Benefit Street, Brighton.

  The first time I ever acted in an historical play we were coached in the ways of walking as women of yesteryear did. Which didn’t seem at all strange to me at the time: at convent boarding schools we had been taught to walk the nunly walk: which turned out to be exactly the same method. But sanctified. I didn’t really understand why women used to walk differently then, and neither did my mother; who told me that her mother had also instructed her that a woman’s footprints should always be in a straight line: — one foot directly in front the other, as we’d been taught on both stage and in convents.  Yet it was only about 6 months ago that I suddenly had a lightbulb moment: women walked in that way because they menstruated! This thought didn’t arrive out of the blue; I had, by then, been researching the history of menstruation for months. With the help of the Brighton Museum I’d been able to start my research back in the Palaeolithic. Since then, I had become aware that apart ...

  It was her name that first drew me to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.  In it the Christian, the Old English and the French  mixed together to encapsulate her families passage down through the years. And also just because I like the sounds it makes. As is the way with a name or a concept one has recently encountered, the name kept cropping up in different contexts ranging from the poetic to the scientific, to the medical; and as a feminist. She was being revealed as one of those brave, rebellious Early Modern women whom I was winkling out from under the dusty pall of almost unexplored dismissal.  Mary was born c1689 in the reign of William and Mary of Orange, so no doubt she was one of hundreds of baby girls all over England who were given that same name. From a young age she was resentful of  the expensive education to which her brothers had access but which was forbidden her because of her sex. However, she had complete access to her father's remarkable library an...

                                                  The last blog I published was about the indomitable  Marina Raskova. Because now that Youtubers have discovered The 588th Squadron's exploits, the woman who is responsible for the existence of all three all-female squadrons of the Soviet Air Force, is getting overshadowed by the exploits of the 588th.  Whom one could claim, without hyperbole, are legendary.  These were the women of the most feared and lethal air-borne squadrons of WWII: the squad that prompted the German Military to offer the Iron Cross to any German who shot one down. The squad the Germans called the "die Nachthexen": The Night Witches. The 1930's was a decade in which aeroplanes came into their own - changes in performance, design, composition attracted crowds to Air Shows; and women like Amelia Earhart  in the West and ...

  Much to my chagrin,someone the other day reminded me of my intention to do my bit to let people know that history includes women - women just like us - who did remarkable things,who are role models, and an inspiration to girls & women everywhere. We grow up knowing so few of them, many have turned for emulation to a family of women about whom there is nothing outstanding except their bottoms! But, to date, you pretty much have to go to University to learn about female soldiers; female doctors, scientists, spies, housewives, artists, agitators, pirates... ...And I had One of Those Moments. (I utterly refuse to have an Epiphany. Especially in public.) Last time I sent a missive to the waiting throng I explained about my inability to write...or do much else right now. (http://benefitstbrighton.blogspot.com/2022/02/mental-health-education-me.html) But I suddenly realised, standing at the register in a tiny Coffee Cafe...yes I could! Because writing about "my" ladies brin...

  Apart from a rather cryptic post on my Twitter a/c that I had finally found a shrink, I've been in retreat for a couple of months. But this time it's not just because of the usual bi-polar incident. It's because I can't write. I can't read either. Ergo I'm not able to research. I'm unable to do anything creative. It's impossible to leave the house before the early afternoon. Time became fluid & has now slipped out the door; and I can't do anything creative to occupy my mind. In other words, I've lost the plot on how to, well, live my life. Now, managing bi-polar since I was a child, I've learnt that every so often there comes a point I'm unable to live a normal life & need a bit of help: this is the point at which one is admitted to hospital.  That point arrived about 6 years ago. And since then my meds have not been reviewed or altered; I've not had access to a shrink, and was only able to have 6 counselling sessions. I lea...

I have a somewhat proprietary view of Early Modern women. This stems from the turn of the century -  when there were only four other people in Australia who had discovered Margaret Cavendish; everyone still got marks for citing Ben Johnson as the writer of the first 'Country House'  poem; Jonathan Swift was credited with having introduced the fiction & satire genres; and reference books assured us that it was the dawn of the 20thC before any woman was invited to the Royal Society. So while I'm pleased that we've challenged history and found so much more truth in it than other generations have been able to; it still saddens me that so little of this information has seeped through as mainstream knowledge. Take, for an example, the mysterious, much speculated-about Amelia Lanyer - who was named before spelling became uniform; so I'm sticking with the first spelling of it I came across back in 2004. There are many academics whose only real interest in Amelia (am on ...