feathers of her neighbours by exposing their shenanigans in a loosely disguised novel. So the second instalment saw her up sticks to her new village, where she settle with her publisher husband. And now we catch up with Barbara who is safely ensconced in her new home and getting to grips with England in wartime.

As the title suggests, The Two Mrs Abbotts (Mrs Abbott is Barbara’s married name) has more than one protagonist. And the other Mrs Abbott is Barbara’s sister-in-law Jerry, who largely takes over as the protagonist of this tale with Barbara assuming a secondary position.

In theme, The Two Mrs Abbotts reminded me of another Persephone book – A House In The Country byJocelyn Playfair (which, it pains me to say, is one of very few Persephone books that I have not enjoyed… which is more to do with the style of writing than the content). In that both books are concerned with the women left behind to pick up the pieces in England’s countryside while most men are fighting the war overseas. In both books, the capable and strong women find themselves sharing their country homes with unlikely characters, making do with some trying situations, experiencing awful longing for their absent other halves, and managing the awkwardness of unwanted attentions from interloping men… themselves displaced by the awfulness of the war.

However, where The Two Mrs Abbotts succeeds for me is that the war is not presented as a character in itself… it is simply the backdrop for the situation that our characters now find themselves in. There is no sense of self-pity, and no searching for sympathy. In fact, there is scant narrative thread through The Two Mrs Abbotts – rather, we are presented with a series of interlinking short stories (a young man and his unsuitable fiancée, a soldier and his unrequited love for Jerry, the resentment of a refugee family, a runaway London girl, the morality of whether a man should fight or not etc), that compel us to turn the pages as fast as possible to find out what happens next.

Although The Two Mrs Abbotts is the last in the Miss Buncle trilogy, the character of Barbara Buncle spills over into several other books by DE Stevenson – such as The Four Graces and Spring Magic. So, if you will mourn Miss Buncle as much as I will, then I suggest we start trawling second hand bookshops until we find her lurking in the pages of other novels by the same author.

Jennifer Saunders, 'Bonkers'

While Bonkers is certainly not a warts’n’all book, Jennifer Saunders’ autobiography is a gripping and compulsive read, with Jennifer’s distinctive voice almost reading it aloud in your head – such is the strength of her character on the pages.

While we read about her relationship with lifelong comedy partner Dawn French, working with the legendary Comic Strip team, and her love for Joanna Lumley, we learn little about her experiences as a wife, mother or friend. But that’s hardly surprising as Jennifer has always been a woman who appears to have struggled with the concept of finding herself a celebrity.

At the Cheltenham Literature Festival this year, Jennifer talked so engagingly with Kirsty Young about some of the stories in Bonkers, and it was a joy to hear her chatting on stage. But the sense of keeping everything close to her chest remained. And while you love every second you spend reading Bonkers and hearing her talk about her life, you also come away feeling like you haven’t really learned very much about her. Which is surely what she wants!

But what shines through is a hilarious woman, who is living a life she loves. She’s a woman who loves her family, her animals and her friends. And the fact she comes across as a genuinely good egg is reinforced by the fact she has one of the longest marriages in showbiz, and her friendships have all endured through the decades.

Emily Wilding Davison: A Suffragette’s Family Album

We’re spoilt for choice with suffragist and suffragette literature at the moment, and much of it centres around Emily Wilding Davison, because June was the centenary of her death under the hooves of the king’s horse in Epsom.

This latest offering by Maureen Howes is something extra special, though. A Suffragette’s Family Album is the result of ten years of exhaustive research from Maureen, who has dedicated the past decade to uncovering every possible scrap of information about Emily. The book aims to help us try to piece together a complete picture of one of the best remembered suffragettes, and to try to help inform us about her actions on that fateful derby day.

Emily’s closest surviving relative Geoffrey Davison has written the book’s preface, which is an indication of the close involvement of Emily’s family with Maureen’s research. And through postcards, letters, photos – even Emily’s christening gown, Maureen pieces together Emily’s entire life story, which really comes to life thanks to the many photographs.

With the aid of timelines about Emily individually as well as the suffrage campaign generally, plus a great deal of supporting background information about the other campaigners who worked with Emily, A Suffragette’s Family Album is an extremely authoritative and comprehensive guide to Emily Wilding Davison. Maureen has evidently worked extremely hard on this book, and her decade of research has more than paid off.

The book is published by The History Press. Click here for more information.

