Category Archives: Features

The trouble with Women Pirates…

What could be sassier, you might think, than a bold, sexy buccaneer?  Slightly dykey and into a light-hearted touch of woman-led bondage. Brandishing—but with a beautiful smile—a long whip to go with that lethal cutlass. And mmmmm, swashbuckling along the

‘the only black-out is the black-out in my soul’

British women’s poetry of the Second World War by Anne Powell … experiences connected with the blitz, the home front, symptoms deserted wives, and deceived husbands, broken homes, dull jobs, bad schools, group squabbles, are so much a picture of

Women’s History Walk around Radical Manchester

By Michael Herbert.  Manchester was the world’s first great industrial city—‘Cottonopolis’—its privilege and poverty both dazzled and appalled by turn. It played a significant role in the formation of radical movements that challenged the status quo including trade unionism, co-operation,

Women and Madness

By Claire Jones. The association of madness with 19C femininity has generated much research by historians of women’s history. Although this association can be traced back to medieval times, to woman mystics such as Julian of Norwich for example, it

Sylvia Pankhurst: Activist with Attitude

As a little girl growing up in Woodford Green, on the fringe of Epping Forest, just before World War Two, I was warned by my very conventional Conservative parents to walk on the other side of the road when I

What is women’s history?

History is all too often exactly that - His Story. Typically the narratives told are the stories of men, with major events interpreted according to their impact on the masculine sex, to the exclusion of any feminine point of view