Showing titles in Women

At her execution Mary, Queen of Scots wore red. Widely known as the colour of strength and passion, it was in fact worn by Mary as the Catholic symbol of martyrdom. In 16th-century Europe, women's voices were suppressed and silenced. Even for a queen like Mary, her prime duty was to bear sons. In an age when textiles expressed power, Mary exploited them to emphasise her female agency.

Annie is the eldest daughter of a laundress in Acton, London, raised to keep the rich families of Kensington spick-and-span. As she grows up in poverty in the 1920s and 1930s, her life centres on the family business, working long hours of hard physical labour. When she's not in the laundry she's looking after her younger brother and two stepsisters. But she's haunted by thoughts of her real father and what happened to him. All she knows is that he died in the Great War - her mother will not talk about him, and his very existence is shrouded in secrecy.

The lives of the three daughters of Lord Curzon: glamorous, rich, independent and wilful. Irene (born 1896), Cynthia (b. 1898) and Alexandria (b.1904) were the three daughters of Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India 1898-1905 and probably the grandest and most self-confident imperial servant Britain ever possessed. After the death of his fabulously rich American wife in 1906, Curzon's determination to control every aspect of his daughters' lives, including the money that was rightfully theirs, led them one by one into revolt against their father.

Award-winning and critically acclaimed historian Helen Rappaport turns to the tragic story of the daughters of the last Tsar of all the Russias, slaughtered with their parents at Ekaterinburg. On 17 July 1918, four young women walked down 23 steps into the cellar of a house in Ekaterinburg. The eldest was 22, the youngest only 17. Together with their parents and their 13-year-old brother, they were all brutally murdered. Their crime: to be the daughters of the last Tsar and Tsaritsa of All the Russias.

Strawberry daiquiris. Skinny martinis. Vodka sodas with lime. These are the cocktails that come in sleek-stemmed glasses, bright colors and fruity flavors—these are the girly drinks. From the earliest days of civilization, alcohol has been at the center of social rituals and cultures worldwide. But when exactly did drinking become a gendered act? With whip-smart insight and boundless curiosity, Girly Drinks unveils an entire untold history of the female distillers, drinkers, and brewers who have played a vital role in the creation and consumption of alcohol

Weaving in and out of these myriad lives, sharing her own memories of otherworldly experiences, Jennifer Higgie discusses the solace of ritual, the gender exclusions of art history, the contemporary relevance of myth, the boom in alternative ways of understanding the world and the impact of spiritualism on feminism and contemporary art. A radical reappraisal of a marginalised group of artists, The Other Side is an intoxicating blend of memoir, biography and art history.

Why Women Grow is a much-needed exploration of why women turn to the earth, as gardeners, growers and custodians. This book emerged from a deeply rooted desire to share the stories of women who are silenced and overlooked. In doing so, Alice fosters connections with gardeners that unfurl into a tender exploration of women's lives, their gardens and what the ground has offered them, with conversations spanning creation and loss, celebration and grief, power, protest, identity and renaissance.

Until the 20th century, art history was, in the main, written by white, western men who tended to write about other white, western men. The idea that women in the West have always made art was rarely cited as a possibility. Yet, they have - and, of course, continue to do so - often against tremendous odds, from laws to religion and the pressures of family and public disapproval. Feminism has shaken up the story of art and, for the first time, cast light on the often-brilliant work by women artists who were often ignored, patronised or marginalised.

In August 2021 a women's creative writing group in Afghanistan shared news of political turmoil and the Fall of Kabul. These women were in the process of publishing a short-story collection when their world was turned upside down by the Taliban. In staying connected via WhatsApp messages, they established a lifeline; a vital space to keep their creativity alive, support each other and bear witness to the events unfolding around them.

Elizabeth Packard was an ordinary Victorian housewife. That was, until the first Woman’s Rights Convention was held in 1848, inspiring Elizabeth and many other women to dream of greater freedoms. She began voicing her opinions on politics and religion – opinions that her husband did not share. Incensed and deeply threatened by her growing independence, he had her declared ‘slightly insane’ and committed to an asylum.

