News
15 March 2024
It's not that there hasn't been any news since my last entry in September 2022 - far from it. It's just that finishing 'Trailblazer' and other projects, mixed with a busy family life, meant that I never got around to posting on here. But now that 'Trailblazer' is out in the world, and before the main season of talks gets underway, I finally have a moment to let you know what's coming next.
Exploring the very live subjects of mental health awareness and women's voices finally being heard in medicine, I'm thrilled to report that Transworld, at Penguin Random House (my usual publishers) have commissioned a major new book about the role of female patients and doctors in the treatment of mental health before the founding of the NHS. 'Lunatic Women' is at once a social history of women's 'madness' and a group biography of five highly influential yet forgotten women pioneers of the 19th and early 20th centuries. They were all irresistibly courageous, optimistic personalities, pivotal in establishing what we now regard as the modern ethos of open-minded, compassionate care. They campaigned for 'mind doctors' to listen to their patients; to take into account their emotional and environmental circumstances; to try to understand, and to encourage real hope in the future.
I've already started work, shocked one day by what I find, inspired the next; by turns horrified and proud. It's a wonderful subject, and I look forward to your getting in touch if you feel you might have anything to contribute.Just drop me an email on [email protected]. Thanks!
image above: https://www.historyhit.com/straitjackets-history/
It's not that there hasn't been any news since my last entry in September 2022 - far from it. It's just that finishing 'Trailblazer' and other projects, mixed with a busy family life, meant that I never got around to posting on here. But now that 'Trailblazer' is out in the world, and before the main season of talks gets underway, I finally have a moment to let you know what's coming next.
Exploring the very live subjects of mental health awareness and women's voices finally being heard in medicine, I'm thrilled to report that Transworld, at Penguin Random House (my usual publishers) have commissioned a major new book about the role of female patients and doctors in the treatment of mental health before the founding of the NHS. 'Lunatic Women' is at once a social history of women's 'madness' and a group biography of five highly influential yet forgotten women pioneers of the 19th and early 20th centuries. They were all irresistibly courageous, optimistic personalities, pivotal in establishing what we now regard as the modern ethos of open-minded, compassionate care. They campaigned for 'mind doctors' to listen to their patients; to take into account their emotional and environmental circumstances; to try to understand, and to encourage real hope in the future.
I've already started work, shocked one day by what I find, inspired the next; by turns horrified and proud. It's a wonderful subject, and I look forward to your getting in touch if you feel you might have anything to contribute.Just drop me an email on [email protected]. Thanks!
image above: https://www.historyhit.com/straitjackets-history/
6 September 2022
Nearly finished the first draft of the Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon biography, ready for a final, fine-toothed-comb redraft before submission at the end of the year. The news is that I'm going to be able to do much of that redraft at Casa Ecco, a sublime villa on the shores of Lake Como, courtesy of the Hawthornden Trust (https://www.hawthorndenliteraryretreat.org/). I'm fortunate enough - and no matter how hard I try, I'm having real difficulty avoiding insufferable smugness here - to have been re-elected to a Hawthornden Fellowship, which means a residency in Italy where I'm expected to work undisturbed in the most inspiring surroundings, being fed three times a day, and sharing experiences with other international writers in the evenings (watching the sun set behind the mountains while sipping a glass of - well, you get the idea). Casa Ecco is where I first started research on Barbara two years ago. It feels poetic that that's where I'll finish. So grateful.
Nearly finished the first draft of the Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon biography, ready for a final, fine-toothed-comb redraft before submission at the end of the year. The news is that I'm going to be able to do much of that redraft at Casa Ecco, a sublime villa on the shores of Lake Como, courtesy of the Hawthornden Trust (https://www.hawthorndenliteraryretreat.org/). I'm fortunate enough - and no matter how hard I try, I'm having real difficulty avoiding insufferable smugness here - to have been re-elected to a Hawthornden Fellowship, which means a residency in Italy where I'm expected to work undisturbed in the most inspiring surroundings, being fed three times a day, and sharing experiences with other international writers in the evenings (watching the sun set behind the mountains while sipping a glass of - well, you get the idea). Casa Ecco is where I first started research on Barbara two years ago. It feels poetic that that's where I'll finish. So grateful.
