Bloody Brilliant Women : The Pioneers, Revolutionaries and Geniuses Your History Teacher Forgot to Mention by Cathy Newman (UK edition, paperback) - 9780008241674

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

ISBN 13: 9780008241674

Condition: Brandnew

Binding: paperback

Pages: 384

Dimensons: 198 x 129 x 25 | 300 (gram)

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'A litany of fresh heroes to make the embattled heart sing' Caitlin Moran

'Newman is a brilliant writer' Observer

A fresh, opinionated history of all the brilliant women you should have learned about in school but didn't.

For hundreds of years we have heard about the great men of history, but what about herstory?

In this freewheeling history of modern Britain, Cathy Newman writes about the pioneering women who defied the odds to make careers for themselves and alter the course of modern history; women who achieved what they achieved while dismantling hostile, entrenched views about their place in society. Their role in transforming Britain is fundamental, far greater than has generally been acknowledged, and not just in the arts or education but in fields like medicine, politics, law, engineering and the military.

While a few of the women in this book are now household names, many have faded into oblivion, their personal and collective achievements mere footnotes in history. We know of Emmeline Pankhurst, Vera Brittain, Marie Stopes and Beatrice Webb. But who remembers engineer and motorbike racer Beatrice Shilling, whose ingenious device for the Spitfires' Rolls-Royce Merlin fixed an often-fatal flaw, allowing the RAF's planes to beat the German in the Battle of Britain? Or Dorothy Lawrence, the journalist who achieved her ambition to become a WW1 correspondent by pretending to be a man? And developmental biologist Anne McLaren, whose work in genetics paved the way for in vitro fertilisation?