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.

Why I Hate The Word 'Comedienne'

It’s only a word, it’s only a little thing. But since you can only eat an elephant in small bites (as the saying goes), let’s take things one mouthful at a time.

And one of the little things that gets my goat is the use of the word ‘comedienne’ to describe a woman who makes people laugh. It implies that the originally male word ‘comedian’ is superior, and therefore anything else is a poor substitute. It implies a sense of otherness with a female comedian, a sense of second best, it gives a hint of frailty, and suggests that a woman telling jokes is somehow different to a man telling jokes. Which is balls.

I run an all-female comedy night called What The Frock! Comedy. Not because I want to be mean and exclude all the boy comedians from the fun, but because for so long most of the women comedians have been excluded from the comedy circuit (on average, only 4% of all acts booked on comedy nights in the UK will be female. It’s 2013!).

Because I make this deliberate gender distinction in my booking policy, I inevitably spend a lot of time reading cuttings about my acts that refers to them as ‘comediennes’. Now don’t get me wrong – I am DELIGHTED when anybody writes anything about my events, I am over the frickin’ moon. But, given the opportunity, I do find myself saying to journalists who contact me: “I don’t want to be annoying, and I’m not going to ask to approve the copy… but please call the acts ‘comedians’ and not ‘comediennes’. It’s about what comes out of their gob, not what their gob looks like.” On the whole, they listen.

But last week the word seemed to come up a lot. Maybe that was because What The Frock! put on a big show that generated a lot of press – in print, on radio and on the telly box. Wooh! But in every instance, at some point the acts were called ‘comediennes’. Even by female journalists (journalistas?).

But why? You don’t get the same gender distinction in a lot of other professions. You don’t get male dentists and female dentistas; you don’t get male lawyers and female lawyerettes; you don’t get male accountants and female sumsticians. For one thing, they’re all really ugly words. For another thing, they’re all really stupid words. And for a third thing, they’re all made-up words. Just like ‘comedienne’.

Every single one of the 100+ acts I’ve worked with to date refers to herself as a ‘comedian’. Some make a point of saying they actively distance themselves from the word ‘comedienne’, while others say they don’t like the word but they’d rather somebody wrote something about them than nothing at all.

Which leads me to say that the language used to describe female acts also baffles me sometimes. For instance, we had Lucy Porter on last week, who was variously described in the local press as “sweet voiced”, “a familiar funny maker” and “sweetly demeanored”, while previously Tiffany Stevenson was said to provide “amiable and chatty banter”. All phrases to imply maternal hugs or bland giggles. There’s an interview with Bridget Christie in the current issue of Vogue with the headline “Pretty Funny” (not only would that headline never go with a piece about a male comedian, but it also implies that Bridget’s appearance is somehow relevant, and that it is surprising that she should be amusing. Being a laydee and that).

I know there are bigger things to worry about, but when we are still giving the same job different words depending on the gender of the person doing it, we still need to think about how much further we have to go in the equality battle.

Women typically get short shrift in the comedy industry – thanks to venues that will only book a maximum of one woman a night, panel shows that ignore them altogether, and stadium tours populated almost exclusively by the boys. And don’t get me started on how few female comedians are able to put out comedy DVDs.

And if people keep on calling them ‘comediennes’ rather than ’comedians’, things aren’t going to change any time soon. I’m not for a second implying this is the only problem women face in the comedy industry, far from it. But the nuances implied by a distinctively lesser word, one that is feminine and dainty in its sound and appearance, suggest that a gurl comedian is going to be a disappointment. When, frankly, that’s just poppycock.

Here’s a top ten of my favourite comedians right this minute. What do they all have in common? (Clue – none of them are shit, none of them are dainty):

• Aisling Bea
• Amy Poehler
• Bridget Christie
• Jayde Adams
• Jennifer Saunders
• Katherine Ryan
• Luisa Omielan
• Sara Pascoe
• Tina Fey
• Vikki Stone

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.

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.

Major Tom - Bristol Old Vic

Victoria Melody likes a challenge. And glancing at her website, it's more than clear that this is one woman who has turned her hand to a lot of different things - wreaking havoc in Office Pervert, screaming on hills around the country, and bending the genders of people in her audience... to name three.

