This well written, poignant, fast-paced novel focuses on what women did in the Great War that turned Europe upside down and devastated so many millions of lives. It follows the path that leads Ellie Warburton from a curiously isolated, upper class childhood in the wilds of north Lancashire, to pre-war campaigning as a non-militant suffragette, to her wartime role as mobile kitchen and ambulance driver in Flanders’ bloody fields.The youngest of “the three beautiful Warburton sisters”, Ellie...

An award winning story of the epic campaign for 'Votes for Women ' and a tempestuous love affair…..Kessie Thorpe, the daughter of a Manchester mill-owner is charming, innocent, eager. Sarah Whitworth hails from a tough, working class Lancashire background. Alice Hartley is a rich American, brought to England to find a titled husband, but headstrong Alice has other ideas. Their lives converge in 1905 when the three young women join the Pankhursts in the suffrage struggle. And join f...

Queen Victoria is most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad wicked folly of women's rights, with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor sex is bent' - 1870It was a bloody and dangerous war lasting several decades, won finally by sheer will and determination in 1928. Drawing on extracts from diaries, newspapers, letters, journals and books, Joyce Marlow has pieced together this inspiring, poignant and exciting history using the voices o...

*****The subject of the new major film by Mike Leigh***Unity of the oppressed can make a difference in politically uncertain timesA peaceful protest turned tragedy; this is the true story of the working class fight for the vote.On August 16 1819, in St Peter’s Field, Manchester, a large non-violent gathering demanding parliamentary reform turned into a massacre, leaving many dead and hundreds more injured.This catastrophic event was...

A historian reveals the grittier side of Regency England, far from the country houses and costume balls of high society.Often upheld as a period of elegance with many achievements in the fine arts and architecture, the Regency era also encompassed a time of great social, political, and economic upheaval. In this insightful social history, the emphasis is on the lives of those not born into nobility—what it was like for the poor, and what challenges they faced....

This dramatic social history follows the struggle for women's rights in England from the Industrial Revolution to the Suffragist victory after WWI.The 100 years from 1819-1919 saw remarkable change for women in England. From the early nineteenth century, when women were not even considered 'persons' under the law, they achieved full legal rights and status. The doors of education and employment were thrown open to them, and by 1919, they won universal suffrage.

'I can never understand how the scribbles of such an ordinary person ... can possibly have value.' So wrote Nella Last in her diary on 2 September 1949. More than sixty years on, tens of thousands of people have read and enjoyed three volumes of her vivid and moving diaries, written during the Second World War and its aftermath as part of the Mass Observation project - and the basis for BAFTA-winning drama Housewife 49 starring Victoria Wood. The Diaries of Nella Last, brings together into...

'I agree with Lord David [Cecil] that Melbourne as a friend or relative must have been one of the most delightful, wise and entertaining of men, but in public life I believe him also to have been ambitious, cynical and almost wholly without political principle. He was, in short, much less of a carefree amateur, much more of a politician.' Philip Ziegler, from his PrefaceFirst published in 1976, Philip Ziegler's Melbourne drew on hitherto unused material and made an unprece...

There may be a civil war, starting in the Midlands. The Birmingham garrison have rough-sharpened their swords and barricades have gone up in the town. Wellington is trying to form a government without a majority. The Duke says 'The English people are usually quiet; if not, there are ways of making them.' These are the Days of May, High Summer of English Reform. The new Whig government has staggered everyone with a reform bill more drastic than all expectations, one to wipe out rotten borou...

'Receding imperialism usually leaves behind those who have for generations staunchly upheld its authority and flourished under its aegis – Germans in Bohemia, Swedes in Finland, loyalists or tories in the American colonies, Greeks in Asia Minor, Muslims in the Balkans. Among those abandoned adherents of a lost cause were the unionists in the south and the west of Ireland.' So begins R.B. McDowell's preface to this lively, meticulously researched account of the fate of Irish unionists outsi...

ONE OF THE BESTSELLING MEMOIRS OF ALL TIME WITH OVER FIVE MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDEDiscover the heartfelt, laugh-out-loud account of one of Hollywood's greatest actors and, above all, greatest menDebonair English wit and humourist extraordinaire, star of The Pink Panther, Casino Royal and Around the World in 80 Days, few Hollywood actors are remembered as fondly as David Niven.In this bestselling autob...

The Australian actress who became one of London's most famous suffragists.Discover the most inspiring woman you've never heard of ...In 1909, a young Australian actress made headlines around the world when she took to the sky over London in an airship emblazoned with the slogan 'Votes for Women' and dropped leaflets over the city. Muriel Matters was dubbed 'that daring Australian girl', and the American media declared it to be the world's first aerial protest.Just m...