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Showing posts from August, 2016

Quakers and Suffragettes

I’ve always been interested in the way history reflects the age in which it is written. I recently came across a striking example of this in M R Brailsford’s book Quaker Women 1650-1690 , which was published in 1915. When I started reading the book I didn’t know who M R Brailsford was, but it wasn’t long before I realised that her book was profoundly influenced by the stirring events of the women’s suffrage campaign in the years before the First World War. For example, Brailsford expresses “a reluctant sympathy” for preachers confronted by women like Elizabeth Hooton who spoke out in church. Brailsford wrote that a preacher’s meetings, like those of “Cabinet Ministers of later date, were subject to interruption without warning, and his most eloquent discourses broken at any moment by the sudden shouting of home truths from a member of his congregation”. Heckling government ministers was one of the tactics used by the militant Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) from the st

Silver Sound 26 August 2016: Bad Girls and Dromomania

Today’s guest was Bristol novelist Jean Burnett, a self-confessed dromomaniac (someone addicted to travelling), who talked to us about the travels which inspired her book Vagabond Shoes . Jean has always been fascinated by the memoirs of Victorian women travellers and so she decided to follow in their footsteps. The book includes quotes and advice from some of the doughty women who went before her – ladies, never take more than one carpet bag! Jean talked about some of her own hair-raising adventures which included staying in a haunted museum in France and travelling with a bodyguard in Georgia. In addition, Jean has written two novels about Lydia Bennett, the “bad Miss Bennett” of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice . They are Who Needs Mr Darcy and The Bad Miss Bennett Abroad. Jean also told us about creative writing classes she’s running for the over 55s with Link Age – Write with a Bite – the classes start at 12.30 on 23 September 2016 at Henbury Library. No need to bo