In Major Tom, Victoria focuses on the beauty industry and uses her inherent desire to catalogue her day-to-day life to create a compelling and funny account of how she decided to enter her beloved basset hound (Major Tom) into competitive dog shows. What sets this show off a treat is that Major Tom (who Victoria describes, accurately, as looking like a lovable old Tory) is on set at Bristol Old Vic throughout the show, and behaves beautifully when Victoria calls on him to do one or two tricks. 

However, it turns out that Major isn't a winning dog, and when he repeatedly keeps coming last Victoria is stung by a pang of guilt at how she keeps putting him up there to be judged - so decides to be judged herself. Quickly crowned Mrs Brighton, Victoria's next mission is to become Mrs UK and ultimately Mrs International. 

This is where Major Tom takes an interesting twist. Victoria cleverly contrasts dog shows with human beauty pagents to highlight the ridiculous lengths that people go to in order to fulfil the ridiculous and inflexible demands of perfection in the eyes of judges. Ultimately, who is anyone else to judge us? 

At several points, Victoria tells us she's a feminist, and illustrates this with the example of how on her hen night, her friends are shocked to discover she has pubic hair - and Victoria seems surprised that any adult woman wouldn't have pubic hair. 

Beauty pagents, and the business of judging others on their appearance, are clearly thorny issues for feminists. When one of Gok Wan's I-can-make-you-look-better-than-you-currently-do-sister type shows was filming in Bristol a few years ago, his producers seemed surprised that the Bristol feminists declined the invitation to take part or watch the show being filmed. What with it being a decidedly un-sisterly activity. 

However, Victoria's take on beauty pagents (which she says she is now pleased to have left behind her) seems one fuelled more by curiosity and journalistic documentation, than a real desire to become a beauty queen - although she does also come across as very competitive in her desire to win (and I guess if you're going to do something, why not do it to the max?)!

Major Tom is a fun show, and Victoria has an extremely likeable stage presence. The show puts an interesting spin on how we look at ourselves and just how daft the beauty industry is. And did I mention that there's a dog on stage?!


Major Tom is on at Bristol Old Vic until May 4. Click here for more information and to book tickets.

The Bloody Ballad of Mary Maid

Have you ever wondered what Happy Days would be like if it was set in an abattoir? Well, wonder no more because The Bloody Ballad is the show for you.

Bristol Old Vic’s basement Studio space has been transformed into a hick village in 1950s southern America. With a four-piece backing band (aka The Missing Fingers), Mary (played by scriptwriter Lucy Rivers) steps on to the stage in a blood-soaked nightie to tell us all about the terrible weekend she’s just had. She looks like Juliette Lewis in Natural Born Killers, and that’s clearly the inspiration.

Poor Mary has had a crappy start to life. Abused by her father since she was a child (we’re told this via a chirpy country song called What My Daddy Done in A Minor, ouch), her mother hung herself, and sour Mary is left rotting behind the till in her father’s petrol station. When in wanders Connor (Oliver Woods) to sweep her off her feet.

But of course, all is not as it seems. After falling in love with Connor, Mary kills his three brothers in self-defence after they break into her house to rob her. Leading to a helter-skelter situation where Mary goes from a country bumpkin whose never been kissed, to a full blown murderer in two short breaths.

And all of this is delivered in a raucous rockabilly performance, with a backing band (aided by Tom Cottle and Den Messore), fun 1950s costumes and a hell of a lot of theatrical blood.

With strong women a-plenty (Rivers herself, and Hannah McPake as Connor's cunning mother), The Bloody Ballad had every potential of being a strident feminist theatre piece, and indeed some may still say it is. “I won’t be bullied by no man,” cried Mary. But here’s why I say it isn’t…

What troubled me was the casual way that Mary’s childhood abuse was glossed over with a jaunty song. For a girl who’d been repeatedly subjected to sexual abuse by her father since she was tiny, perhaps it’s not so surprising she’d turn out troubled, but then why wasn’t her murderous streak directed at her father (who the script had invested time in telling us about) rather than three strangers? Why wasn’t the revenge motif for her years of rape explored in any way? Hmm. I felt the issue of child abuse was dismissed too lightly and that made me uncomfortable. Even within the light tone of this show, it could have been explored further, which would have had more credibility. But as it stands, the casual attitude appeared disrespectful and sensational. Or worse, that child sex abuse is normal and therefore doesn’t need discussion.