The Bristol Suffragettes – Lucienne Boyce

One of the very first UK suffrage centres was established in Bristol, and outside of London we saw the most active suffrage activity here in Bristol. So now local author Lucienne Boyce has celebrated the work of the militants in the city with her new book The Bristol Suffragettes.

Focussing on the militants (rather than the suffragists), Lucienne’s book launches us into the world of 1907 when former Lancashire mill worker Annie Kenney was dispatched to Bristol by the Pankhursts to head up the South West branch of the Women’s Social & Poltical Union (WSPU).

From this point on, Lucienne guides us through the following years as the suffragettes ramped up their activity, including arson attacks, whipping Winston Churchill, and disrupting political speeches. But along the way, we also hear about rousing suffrage plays performed at a (now vanished) theatre on Park Row, coffee mornings at the Victoria Rooms and the suffragette wood in Batheaston.

The Bristol Suffragettes is a very nicely put together and accessible book, with a clean design and voting ‘x’ motif throughout. It also includes a foldout map offering a walk around the Clifton area to take in some buildings of suffragette significance, as well as lots of appendices with timelines, biographies, and further reading suggestions. A very neat resource.

March, Women, March – Lucinda Hawksley

Published to coincide with the centenary of Emily Wilding Davison’s death under the hooves of the king’s horse at the Epsom Derby in 1913, March, Women, March is a truly impressive collection of suffrage memories.

The subtitle Voices of the Women’s Movement from the First Feminist to Votes for Women succinctly sums up the contents of Lucinda Hawksley’s book, which is a thorough and authoritative anthology of quotes from important early feminist figures, many of whom have been sadly forgotten in the wake of their headlining grabbing 20^th Century suffragette sisters.

The suffragettes were the militant women who only rose to prominence in the very final years of the suffrage campaign, before the First World War saw Emmeline Pankhurst call her army of women to stand down. But the suffragists far out-numbered the suffragettes – being the peaceful campaigners who had tirelessly worked for decades previously to overturn not only marriage acts, but also health bills and working rights for women, alongside campaigning for the vote. The right to vote being just one of the key demands of what is now called the first wave of feminism.

Lucinda’s beautiful book (with two large sections of fascinating photos) quite rightly pays great respect to the many, many forgotten women who campaigned for decades before the suffragettes arrived on the scene. Meaning that we begin with Mary Wollstonecraft in the 1790s, and follow through the decades via legendary and reforming nurse Florence Nightingale, and the poet Caroline Norton – whose story particularly sung out to me.

Caroline was obliged to marry an older man who she didn’t love in order to ensure financial security for her family – only for her husband to violently abuse her, kidnap their children and steal all the money she earned as a successful poet. However, after leaving her abusive husband, Caroline threw herself into studying law and was ultimately successful in bringing about the Custody of Infants Acts 1839, which finally saw mothers recognised as joint parent of her children (previously, in the event of a marriage break up, children automatically went to the father). It’s shocking that Caroline isn’t better known today.

Through the following chapters we learn of so many other, equally amazing and astonishing women who achieved so much in such stiflingly oppressive times. And while a large part of the book is occupied with the women who helped us win the vote, Lucinda doesn’t focus too heavily on the better known figures.

What we are left with in March, Women, March is a very accessibly and compulsive book, which is a testament to a great deal of library research and archival work. Lucinda supports the many quotes and excerpts with very readable historical background information – and the volume of these facts that relate back to Charles Dickens are clearly a nod to her very well known great, great, great grandfather.

"I Laughed, I Cried" - Viv Groskop

There is nothing worse than regret. The ‘if only’ feeling that haunts you when you realise it’s too late to put in the years of grit and determination needed to make your lifelong dream come true… or even find out if you’re any good at it. Regret sucks.

The old cliché goes: ‘You can only regret the things you haven’t done’. So jumping on the back of this, wife, mum and journalist Viv Groskop decided that with her fortieth birthday knocking on the door, it was time she put her money where her mouth was to find out if she really was any good at this stand-up comedy business. Or if she was just wasting her time.

And so begins Viv’s mammoth quest to perform 100 comedy shows in 100 days. Despite having three young kids at home (including a baby who was barely one), a long-suffering but patient husband, and a very busy career as a freelance journalist for most of the UK’s bigger newspapers and magazines.

I Laughed, I Cried documents – sometimes hilariously, sometimes painfully (this book delivers what it promises) – Viv’s progress gig by gig, gag by gag, glug (of Diet Coke) by glug.

