this book explores the roles of National Trust places in the women’s suffrage movement, through the people who lived and worked in them – from the Midlands kitchen-maid turned suffragette arsonist to the aristocratic dynasties split by a daughter’s campaigning.
Today, I was back with the cast and crew for Primavera’s production of The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith, Arthur Wing Pinero’s 1895 play about the relationship between a radical female demagogue, and the young MP who abandons his wife and career for her. Living as political comrades and lovers in Venice, Agnes Ebbsmith and Lucas Cleeve…
Read more Rehearsal notes: thoughts on The Notorious Mrs Ebbsmith
I don’t have language bad enough to describe Charles Saatchi, the abuser and art collector who is divorcing his wife, Nigella Lawson, in part because he is “disappointed that she was advised to make no public statement to explain that […] [he] has never abused her physically in any way“. In other words, that she…
Read more Saatchi divorces Lawson (and yes, it IS that way round)
(This is a type of post stolen entirely from the lovely Simon at Stuck In A Book. Simon and I first met when we were the only two Masters students who wanted to do nineteenth- and twentieth-century drama. Simon now has a job that I don’t really understand, but which seems to involve him using…
On Wednesday, I saw Bitch Boxer at the Soho Theatre; a one-hour, one-woman play written and performed by Charlotte Josephine. Having seen Josephine in Julius Caesar earlier this year, I was excited to see her own work – and, to be honest, I’m a bit in love with the Soho Theatre and their apparent directorial…
Long-time readers will know that Harriet Walter is not irrelevant to my interests. I have purchased a certain number of theatre tickets in order to see her perform. I have a certain degree of familiarity with her first book, Other People’s Shoes. She was central to Clamorous Voices, the book after which this blog was…
Read more [not really a REVIEW]: Julius Caesar, Harriet Walter and all-female Shakespeare
Before Oscar: Reading Gender and Sexuality Pre-1880 a cross-period lecture series Hilary Term 2013 2pm Wednesdays – Weeks 1-8 – Seminar Room K Oxford University Faculty of English, Manor Rd, Oxford Crossing period and national boundaries, this lecture series will introduce the pleasures and dangers of reading pre-twentieth century literature through a queer-studies and gender-studies…
Hello! I hope you’re well. I’ve been to Grimsby. And Sheffield. I know how to live. I break my silence to deal with the five million or so posts that have been brewing over the summer. Naturally, the first is a rant about telly. NOTE: given the spike in traffic, I think I should point…
Read more Elementary: the stroppy genius and the devoted helpmeet
It doesn’t matter if you love him or capital H – I – M […] ‘Cause you were born this way, baby There’s nothing wrong with loving who are she said, ’cause He made you perfect, babe (this is a longer post than usual, and rather more discursive. Please bear with me, and/or flick straight…
Read more “Born This Way” and the Sanctity of (all) Marriage
This is my fifth term as a doctoral student, and a New Year to boot. Thinking about academic goals for the year, I’ve decided I want to spend more time thinking about, and practising public engagement. Already, there’s a problem. I don’t like the phrase. It’s too jargony, redolent of patronising bussed-in audiences with why…