I have to admit, the plausibility of Mary’s character suddenly turning so vicious so quickly left me a little unconvinced, even if I suspended my disbelief. And the actual mechanics and reasoning behind the murders themselves was so convoluted and uninvolved that I was left wondering what happened and why.

The Bloody Ballad was a great fun show, delivered in a blood-slick, high energy way. It’s got enormous potential, but to my mind there are a few big plot holes that need smoothing over first.

The Bloody Ballad is playing at Bristol Old Vic until April 6. Click here for more information and to book tickets.

WOW, what a weekend!

As I write this on a freezing Tuesday morning, I’m still basking in the toasty afterglow of a fabulously feminist few days.

On Saturday morning, I was up with the fairies to catch the Megatrain to London, where I spent a zinging weekend at the Women Of the World Festival (WOW) at the Southbank Centre. On the train up I was reading a review copy of the forthcoming Virago anthology Fifty Shades of Feminism, which had only arrived the day before, and in the evening I watched Made In Dagenham in my mini B&B room. I was Not Doing Feminism By Halves. No, siree.

Being at WOW was a wonderful experience. 2013 marked the third WOW festival but the first that I’d attended, and my reason for going was that the women’s comedy event I run, WhatThe Frock! Comedy, had been invited to put on a show in the Royal Festival Hall’s ballroom on the Sunday afternoon. That wasn’t an opportunity I was going to say ‘no’ to. Putting on a show (only our sixth ever) to 500+ people in the UK’s biggest arts centre? Err, yes please.

I headed up a day early to make the most of the festival and to see as much as possible. I lived in London for most of my 20s and still feel very fond of the place, so it’s always nice to have an excuse to go back. The Southbank Centre was somewhere I spent a lot of time in my London years as I both lived and worked nearby, plus I love the heritage of the place and the reasons why it was created in the first place.

To see the buildings (Royal Festival Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall) filled to the rafters with women-friendly stalls and events promoting women in business, women in comedy, women in fashion, women in charities… was brilliant. The buzz in the whole centre was electric, and the atmosphere was nothing but warm, welcoming and inclusive.

I saw several talks over the two days, but with up to 10 events happening simultaneously, I inevitably also missed a great deal. But I did catch a brilliant session celebrating women who don’t have children (whether by choice or by circumstance); debating the outcome of the Levenson Report into how the media continues to view women; the brilliance of Jane Austen. I saw Ruby Wax’s soloshow Losing It, in which she talks frankly and hilariously about her very real mental breakdown and ongoing problems with depression. And it was great to finally see Michael Kaufman talk, having interviewed him a few years previously for his book A Guy’s Guide To Feminism – and he didn’t disappoint.

All three pictures, copyright Southbank Centre

Of course, my main focus was putting on the What The Frock! Comedy show on the Sunday afternoon. With a one-hour timeslot, I’d booked Rosie Wilby as MC, and Shazia Mirza and Danielle Ward for 20-minute slots. It seemed a tough call – the ballroom turned out to be not a ‘room’ but a huge sunken space within the main foyer, meaning there was a lot of background noise and distractions. But it also meant that as well as filling our 500 seats, we gained about 200 extra audience members who were standing around the edges, sitting on the floor at the front, and pulling up chairs to peer over the balcony to watch. It was fabulous. And where else was I going to put on a show where our ‘warm-up act’ was Woman’s Hour’s Jenni Murray (who had done a piece on What The Frock! earlier in the week), and where we were succeeded by Sandi Toksvig?

The tweets and messages I’ve since received from people in the audience, who previously didn’t know about What The Frock! but who had a wonderful time, and who also discovered one or two comedians they didn’t previously know, has made it all so worthwhile. Putting on any show is never a piece of cake – there are contracts to sign, money to be negotiated, publicity to garner, and inevitably technical hitches on the day. But the buzz of the day and the resulting feedback is what always makes it worthwhile. Even as I sat squashed into an uncomfortable corner of a bumpy coach for three hours going home, I was still basking in the glow of a weekend where the women deservedly won.

So, thank you to everyone at WOW and the Royal Festival Hall for inviting What The Frock! along and for taking a punt on an up and coming comedy event. I had a ball, and whether or not What The Frock! comes back for WOW 2014, I’ll certainly be there, come hell or high water.