Part diary, part memoir, part self-help book for aspiring comedians, I Laughed, I Cried is a no-holds-barred expose of Viv’s 100 days. We meet the best and the worst of the amateur comedy circuit with her – from the award-winning clown-comic Dr Brown who likes to take his clothes off, to the misery of the shared car journey to an out-of-London unpaid gig. Through all of this we root for Viv, and we want her to succeed. It’s to her advantage that she doesn’t try to disguise the fact that her quest involves performing night and after night in smelly hot clubs meaning she sweats into her only sequined cardie, and eats a lot of bad fast food, or runs up an exorbitantly high bar tab on watered down soft drinks.

The ‘quest book’ format is a well-tested market. The Danny Wallaces, Dave Gormans and Tony Hawks of the comedy world have all trodden the ground in recent years and sold a zillion books and built careers off it. It’s nice to finally see a woman dipping her sequined toe into the market – and it feels right that Viv should be the one to do it.

Her honest and funny writing, and shameless style, meant that I sped through I Laughed, I Cried in only two sittings – absorbed in the ups and down of Viv’s mission, and drawn in by the journalistic inclusion of various quotes and facts from established comedians on the circuit. This book makes you want to be Viv’s friend – even if that means being dragged along as her ‘bring a mate’ to a dingy club that smells of sewage (I refer you to gig four).

Viv Groksop will return to Bristol on July 3 with a preview of her Edinburgh solo show about I Laughed, I Cried atWatershed at 6.15pm. Tickets are £7/£6. This special event is co-hosted by What The Frock! and Bristol Festival of Ideas. After the show, Viv will be signing copies of the book – published by Orion on June 27.

Suffragettes – Frank Meeres

As the name of Frank Meeres’ new book Suffragettes (published by Amberley) suggests, he is focussing on the militant aspect of the votes for women campaign. And he does so very thoroughly.

Beginning with a short introduction to the lengthy suffrage campaign until the WSPU’s militancy began to dominate around 1907, Frank inevitably also includes a long-ish mention of Emily Wilding Davison’s death at the Epsom Derby in 1913.

However, the body of the book is a chronological guide through the main stages of the campaign between 1907 and 1914, when the First World War broke out and Emmeline Pankhurst suspended the campaign for women’s votes. Frank includes plenty of hefty quotes from newspapers and suffragette autobiographies, giving his volume weight and authority. (Although, I felt a little piqued that Christabel Pankhurst is incorrectly called ‘Charlotte’ in one instance towards the end – a typo that marred an otherwise factually clean book.)

There is also a substantial selection of images in the centre of Suffragettes, including one or two photos I hadn’t seen before – such as a photo of women sleeping in an unoccupied house to avoid the 1911 census, and one or two photos from the author’s collection of suffragette activity in his home area of Norfolk.

While Suffragettes may not add much to those already familiar with the campaign for the vote, it is a good starting place for those without much existing knowledge of the subject. And the photos in the middle are a bonus.

Campaigning For The Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary

When editor Elizabeth Crawford was alerted to the discovery of a box of ancient diaries and memorabilia, she knew she was onto something extraordinarily special. In 2013, it is now so rare to come across forgotten treasure troves stuffed away in attics and cupboards – not least because we’ve all converted our attics into studio flats, and our cupboards into extra bedrooms. But what Elizabeth was shown was a complete set of a suffragist’s diaries throughout her entire life, in which the suffragist had painstakingly preserved flyers, photos, banners and other mementoes.

Shortly before Christmas I was lucky enough to go up to Parliament and hear Elizabeth talking about her new book – Campaigning For The Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary. She brought with her some of Kate’s diaries, and some of the (now very fragile) treasures that had been preserved within them. The talk was only an hour long, but it was the most engaging and fascinating session about the life of a woman nobody had ever previously heard of.

Kate Parry Frye was not a suffrage leader, she was not a militant, she never went to prison and she was never force-fed. But she was an extremely active member of the suffrage campaign from 1911 onwards, and toured all over the UK setting up meetings, organising speakers, campaigning, building awareness, knocking on doors and tirelessly raising people’s consciousness about how vitally important it was that women were entitled to equal political representation.

Just some of Kate's diaries. Photo by Elizabeth Crawford.

