For those of us who love women’s history, there is perhaps nothing more spine-tingling than to watch a piece of it come alive as a musical on a New York stage. I never imagined that, after reading books about the…
Category: Blog and News
News items of interest to WHN Members
Rethinking Welsh Women – Daryl Leeworthy
Dorothy Rees, the first working-class woman ever to be elected to parliament in a Welsh constituency, was born almost 125 years ago in the booming docklands of Barry in the Vale of Glamorgan. Her hometown, which had been nothing more…
Women’s Health in Women’s Magazines during the 1980s – Hannah Sherwood
During the 1980s, a boom in women’s magazines expanded and reshaped the market. The magazines provided a space for women to explore ideas and concerns about their bodies within a community of others with similar worries searching for the same…
Women’s Activism in Twentieth Century Britain – Paula Bartley
In 1906, the Anglo-Indian journalist Olive Malvery published The Soul Market, a book about women at the sharp end of exploitation. In her chapter about dress-makers, she wrote of a ‘large and fashionable establishment with a ground floor show-room and…
Painting Our Own Portraits – Olivia Wyatt
My grandmother has lived in Britain for sixty five years, but occasionally she transports us back to St Kitts. We listen in awe as she recalls defeating my grandfather in horse races, diving into the sea in search of discarded…
Book Review: Remarkable Women of the Second World War: A Collection of Untold Stories
Kat Perry I was recently lucky enough to be sent a copy of Remarkable Women of the Second World War: A Collection of Untold Stories by Victoria Panton Bacon to review. Split into two sections of ‘British Memories’ and ‘Stories…
Risky Pleasures: Female experiences of the 1990s rave scene – Elissa Stoddart
During the UK’s second national lockdown I underwent the process of researching and writing my dissertation from the comfort of my damp ridden university bedroom. During this period of restriction and, what at times felt like voluntary home arrest, I…
Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy comes home to Congleton – Maureen Wright
The sun shone down on the town of Congleton, Cheshire, on International Women’s Day, 2022. That was the date chosen by Elizabeth’s Group, of which I am Patron, to unveil the magnificent life-size statue of Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy (1833-1918), Victorian…
Sarah Sophia Banks’ tokens and collecting as a methodology – Kerry Love
I study late Georgian (early nineteenth century) material culture that is broadly ‘political’ in nature: referencing an event, campaign, or political person and looking at how individuals used them to engage with political ideas. One group of sources that I…