23 May 2022
There was no news but THE news until recently; like many other writers I gave talks online during the pandemic, which had its advantages and disadvantages. It was wonderful to be able to reach audience members from all over the world, but however used one got to the technology, something always seemed to trip someone up along the way, and there is absolutely no substitute for engaging with a speaker and audience face-to-face. Nor for being able to sell books and chat after an event. I've really missed that part of my job, and am delighted it's beginning to resume now.
Meanwhile, my biography of Barbara Bodichon is making exciting progress. Archives here and in the US were incredibly accommodating during lockdown, copiously scanning documents for me for little or no charge. Libraries digitised books and made them available for scholars online, and as soon as I was allowed to travel, I visited all the necessary collections in England and in the States in person, to complete my research.
Now I'm writing the first draft, and am astonished every day by the lives - plural - of this truly remarkable woman. I can't wait for you to get to know her, and realise how much influence she has on women's lives today.
One sad piece of news - or two; first, my beloved Captain Oates went for his last 'walk' during covid, and we miss him hugely. I did the lino-cut portrait at the head of this entry (a new lockdown hobby) in his honour, using an image by the artist Alex Jabore as my starting-point. I'm training up Mrs Chippy and Emmy as my new feline amanuenses. And secondly, we have come to the end of the road with plans for the Bluestockings TV adaptation. Collateral covid damage, unfortunately.
9 September 2020
Good grief. A year has passed - and almost more news than we can all cope with - since I last updated this page. In brief: Ladies Can't Climb Ladders was published with wonderful reviews just before lockdown at the end of January 2020; Josephine Butler: A Very Brief History comes out in October 2020, and I have a new commission: a biography of Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon. See my blog post for more details about her. I've also been invited to become a Hawthornden Fellow, which involves a writing residency in Italy, and am enjoying giving Zoom talks nationally and internationally, often co-starring Captain Oates.
18 September 2019
You may have guessed what stage I've been at for the last few months: my head's been down, writing, drafting, editing, being worried, being relieved and - right now - relaxing a little, since Ladies Can't Climb Ladders has gone to press. So apologies for my silence. The book will be launched on 23 January 2020. It's been intense but hugely rewarding working on this one, which in many ways is a sequel to Bluestockings. Once these women had won their degrees, what next? December 2019 is the centenary of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act, supposed to throw open the doors of the traditional professions to women (you can guess...) and 2020, the centenary of women first being awarded degrees at Oxford: stirring stuff. https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/111/1116416/ladies-can_t-climb-ladders/9780857525871.html
3 January 2019
Happy new year! Here's a link to the programme I did with Mary Beard, mentioned below. Hope you enjoy listening as much as I enjoyed recording it. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001tb2
There was no news but THE news until recently; like many other writers I gave talks online during the pandemic, which had its advantages and disadvantages. It was wonderful to be able to reach audience members from all over the world, but however used one got to the technology, something always seemed to trip someone up along the way, and there is absolutely no substitute for engaging with a speaker and audience face-to-face. Nor for being able to sell books and chat after an event. I've really missed that part of my job, and am delighted it's beginning to resume now.
Meanwhile, my biography of Barbara Bodichon is making exciting progress. Archives here and in the US were incredibly accommodating during lockdown, copiously scanning documents for me for little or no charge. Libraries digitised books and made them available for scholars online, and as soon as I was allowed to travel, I visited all the necessary collections in England and in the States in person, to complete my research.
Now I'm writing the first draft, and am astonished every day by the lives - plural - of this truly remarkable woman. I can't wait for you to get to know her, and realise how much influence she has on women's lives today.
One sad piece of news - or two; first, my beloved Captain Oates went for his last 'walk' during covid, and we miss him hugely. I did the lino-cut portrait at the head of this entry (a new lockdown hobby) in his honour, using an image by the artist Alex Jabore as my starting-point. I'm training up Mrs Chippy and Emmy as my new feline amanuenses. And secondly, we have come to the end of the road with plans for the Bluestockings TV adaptation. Collateral covid damage, unfortunately.
