Blog | Lucienne Boyce

Gertrude Baillie-Weaver: anti-vivisectionist, suffrage campaigner, theosophist

If she is remembered at all Gertrude Baillie-Weaver is best known as the author G Colmore (George or Gertrude Colmore) whose 1911 novel Suffragette Sally was republished by Pandora Press …

How a terrier called Peg helped women get the vote

Today suffragette militancy is often equated with the Women’s Social and Political Union’s (WSPU) policy of attacking property by, for example, smashing windows or burning down buildings. However, there were …

Don’t call them Lympne-pets: the suffragettes at Lympne Castle

On Sunday 5 September 1909, suffragettes Vera Wentworth, Elsie Howey and Jessie Kenney assaulted prime minister Herbert Henry Asquith when he was staying at Lympne Castle in Kent. Lympne (pronounced …

Jack and the Lion King

I had a lot of fun at the panto recently (4 January 2025). I went to see Jack and the Beanstalk at Bristol’s Redgrave Theatre in a production by Polka …

The Volcano, or the Rival Harlequins: A Dan Foster Mystery – The History Behind the Story

Last week I published a short story for Christmas: The Volcano, or the Rival Harlequins: A Dan Foster Mystery. It’s December 1799 and the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden is presenting …

A Guided Tour of Bristol Old Vic (the Theatre Royal)

A few days ago I went on a Bristol Old Vic Guided Theatre Tour. As it’s an eighteenth century theatre I hoped it might be useful research for a story …

William’s Wife, Gertrude Trevelyan, Boiler House Press, 2023 (first published 1938)

William’s Wife is an unpleasant novel about unpleasant people. It draws you in to an ugly world of dark and neglected rooms; hideous, bulky old furniture; and musty, outworn clothes, …

At Mr B’s Reading Spa

I was given my Mr B’s Reading Spa on my last birthday. That was back in January, but they are so popular I had to wait until September before I …

Commemorating eighteenth-century women writers and artists in Clifton, Bristol

Clifton in Bristol has many literary connections, not least of which is that it is the setting for much of Frances Burney’s first novel, Evelina (1778). Jane Austen visited in …

A Memory of Murder by Helen Hollick (Taw River Press, 2024)

A Memory of Murder is the fifth novella in the Jan Christopher Mysteries series. Set in the 1970s in Chingford, north east London, this cosy series follows the adventures of …

Mary Neal and the Suffragettes Who Saved Morris Dancing, Kathryn Atherton (Pen & Sword, 2024)

On the face of it, any connection between the suffragette movement and the folk dance revival seems a tenuous one. If all there is to connect them is that some …

Lyndsey Jenkins, Sisters and Sisterhood: The Kenney Family, Class and Suffrage, 1890-1965 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021)

This is a fascinating account of the lives of the Kenney sisters and their involvement in the militant suffrage movement. Annie and Jessie Kenney are probably the best known sisters, …