Kate was an avid diarist throughout her entire life (1878-1959), meaning that Elizabeth has worked hard to edit down Kate’s voluminous notebooks into this beautiful book that focuses on the suffrage era. Carefully introduced with a chapter by Elizabeth setting the scene and telling us about Kate’s upbringing, aspirations as an actress, extraordinarily long engagement to John and bringing us up to her life in 1911 when Kate launched herself head first into the suffrage campaign. Although the first suffrage entry Elizabeth finds in Kate’s diary was in March 1896 (when Kate would have been 18) when she attends a meeting with her mother where Millicent Fawcett is the guest speaker.

Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary is a deeply important book. Never before have we been able to see such a detailed, first-hand, day-to-day account of the suffrage campaign from someone who worked on the ground level, doing the un-thanked drudge work. The finished book is an absolute credit to Elizabeth and her publishers Francis Boutle – it is easily the most beautiful book in my suffrage library, and is wonderfully illustrated with scans of many of the letters, flyers and photos found in Kate’s collection, as well as containing side panels on each page explaining who the many extra characters Kate refers to are. The attention to detail in this book is exemplary, and so rewarding to read. What a treat.

For more information or to buy a copy, please visit the Francis Boutle website. 

Elizabeth Crawford has a website that is the most comprehensive source of suffrage informationimaginable. 

Please click here to read an article by Elizabeth about the book, illustrated with photos from the diaries. 

Bring Out The Banners

This is a suffragette novel aimed at children – I’m guessing around the 10-12 years age range.

Geoffrey Trease’s novel Bring Out The Banners was originally published in 1994, and has recently been resurrected by Bloomsbury imprint Flash Backs. While it’s not breaking any new ground in the suffragette-novel-for-kids territory (working class girl befriends privileged aristocrat girl, they unfurl Votes For Women banners at a theatre, they improbably meet Mrs Pankhurst, they go on a number of marches and end up arrested where they are force fed) this is one of the better books I’ve read that covers this territory.

Trease brings in lots of accurate historical information to illustrate the plot, he peppers his cast with a few real characters (Mrs Pankhurst, Annie Kenney, Grace Roe), and explains the facts in a very easy-to-understand (but not patronising) way.

If you’re looking for a good book to introduce your kids to the suffrage movement, then Bring Out The Banners is a good place to turn.  It is well written, has an engaging plot and is historically accurate.

Heat Lightning – Helen Hull

I really don’t know what we’d do without Persephone Books. Their reprints of forgotten literary treasures are a source of such pleasure to their squillions of readers, and by virtue of typically being set in the past (which was the present, of course, when they were written), they provide wonderful escapism from our contemporary woes.

Which is exactly what we get in Helen Hull’s 1932 novel Heat Lightning, in which protagonist Amy seems to have more woes than the combined characters in EastEnders. All shoehorned into the space of one dusty week.

Amy returns to a sleepy Midwestern town to spend some time with her family – having left her husband and children at home in New York after a heated row, although we never discover the source of the row. Regardless, it is the catalyst for sending Amy back to her family… where she arrives to find scenes of barely controlled calamity.

Her sister has just given birth to another baby, despite her good-for-nothing husband being out of work, and the couple already having more children than they can possibly afford. Her cousin Tom is suspected of having got the house maid pregnant, and of introducing poor Curly to his illicit alcohol supplies. While Amy’s matriarchal grandmother is trying her best to rule over her wayward clan from the back seat of her treasured motorcar. 

And that’s just the start of it.

Over the course of the week in Heat Lightning, Helen Hull guides us through the topsy turvy times of this sprawling family, all seen through the anxious eyes of Amy. The weather is boiling, and the atmosphere in the pages is brooding and stifling at times, intentionally so to urge us into sympathy with poor Amy.

Helen’s writing in Heat Lightning is beautifully descriptive, and she has a fantastically lyrical turn of phrase to describe households, characters and settings… all of which really place the reader inside the constricting belly of the novel. While the subjects Heat Lightning deals with may seem like minor concerns, it is the mundanity of the concerns that makes them so compelling… because, unlike the dramas in EastEnders, these are all issues that could easily affect every single one of Helen’s readers. 

The Exiles Return – Elisabeth de Waal

One of Persephone’s latest books is a previously unpublished work by Austrian writer Elisabeth de Waal set in the early 1950s and following five exiles returning to Vienna 15 years after the Anschluss (when Hitler’s troops marched in to ‘claim’ Austria in March 1938).

