The incredible story of the fight for female education in BritainIn 1869, when five women enrolled at university for the first time in British history, the average female brain was thought to be 150 grams lighter than a man's. When the Cambridge Senate held a vote on whether women students should be allowed official membership of the university, there was a full-scale riot. Despite the prejudice and the terrible sacrifices they faced, women from all backgrounds per...

Real ladies do not travel - or so it was once said. This collection of women's travel writing dispels the notion by showing how there are few corners of the world that have not been visited by women travellers. There are also few difficulties, physical or emotional, real or imagined, that have not been met and usually overcome by these same women. Jane Robinson's first book,Wayward Women, was a guide to women travellers and their writing, and having read over a thousand of their b...

It is a myth that either of the World Wars liberated women.The Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of 1919 was one of the most significant pieces of legislation in modern Britain. It marked at once political watershed and a social revolution; the point at which women of 21 and over were recognised in law as being as competent as men. But were they? What actually happened when this bill was passed? This is the story of what happened next.Ladies Can't Clim...

_______'A history book that should be read by all' - Stylist.Set against the background of the campaign for women to win the vote, this is a story of the ordinary people effecting extraordinary change.1913: the last long summer before the war. The country is gripped by suffragette fever. These impassioned crusaders have their admirers; some agree with their aims if not their forcef...

The 'Greatest Black Briton in History' triumphed over the Crimea and Victorian England. "The Times" called her a heroine, Florence Nightingale called her a brothel-keeping quack, and Queen Victoria's nephew called her, simply, 'Mammy' - Mary Seacole was one of the most eccentric and charismatic women of her era. Born at her mother's hotel in Jamaica in 1805, she became an independent 'doctress' combining the herbal remedies of her African ancestry with sound surgical techniques.On ...

Unmarried mothers, absent fathers, orphaned children - Jane Robinson's In the Family Way is a truly gripping book about long-buried secrets, family bonds and unlikely heroes.Only a generation or two ago, illegitimacy was one of the most shameful things that could happen in a family. Unmarried mothers were considered immoral, single fathers feckless and bastard children inherently defective. They were hidden away from friends and relations as guilty secrets, punished by soc...

Everyone knows three things about the Women's Institute: that they spent the war making jam; the sensational Calendar Girls were WI; and, more recently, that slow-handclapping of Tony Blair.But there's so much more to this remarkable Movement. Over 200,000 women in the UK belong to the WI and their membership is growing. They cross class and religion,include all ages -from students and metropolitan young professionals, such as the Shoreditch Sisters,to rural centenarians -with pass...

When Josephine Butler died in 1906, she was declared by Millicent Fawcett to have been 'the most distinguished Englishwoman of the nineteenth century'. With impassioned speeches and fiery writing, Butler's campaigns for women's rights shook Victorian society to its core and became a force for change that has shaped modern Britain.As well as campaigning for women's suffrage and for married women's property rights she was a tireless advocate of women's access to high...

A quiet revolution has been sweeping through the writing of nursing history over the last decade, transforming it into a robust and reflective area of scholarship. Nursing History and the Politics of Welfare highlights the significant contribution that researching nursing history has to make in settling a new intellectual and political agenda for nurses.The seventeen international contributors to this book look at nursing from different perspectives, as it has developed und...

As early as the 1940s, Walter L. Shaw was thinking of speakerphones, conference calls, and call forwarding. Of the thirty-nine patents to his credit, those three telephonic breakthroughs were his biggest inventions, yet nobody knows his name. Ahead of the world by decades, Shaw spent a lifetime inventing and patenting the many means of communication we take for granted, but he was repeatedly cheated by shrewd businessmen and big corporations.His son, Walter T. Shaw, was enraged by ...

Lady Hale is an inspirational figure admired for her historic achievements and for the causes she has championed. Spider Woman is her story.As 'a little girl from a little school in a little village in North Yorkshire', she only went into the law because her headteacher told her she wasn't clever enough to study history. She became the most senior judge in the country but it was an unconventional path to the top.How does a self-professed 'girly swo...

Preorder the new Mr Ps book 'How to Survive the School Year' – out 29/08/24THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERThe side-splittingly hilarious and heart-warming book from your favourite teacher duo and hosts of Two Mr Ps in a Pod(cast)Remember the distant days of lockdown and those futile attempts to homeschool distracted, disinterested kids?Parents rejoiced to send them back to school, while teachers prepared to face them al...