History is not the full story and half of it has never been told. Join us at Conway Hall for an afternoon of women’s history. Hear the news of murderous early modern women, traitorous wives, greedy mistresses and spiteful witches. Stories of the queens and warrior women who ruled vast swathes of the African continent. They led, loved and fought for their kingdoms and people. Learn of the globe-trotting women who fought for the right to work in, enjoy and help to save the earth’s wild places.
Paula Akpan – When We Ruled: The Rise and Fall of Twelve African Queens and Warriors
Queens and warriors ruled vast swathes of the African continent. They led, loved and fought for their kingdoms and people. They made decisions, good and bad, the impact of which can still be felt today. Yet, beyond the lands they called home, so few of us have ever heard their names. Paula Akpan takes us into the worlds of these powerful figures, following their stories and how they came to rule and influence the futures of their people. With reigns spanning pre-colonial Nigeria to the farming villages of Rwanda, the hills of Madagascar to apartheid South Africa, these ruler’s stories offer us fascinating insight into life in these regions. Akpan shows how societies thrived, expanded and fractured before colonial influence, while also exposing the deep scars colonisation left behind.
Blessin Adams – Thou Savage Woman: Female Killers in Early Modern Britain
Early Modern Britain was awash with pamphlets, ballads, woodcuts broadcasting bloodthirsty tales of traitorous wives, greedy mistresses, cunning female poisoning lacing the supper with deadly substances; of child killers and spiteful witches, stories of women wholly and unnaturally wicked. These were printed or sung, tacked the walls of alehouses, sold in the streets for pennies and read voraciously to thrill all. But why? When the vast majority of murders then (and now) are committed by men.
In her bold, page-turning new history, Thou Savage Woman, former police officer and historian Blessin Adams tells stories of women whose violent crimes shattered the narrow confines of their gender – and whose notoriety revealed a society that was at once repulsed by and attracted to murderous female rebellion. Blessin reminds us that women in the past had voices, that they sought to control their bodies and their environments and that they also had the capacity for committing acts of unspeakable violence.
Sarah Lonsdale – Wildly Different: How Five Women Reclaimed Nature in a Man’s World
For millennia the ‘wild’ was a place heroic men went on epic quests. Women were prevented from joining them, either through physical control or powerful myths about what would happen if they ventured beyond the city wall or village boundary. So how did women claim their place in the remote and lovely parts of our planet?
In Wildly Different, historian Sarah Lonsdale traces the lives of five women who fought for the right to work in, enjoy and help to save the earth’s wild places. Mina Hubbard, who outraged the exploration community when she stepped into a canoe in northern Labrador. Evelyn Cheesman, who became the first female keeper of insects at London Zoo. Dorothy Pilley, who shocked polite society by donning men’s climbing breeches. Ethel Haythornthwaite, who helped make the Peak District Britain’s first National Park. And Wangari Maathai, who started a movement to plant millions of trees across sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on interviews with Sir David Attenborough, Wangari Maathai’s daughter and others, Lonsdale recounts the women’s adventures across five continents.
Our speakers’ books can be bought and signed on the day, courtesy of Newham Bookshop.