Elisabeth wrote The Exiles Return only a few years after the time in which it is set, which gives the piece and the characters a sense of fragility and rawness that might have been hard to recapture if written more recently.

Our five protagonists are all wildly varying in their stories. One is an eminent professor struggling to fit back in after 15 years working in New York, where his marriage crumbled. Another is a wealthy Greek businessman who is determined to rebuild the luxury pre-war existence he loved, while attempting to disguise his homosexuality. And Prince ‘Bimbo’ Grein is the man he is secretly in love with. Although Bimbo has inadvertently become entangled with American teenager Resi, who is staying with her Austrian family, leading to awful consequences. Lastly, there’s laboratory assistant Princess Nina, who brings a new layer of emotion to the professor.

The Exiles Return is not an easy read. And as much as I love Persephone books, this was one of only a few that I’ve struggled to finish. From a style perspective, it needs some gentle editing to iron out a few narrative niggles. And from a reader’s perspective, I found myself getting tangled up in knots with all the many different characters, the many secondary characters, and how they all interwove.

However, this is clearly a very important book, and it’s essential that we learn as much as we can about what is still very recent history. The reverberations of the Second World War are still sounding, and Elisabeth’s novel is a stark reminder of how damaging the war was not only to buildings and cities, but to the persecuted individuals who were forced out of their homelands for more than a decade.

In this respect, the professor’s story is the most chilling. While teenage Resi’s story is equally saddening for different reasons – while, at 18, she was too young to know the Austria she was taken away from, she returns as a confused and naïve young woman who gets caught up in a world that nobody knows how to prepare her for.

Royalties from the sale of this book will be donated to the Refugee Council.

Click here to visit the Persephone Books website for more information.

Suffrage Plays – edited by Naomi Paxton

As regular readers will know, there’s nothing I like more than a book about the suffragettes. And the latest such book to land on my desk is a particularly exciting one because it is looking at an aspect of the movement that is rarely covered – and even more rarely covered in such depth.

The Methuen Drama Book of Suffrage Plays has been carefully edited by Naomi Paxton, and alongside the scripts for eight short plays written during the suffrage campaign, is a considerate and detailed introductory essay by Naomi about the origins of the plays, plus introductions and photos to each play about the authors. It’s a compact little tome at just 136 pages, but there’s still a heck of a lot crammed into those pages.

Perhaps the most well known of suffrage plays is How The Vote Was Won, which was written by Cicely Hamilton and Christopher St John in 1909. It’s a wry little vignette set in a well-to-do drawing room of an ‘anti’, who is suddenly invaded by various female relatives who seek sanctuary with him because (according to the government) they have no independent rights.

And alongside a few other short plays of a similar nature, there are also a handful of monologues. The Mother’s Meeting by Mrs Harlow Phibbs, from 1913, sees Mrs Puckle dressed in the suffrage colours of green, whit and purple, and talking enthusiastically about the hard work she does in order to even be recognised as the mother of her children. On the other side of the coin is the monologue An Anti-Suffragist by HM Paull from 1910, which features an ‘anti’ setting out her stall about why votes for women are an abominable idea – while, of course, actually selling the idea to her audience.

What’s most notable from these plays as a whole is the wit, warmth and humour within them. Even though the writers were all so passionate about securing votes for women (and many endured prison and force feeding along the way), they manage to keep their senses of humour to help spread the message about how important the franchise is. Such an attitude also flies in the face of the commonly touted idea by the ‘antis’ that suffrage campaigners were a bunch of frumpy, lumpy old witches with no sense of joy.

This book of Suffrage Plays is a very important one, and Naomi has carefully unearthed a huge treasure trove of valuable material that is crucial to helping historians understand better the work of our foremothers in the campaign for the vote. What’s even better is that now eight of these plays are available in this book, it means theatre groups now have the script to be able to perform these plays again and ensure the message is never forgotten.

'Gossip from the Forest' by Sara Maitland

Just as Iain Sinclair's travelogue London Orbital mapped every inch of the M25 in beautifully lyrical detail, so Sara Maitland's Gossip From The Forest (Granta) leaves no leafy corner of British forestry undisturbed. And just as Sinclair’s book showed that the green and pleasant lands in England’s folklore are now nothing but ashphalted memories, Maitland pours dappled sunlight on the surviving areas of British woodland… well, those that haven’t become housing estates.

