Blog | Lucienne Boyce

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, …

Exsilium, Alison Morton (Pulcheria Press, 2024)

I’m pleased to join Alison Morton’s Exsilium Blog Tour today with my review of the latest thrilling addition to her Roma Nova series… In Exsilium, Alison Morton continues the origin …

Jack and Eve: Two Women in Love and at War, Wendy Moore, Atlantic Books, 2024

Jack and Eve is an enthralling biography of Vera (Jack) Holme and Evelina Haverfield, the actress and the Hon who met and fell in love during the militant suffrage campaign. …

A Woman’s Place is in the Home

One of the arguments against women having the vote was that women who dabbled in politics would neglect their homes and families. Bristol Liberal MP Charles Hobhouse, a prominent member …

Spotlight on…Flora Drummond

Flora McKinnon Drummond (1878–1949) (née Gibson) was born in Manchester and brought up on the Isle of Arran. After leaving school at the age of fourteen, she qualified as a …

Faith, Hope and Carnage, Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan (Canongate, 2022)

I first heard of Nick Cave’s book when I read an interview he did with the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, in The Sunday Times (5 March 2023). I …

Dolphins and Sphinxes: A stroll on Chelsea Embankment

I’ve passed the Embankment, London countless times on the bus from Bristol, and have always enjoyed gazing out at the many fascinating sights – Blue Plaques, statues, churches, gardens, and …

The Victims of War

I’ve just got back from a trip to the Netherlands, where I went to visit places associated with my work in progress, a biography of suffrage campaigner and pacifist Millicent …

Celia Fremlin: The Queen of Domestic Horror

I’ve got a craze on Celia Fremlin’s novels. I can’t stop reading them, and as soon as I finish the latest batch of two or three I order another lot. …

Hidden Heroines: The Forgotten Suffragettes, Maggie Andrews and Janis Lomas (Robert Hale, 2018)

Hidden Heroines: The Forgotten Suffragettes is a collection of short biographies of forty-eight women who were involved in the struggle for the women’s franchise. The book was published in 2018, …

Pugs, Bruisers and the Fancy: The Language of Pugilism

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, bare knuckle boxing was one of Britain’s most popular sports. It had its own slang: it was the world of the Fancy, of milling …