Blog | Lucienne Boyce

Inventing the Victorians, Matthew Sweet, Faber & Faber, 2001

There’s an idea behind this book which I sympathise with, and that’s the way people too often accept myths about history for truth. The present uses the past to reflect …

The Women Are Revolting: Charles G Harper and the Ladies of Llangollen

I’ve been reading The Holyhead Road: The Mail Coach Road to Dublin by Charles G Harper. It’s a whopping two-volume work, with each volume being around 300 pages. Harper (1863-1943) …

Judy the Obscure

I’ve just read Square Haunting: Five Women, Freedom and London Between the Wars by Francesca Wade. I loved this book. It’s about a group of women whose lives and work …

“The suffragette who beat Win C”: Theresa Garnett and the International Alliance of Women

I’ve always been interested in the “after life” of the suffrage campaigners in Britain – what they did after the campaign for the vote – especially since so many histories …

The Father of Virginia Woolf: Women and the Essay

I recently read A C Grayling’s biography The Quarrel of the Age: The Life and Times of William Hazlitt (2000). It’s the fascinating story of a fascinating man, elegantly written …

“Cheap and easy railway traffic”: Suffragettes and the Railways, Part 3: Arson on the Railways

In Part 1 of these three articles exploring the way in which the rail network influenced the suffrage campaign, I looked at how trains were instrumental in facilitating suffrage campaigns, …

“Cheap and easy railway traffic”: Suffragettes and the Railways, Part 2: The Battle to Free Mrs Pankhurst

In Part 1 of these three articles about how the rail network influenced the suffrage campaign, I looked at how trains were instrumental in facilitating suffrage campaigns, including militant activism, …

“Cheap and easy railway traffic”: Suffragettes and the Railways, Part 1

In February 1912 the Bristol Liberal MP Charles E H Hobhouse addressed a meeting of the National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage in the city’s Colston Hall (now the Bristol …

On Gender, Writing, and Not Being Published

I’ve just read On Gender and Writing, a selection of essays edited by Michelene Wandor published in 1983. It was a fascinating look back at the 1980s, the era of …

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) : An Inspirational Woman

It’s International Women’s Day today and I’ve been thinking about the women who inspired me. On Friday I was at the unveiling of a Blue Plaque to one very inspirational …

No more pushing around of Mrs Pankhurst

When I was in London a few days ago I spent an enjoyable afternoon strolling around the Houses of Parliament and viewing the statues of suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of …

You Daughters of Freedom by Clare Wright

In my last blog, I looked at the question of the British press’s “boycott” of the suffragette movement. The piece was prompted by reading Clare Wright’s You Daughters of Freedom: …