Ashes and Stones is a moving and personal journey, along rugged coasts and through remote villages and modern cities, in search of the traces of those accused of witchcraft in seventeenth-century Scotland. We visit modern memorials, roadside shrines and standing stones, and roam among forests and hedge mazes, folk lore and political fantasies. From fairy hills to forgotten caves, we explore a spellbound landscape.

As a breastfed baby herself, Joanna Wolfarth assumed it would come easily to her when she had her first child. Yet three weeks after the birth, she was back in hospital with an underweight baby, bewildered by the inconsistent advice and myriad problems she was encountering. As a cultural historian, Joanna's impulse was to look to the past. What she discovered, neglected in the archives, amazed and reassured her. She found connection and solace in communities from the past.

We fantasise about what we would do if we inherited a fortune: the house on Cheyne Walk? The Manolo Blahniks? The racehorses? But what would it be like, never to have to dream in that way? Laura Thompson explores the historical phenomenon of the heiress in four inviting categories.

In the early '60s, four friends from Liverpool formed a band. But this is not the 'fab four' story we know... Mary, Sylvia, Valerie and Pamela - also known as The Liverbirds - were one of the world's first all-female rock'n'roll bands. At an early gig, backstage at the Cavern Club, a young John Lennon told them that 'girls don't play guitars'. But they took that as a challenge. Despite the early scepticism, they won over tough crowds, toured stadiums, recorded two hit albums, and played with the Kinks, Rolling Stones and Chuck Berry - all in the space of just five years.

A heroine for our times, Etta Lemon campaigned for 50 years against the worldwide slaughter of birds for extravagantly feathered hats. Her legacy is the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (the RSPB), grown from an all-female pressure group of 1889 with the splendidly simple pledge: Wear No Feathers. Etta’s long battle against ‘murderous millinery’ triumphed with the Plumage Act of 1921 - but her legacy has been eclipsed by the more glamorous campaign for the vote, led by the elegantly plumed Emmeline Pankhurst.

The story of the family who rose from the Frankfurt ghetto to become synonymous with wealth and power has been much mythologised. Yet half the Rothschilds, the women, remain virtually unknown. Natalie Livingstone follows the extraordinary lives of the English branch of the Rothschild women from the dawn of the 19th century to the early years of the 21st.

Immaculate Forms examines all the ways in which medicine and religion have played a gatekeeping role over women's organs. It explores how the womb was seen as both the most miraculous organ in the body and as a sewer; uncovers breasts' legacies as maternal or sexual organs - or both; probes the mystery of the disappearing hymen, and asks, did the clitoris need to be discovered at all?

This is the incredible story of Elzbieta Zawacka, the WW2 female resistance fighter known as Agent Zo, told here for the very first time. Agent Zo was the only woman to reach London from Warsaw during the Second World War as an emissary of the Polish Home Army command, and then in Britain she became the only woman to join the Polish elite Special Forces, known as the 'Silent Unseen'. She was secretly trained in the British countryside, and then the only female member of these SOE affiliated forces to be parachuted back behind enemy lines to Nazi-occupied Poland.

Only 30 years ago, rape within marriage was not a crime, Judges saw rape victims as complicit for wearing short skirts; teenage runaways were groomed, pimped and then arrested as ‘common prostitutes’, and harassment, stalking, forced marriage and honour-based violence were not defined or recognised as separate offences in law. Since then there have been important legislative reforms but the law is only as good as those who enforce it. Telling the stories of a series of ground-breaking cases, Harriet Wistrich illustrates how far misogyny is baked into our justice system.

Anderson was a leading member of British intelligence for over three decades. She played key roles in both World Wars, worked in Bletchley Park and in the Middle East, and was among the top three female codebreakers in the world. She is famous in musicology circles as being the first to decipher the letters and diaries of Mozart and Beethoven. In 1961 Germany awarded her their highest honour, the Order of Merit First Class, completely ignorant of the fact that the interpretative skills they were honouring were the same utilised to defeat their military only a few years previously.