With inescapable ethereal overtones, Gossip From The Forest ensures the folklore we've garnered from the woodlands is tightly preserved for another generation. And it's a worthwhile project because, as Maitland notes, the fairytales we learned as children were bastardised repeatedly from inception. So much so that many bear little relation to their original tone or intent, often because the marketed audience shifted from adult peasants seeking distraction, to privileged children in city nurseries being told moralistic tales. You know, the sort of tales where the princess always has golden hair, animals are always anthropomorthic, and where avarice always meets a grisly end. Maitland reminds us it wasn't meant to be this way. But just as folk music has seen songs evolve through the travelling generations, forestry folk stories have been edited and tweaked. And both are equally in danger of being forgotten now that British lifestyles have changed and the habit of storytelling is dying out.

Gossip From The Forest is about much more than fairytales, though. This book is also a fascinating and unlikely sociohistorical commentary on how we have changed as Britons over the centuries. How we live, how we learn and how we treat one another. Not to mention some considered thoughts on etymology, society, politics and child rearing. Maitland leaves no tussock unturned!

In many ways, Maitland’s book reminds me of key messages from Nicola Bown’s Fairies in Nineteenth Century Literature, which again places Britain’s forests and nature at its core to explore the particular obsession of the Victorians with fairytales… the very generation whom Maitland credits with making the stories as moralistic as we now know them, and for most adjusting the tales for a young audience. But the Victorians weren’t the first to amend the stories... even the most-recognised fairytale-tellers of all, the Grimm Brothers, come in for a bad reputation in Maitland’s eyes. They may have been the pair who went around the peasants to gather up the spoken stories to publish for the first time in 1812, but they were also the pair who repeatedly reworked those same stories in every new edition of their book, until the stories bore little relation to the originals.

Framed as a monthly pilgrimage to 12 of Britain’s most important and contributory forests, in painstaking detail and beautiful language Maitland relays the origins of that woodland, the people who lived in or nearby it, the stories derived from it whether old or new (for instance, Raoul Moat’s hideout in Epping Forest in 2010 doesn’t pass unnoticed), and the present condition and use of the land.

Each chapter is supplemented with a fairytale of Maitland’s own, which are sinister reworkings of original stories. There’s surely no one more suited to this task than Maitland, a magical realist writer who knows these stories inside out. And considering that, as she explains, these are stories that have been rewritten innumerable times over the centuries, it seems only fitting that she is the one to rewrite them for a 21^st Century reader. But be warned, Maitland’s reader is an adult (as was the original intention): hers are not fairytales for children.

The Persephone Book of Short Stories

When Persephone Books celebrated their 100^th book, how else were they going to do it but with a collection of 30 of their favourite short stories by forgotten female writers from the past 100 years? Welcome to The Persephone Book of Short Stories.

The resulting collection is 480 pages of Persephone joy, with stories spanning from 1909 to 1986. Some of the stories are familiar from Persephone Biannually newsletters or previously published Persephone short story collections, but there are also some pieces in here that will be brand new to Persephone readers.

The choice of stories is in one sense quite disparate – there are romances (eg From A to Z, Here We Are), family tales (eg The Black Cap), horrors (eg The Lottery), feminist polemics (eg A Few Problems In The Day Case Unit)…

But there is also a consistent theme of sexism through almost every story – whether explicit not. This is most striking in The Test (1940, Angelica Gibbs), where in just five pages our heroine Marian fails her driving test for the second time because she again refuses to kowtow to the misogynistic, sexist, perverted lech of a driving examiner, who grinds her down with his relentless, patronising and offensive ‘banter’.

Another theme is the obstruction by man in woman’s way – which is also evident in every single Dorothy Whipple novel published by Persephone (all gems by the way, highly recommended). Again, it’s not an obstruction that’s blatant and in-your-face, but merely a weary reminder by the writers that life for their female protagonists (and presumably themselves as the influence) has an extra hurdle to be clambered over by women before the race can even begin. It’s particularly interesting to read this in the stories from the 1930s and 1940s, as the passing of time has – in many ways – not lessened the difficulties for contemporary women in similar situations. EM Delafield’s story Holiday Group from 1926 perfectly sums up the misery of a family holiday for the put upon mother – which presumably rings true to every single mother today.