9 September 2020
Good grief. A year has passed - and almost more news than we can all cope with - since I last updated this page. In brief: Ladies Can't Climb Ladders was published with wonderful reviews just before lockdown at the end of January 2020; Josephine Butler: A Very Brief History comes out in October 2020, and I have a new commission: a biography of Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon. See my blog post for more details about her. I've also been invited to become a Hawthornden Fellow, which involves a writing residency in Italy, and am enjoying giving Zoom talks nationally and internationally, often co-starring Captain Oates.
18 September 2019
You may have guessed what stage I've been at for the last few months: my head's been down, writing, drafting, editing, being worried, being relieved and - right now - relaxing a little, since Ladies Can't Climb Ladders has gone to press. So apologies for my silence. The book will be launched on 23 January 2020. It's been intense but hugely rewarding working on this one, which in many ways is a sequel to Bluestockings. Once these women had won their degrees, what next? December 2019 is the centenary of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act, supposed to throw open the doors of the traditional professions to women (you can guess...) and 2020, the centenary of women first being awarded degrees at Oxford: stirring stuff. https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/111/1116416/ladies-can_t-climb-ladders/9780857525871.html
3 January 2019
Happy new year! Here's a link to the programme I did with Mary Beard, mentioned below. Hope you enjoy listening as much as I enjoyed recording it. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001tb2
31 December 2018
If you're near a radio at 4pm today, catch 'Amo Amas Amusical' on BBC Radio 4: a bit of fun I was privileged to record with Professor Dame Mary Beard recently. It'll be on iPlayer afterwards. Happy New Year!
13 December 2018
I've started drafting the new book on pioneering women in the traditional professions - Ladies Can't Climb Ladders - while completing a tour of 72 talks on Hearts and Minds: my excuse for not having updated this feed for so long. The big news is that my advance copy of the Hearts and Minds paperback has just arrived and I couldn't be more delighted with it.
If you're near a radio at 4pm today, catch 'Amo Amas Amusical' on BBC Radio 4: a bit of fun I was privileged to record with Professor Dame Mary Beard recently. It'll be on iPlayer afterwards. Happy New Year!
13 December 2018
I've started drafting the new book on pioneering women in the traditional professions - Ladies Can't Climb Ladders - while completing a tour of 72 talks on Hearts and Minds: my excuse for not having updated this feed for so long. The big news is that my advance copy of the Hearts and Minds paperback has just arrived and I couldn't be more delighted with it.
25 July 2018
Two lovely pieces of news during the last few days: firstly, I heard that Hearts and Minds is one of the twelve long-listed books for the Historical Writers' Association Non-Fiction Crown for 2018. I think the short-list is announced in September. Then my editor told me that during the six months since its publication, the book has moved into the top 10 best-selling history books. Oh - and the Mail on Sunday had it as one of their 100 Hot Reads for the summer... A good week at the office.
Filming on a suffrage caravan for BBC Breakfast, aired 25 May
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13 June 2018
Hearts and Minds. This is such an exciting year! I counted up recently; from publication of the hardback in January 2018, I’ve been booked for over 60 engagements: more than ever before. Most are live talks; some are broadcasts on radio and TV or podcasts. Have a look at my events page for links, and for forthcoming appearances. I love meeting readers, so do come and say hello. |
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13 June 2018
Bluestockings. I am thrilled to tell you that Bluestockings is now in development for a drama series on TV, for which I am the historical consultant. More details when I have them. |
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13 June 2018
Work in Progress. My 11th book is about the first women in the traditional professions of Law, Medicine, Architecture, Engineering, Academia and the Church. I’m provisionally calling it Ladies Can’t Climb Ladders: that was one of the best arguments architects came up with in the 1920s for keeping women out of their profession. The book will span the years between 1919, when the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act was passed, and 1939. If you know of any women who trained or worked in these fields at that time, please let me know! Publication is by PenguinRandomHouse in early 2020. |
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