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.

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. 

Dreadnought South West

In June 1913, eight groups of suffragists set off from starting points across the country, including Cornwall, to walk to Hyde Park in London. There they held a large rally on 26 July 1913 in support of votes for women.

Now four South West women are planning a centenary celebration of what became known as the Great 1913 Suffrage Pilgrimage.

Dreadnought South West (named after Sylvia Pankhurst’s suffragette newspaper) will comprise an original theatre piece performed at key stopping places along the South West route with associated waymarker projects promoted by schools and community groups.

Playwright Natalie McGrath and director Josie Sutcliffe, supported by cultural managers Sue Kay and Mary Schwarz, have received an Arts Council England grant to research the route, find suffrage stories and develop partnerships with venues and organisations in the towns and cities through which the Pilgrimage passed.

“Seven women started at Land’s End and made it all the way to Hyde Park,” explains Natalie. “They were joined for periods of time by many supporters as well as encountering much resistance along the way. They held open-air meetings where they were allowed. We’re really interested in exploring people’s experiences of the suffrage campaign in relation to the contemporary social, economic and political position of women today – as well as current modes of, and attitudes to, public protest.”

(Story above adapted from the Dreadnought press release.)

Anti-Suffrage Postcards

Probably due to the recent American election, but recently there have been quite a few online articles rounding up various anti-suffrage postcards from the early 20th Century. I've blogged about this previously here, but am also rounding up links to some of the other recent articles to try and collect them in one place. If you know of any more, please let me know in the Comments section and I'll add them to this post.

The Society Pages – Vintage Anti-Suffrage Postcards

Collectors Weekly – War on Women, Waged in Postcards

Man Boobz – Anti-Suffrage Postcard Saturday

Ms Magazine – UK Suffrage Postcards

Ms Magazine – Suffragist Postcards

Ms Magazine – Live Blogging Women's History

Edwardian Promenade – Women's Suffrage Through Postcards

Suffragette Postcards

Alice Suffragette – Postcards

The Pankhurst Centre – Postcards

‘Votes For Ladies’

Recently, I’ve come across the Bristol Radical History Group, which formed in 2006 to stage talks, walks, gigs and more, as well as publishing an impressive catalogue of pamphlets, all celebrating different aspects of Bristol’s radical past.

So I visited HydraBookshop on Old Market (which grew out of the BRHG) and bought quite a few pamphlets, including Votes For Ladies: The Suffrage Movement 1867-1918 by Sheila McNeil (which I’m told is a pseudonym). 

As the title suggests, McNeil is not backwards in coming forwards in suggesting that the suffrage movement was aimed at middle-class women only, and was alienating to working-class women. These facts can’t be denied – meetings were generally held during day times meaning working-class women couldn’t attend; if meetings were held in the evenings, working-class women had little free time to attend between child-care and domestic tasks etc; middle-class women had servants and nannies to keep the home in order if they were sent to prison, while working-class women had no such luxury; and so on. These are plain facts.

What’s interesting in McNeil’s pamphlet is that she chooses deliberate and firm language to make plain her belief that this exclusivity was wrong and detrimental to the cause. In fact, the pamphlet’s title comes from a quote by Dora Montefiore (who set up a branch of the WSPU in a working-class area of East London, but who campaigned for ‘adult suffrage’ rather than ‘women’s suffrage’), who said the WSPU was not interested in votes for women but in “votes for ladies”. Implying the Pankhursts saw a clear line between themselves and their less fortunate sisters.

Since much literature about the suffrage movement only briefly mentions the exclusion of working-class women, it’s important that it’s highlighted here in McNeil’s pamphlet. I’ve now ordered a copy of One Hand Tied Behind Us by Jill Liddington and Jill Norris, which is one of very few historical suffrage books to focus on this aspect. (You can expect a review of that in due course!)

Votes For Ladies takes an interesting angle on the suffrage movement, and acknowledges that there is a key area that has been often overlooked in most writings about the campaign. And it’s good to know that there is a diligent bunch of people locally who are committed to keeping the socialist past of our female history alive. In 2009, the BRHG even staged a dramatic re-enactment of Theresa Garnett’s attack on Winston Churchill at Temple Meads Station (watch the film clip here).