The story that stayed with me more than any other, and which still haunts me more than a week after reading it, is The Lottery – a 1948 tale of Wicker Man-esque barbarity by Shirley Jackson. So simply written, so concise with language… The Lottery perfectly sums up a lack of respect for women, a disregard for women as human beings, and the terrifying way in which a community see a woman as ‘sport’: an object for their entertainment. So horrific was The Lottery that I had to read it again as soon as I’d finished it… just to be sure I’d understood it correctly.

I wish Persephone every success with their next 100 books, and I hope with all my heart that therumours of Nicola Beauman closing Persephone after 100 books was nothing more than a rumour… Because to lose Persephone now would be an enormous tragedy for the publishing world, and for the (doubtless) millions of readers like me who devour their books and the introductions to new favourite (or forgotten) authors.

Mrs Hughes: The Loo Lady

This tiny book may weigh in at only 67 pages but it’s an utterly fascinating read. Ladies’ Mile is “the remarkable and shocking story of twilight Bristol” as seen through the eyes of Victoria Hughes, who was a toilet attendant on Durdham Downs from 1929 to 1962.

The book was edited by David Foot, and published in 1977 by a small Bristol company called Abson, whose other titles included A Guide To Hip Language & Culture (35p), and How Not To Do Your Duty (36p). Such is the legacy of Mrs Hughes that in 2006 she was entered into the OxfordDictionary of National Biography, as reported in the Daily Telegraph. 

The reason for Mrs Hughes’ work being so particularly important is that she kept diaries and notebooks during her decades working on the Downs, in which she logged the comings and goings of various characters, as well as some bizarre scrapes she found herself in due to befriending them – including having to cycle home down Blackboy Hill wearing nothing but her raincoat one night, after becoming infesting with lice!

As you can imagine, working on the Downs in the small hours meant that the bulk of Mrs Hughes’ customers were ladies of the night, for whom the Downs was a key and profitable area in the pre and post war years. But all the while she is portrayed as a matronly lady who passes her time by knitting, and who keeps the kettle handy for anyone who needs a warming brew.

Ladies’ Mile was published when Mrs Hughes was 80 and enjoying her retirement, but even on publication in the late 1970s the subject matter was shocking to some readers. Those readers who might be offended by talk of women being forced to sell their bodies to feed their children, pensionable women who had no alternative but to sell themselves against a tree, and the grim realities of dealing with sexually transmitted diseases in the unenlightened times (and before penicillin) etc. Indeed, Mrs Hughes herself only started working as a ‘loo lady’ because her husband was unable to work due to a war injury and they had two children.

In 2012 it’s sadly rather more difficult to be shocked by such stories, as they’re so normalised by the news, TV and film. Yet there remained two aspects of Ladies’ Mile that really affected me.

The first was an anecdote at the very beginning of the book about a young woman who goes into a cubicle and doesn’t emerge for quite some time. When she does, she looks shaky and upset but refuses offers of help and scuttles away (apparently to a nearby pub). When Mrs Hughes goes into the cubicle, she finds a dead premature baby wrapped in newspaper and left inside “the white enamel container”. Mrs Hughes’ written response is very revealing about her own nature, and her determination to be kind and comforting to whomever uses her facilities: “The noonday miscarriage left me with conflicting thoughts. I hated the cold-blooded way she had brazenly confronted us and walked out as though nothing had happened. But I wanted to sympathise with her at the same time. I was haunted by her chalk-white face and hands that were trembling.”

And it’s this kindly attitude that must be remembered and born in mind when reading, all throughout Ladies’ Mile, Mrs Hughes’ seemingly throwaway references to the ‘whores’ and ‘tarts’ who use her facilities, and even to the casual manner she recalls the women who threatened, or achieved, suicide due to their utterly miserable lives. While this disrespectful language shocked me, I tried to keep in mind that the book was written in a long past generation when attitudes were not as understanding as they now are. Mrs Hughes herself states that she tried never to moralise or to tell the prostitutes to give up their trade.

Ladies’ Mile is long out of print, and second hand copies are extremely expensive. However, a number of Bristol libraries stock the book – which in itself in an achievement, because on publication in the late 1970s, many libraries were wary of carrying such a book!

Mrs Hughes’ toilets were commemorated with a blue plaque on 22 September 2003. The inscription reads: “Victoria Hughes 1897-1978, who befriended and cared for prostitutes when she worked here as a lavatory attendant from 1929-1962.” Please click here for details.

• Paper Ladies writes about Mrs Hughes. 

• Curating The World writes about Mrs Hughes. 

• Article about Mrs Hughes on Flickr.