Feminist History Archives - Aspects of History

AoH Book Club: Sarah Gristwood on the Women Who Made Sixteenth-Century Europe

In a century of turmoil and conflict, both religious and political, women often stood up to govern and rule, assuming serious roles in the absence of male counterparts. Historian Sarah Gristwood discusses with our editor the stories and successes of several female leaders who wielded influence across the continent.

Sarah Gristwood

AoH Book Club: Sarah Gristwood on the Women Who Made Sixteenth-Century Europe Sarah, what are your thoughts on Game of Queens today, nearly ten years after it was published? It's one of the books of which I am most proud - because I really did feel that for the...

Herstory: An Aspects of History Anthology

This book is a necessary testament to the spirit, intelligence, and impact of women throughout history.

Zoe Brunskill

Herstory: An Aspects of History Anthology Women’s history is often being turned over, reevaluated, rediscovered, and retold as we understand further how stereotypes at the time heavily influenced how women were remembered. This is opening our eyes to forgotten figures...

Review: A Little Inquest Into What We Are All Doing Here

Not just a performance, but a declaration by Josie Dale-Jones.

Zoe Brunskill

Josie Dale-Jones is a force to be reckoned with as she takes to Shoreditch Town Hall for her show, A Little Inquest Into What We Are All Doing Here. The show is an exploration of topics such as censorship, free speech, artistic freedom, and cancel culture. In 2022,...

Fiction Book of the Month: Lucy Ashe on Clara & Olivia

Author Lucy Ashe shares her journey from ballet to writing, and the inspiration behind her debut novel Clara & Olivia.

Lucy Ashe

Lucy, Clara & Olivia was your debut novel. Was the idea for the book long in gestation? While Clara & Olivia is my first published novel, I did write two novels in the twenties that I never managed to get published. I think of these as my practice novels, my...

Earthquake at Antioch

Antioch (modern-day Antakya) has suffered terribly from earthquakes throughout its history.

Katherine Pangonis

Earthquake at Antioch Six months following the devastating earthquake of February 6th 2023, the dust has finally settled across Southern Turkey and Northern Syria. Rescue efforts are over and the attention of the Turkish government and international aid community is...

Lady Caroline Lamb, by Antonia Fraser

A finely wrought portrait from Antonia Fraser.

Gretchen Friemann

History has not been kind to Caroline Lamb. The writer and lover of Lord Byron, who characterised him as ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’, has generally been dismissed by his biographers, and those of her husband, William Lamb, the future Lord Melbourne, as an...

A Persian Journey

Dorothy Wellesley was a poet, gardener, traveller and heiress - a fascinating and complex woman whose marriage failed after an affair with Vita Sackville-West

Jane Wellesley

A Persian Journey ‘This Persian journey was the best in all my life’. I came across this note in a diary my grandmother Dorothy (‘Dottie’) Wellesley had kept during a trip to Persia in 1927. She added these words nearly twenty-five years later when she was writing her...

Deborah Swift on The Shadow Network

The USA Today bestselling novelist talks about her latest World War Two set novel.

Ruby Dalwood

Deborah, congratulations on The Shadow Network. What inspired you to write it? The idea of manipulating the public through ‘fake news’ has many resonances for today, and this is what led me to be interested in the subject for a novel. How the media is controlled, and...

Lucy Ashe

The author discusses her novels, inspiration and favourite moments of history.

Lucy Ashe

Lucy Ashe, what prompted you to choose the period that you wrote your first book in? I knew I wanted my novel to be set at a time of new beginnings for British Ballet, and the early 1930s was an important transitional time. Ninette de Valois founded the Vic-Wells...

Deborah Swift on The Silk Code

Amy Chandler

Deborah Swift on The Silk Code Deborah, congratulations on The Silk Code. What encouraged you to write about the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in the Second World War? Like most people, I’m fascinated by those who are prepared to risk death in order to further a...