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‘Hunger Striking For The Vote’: An Afterword to ‘There Are Five Ways Out Of This Room’ by Michelle Green
Posted by womanandhersphere in Suffrage Stories on July 6, 2017
PROTEST: STORIES OF RESISTANCE
PUBLISHED TODAY – 6 JULY 2017
A few months ago I was pleased to be asked by Comma Press to provide an Afterword to a short story by Michelle Green to be published in this most interesting collection of short stories. The premise behind the book is that each story highlights an episode of protest in Britain’s history and that each story is then, in an Afterword, set in its historical context. The result is a most satisfying volume – fuelling the imagination while also throwing light on the circumstances that led the characters, both real and fictional, to act in the way that they did.
For instance, Michelle Green’s story, There Are Five Ways Out of this Room, has as its central character a hunger-striking suffragette based, to a degree, on the figure of Annie Kenney. Michelle’s lyrical prose enters so perceptively the suffragette’s mind, capturing the surreal atmosphere produced by starving incarceration. I was bowled over by it. My task was merely to provide the historical backdrop – setting out the sequence of events that led such women to undergo such terrible suffering.
The historians include Prof Sally Alexande, on ‘Women’s Liberation in the 1970s’, an Afterword to Maggie Gee’s story on ‘May Hobbs’, leader of the Night Cleaners’ Strike; Lyn Barlow on Greenham Common, an Afterword to Joanna Quinn’s Story The Stars are in the Sky; Prof David Waddington on The Battle of Orgreave, an Afterword to Withen by Martyn Bedford; Dr Gordon Pentland on The Scottish Insurrection, April 1820, as an Afterword to Laura Hiind’s story Spun; Dr Katrina Navickas on The Pentrich Rising, 1871, an Afterword to Trying Lydia by Andy Hedgecock; Dr Ariel Hessayon on Venner’s Rising, 1817, as an Afterword to A Fiery Flag Unfurled on Coleman Street by Frank Cottrell-Boyce; Russ Hickman on The Grosvenor Square Demo, 1968, an Afterword to Banner Bright, by Alexei Sayle; Dr John Drury on The Poll Tax Riot, 1990 as an Afterword to That Right to Be There by Courtia Newland, and Prof Laleh Khalili on The Anti-Iraq War Demo, 2003 as an Afterword to The Turd Tree by Kate Clanchy.
All the stories are memorably engaging and the Afterwords free of academic jargon.
Published by Comma Press – for full details see here
Comma Press were last week declared Northern Publisher of the Year at the Northern Soul awards and in the same week were awarded funding by Arts Council England.
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Archives
All My Books
- Art and Suffrage: a biographical dictionary of suffrage artists
- Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye's Suffrage Diary
- Enterprising Women: the Garretts and their circle
- Kate Parry Frye: the long life of an Edwardian actress and suffragette – ebook available on iTunes
- Kate Parry Frye: the long life of an Edwardian actress and suffragette – ebook available on Amazon
- The Women's Suffrage Movement: a reference guide
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Articles
- 'Hunger Striking for the Vote'
- 'Women do not count, neither shall they be counted': Suffrage, Citizenship and the Battle for the 1911 Census (co-authored with Jill Liddington). History Workshop Journal
- BBC History: Women: From Abolition to the Vote
- Emily Wilding Davison: Centennial Celebrations. Women's History Review
- Introduction to 'Bewildering Cares' by Winifred Peck
- Introduction to six novels by Elizabeth Fair
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- Police, Prisons and Prisoners: the view from the Home Office. Women's History Review
- The Bloomsbury Project: A Woman Professional in Bloomsbury: Fanny Wilkinson, Landscape Gardener
Audio/Audio Visual
- 'Collecting The Suffragettes': A Fully-Illustrated Video Talk
- 'Collecting The Suffragettes': A Fully-Illustrated Video Talk
- 'Furrowed Middle-Brow Fiction'
- 'Suffragette': the making of the film. Q & A discussion hosted by the Women's Library@LSE
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- BBC Radio 4: Woman's Hour Suffragette Mary Richardson Who Slashed the Rokeby Venus
- BBC Radio 4: Woman's Hour Suffragette Special 26 July 2013
- BBC Radio 4: Woman's Hour: Emily Wilding Davison and the 1911 census boycott
- BBC Radio 4: Woman's Hour: Suffragettes and Tea Rooms (starts c 27 min in)
- BBC Two 'Ascent of Women'
- BBC World Service Lost World of the Suffragettes
- Channel 4 TV: Clare Balding's Secrets of a Suffragette
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- Endless Endeavours: from the 1866 women's suffrage petition to the Fawcett Society: The Women's Library@LSE Podcast
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- Fanny Wilkinson: A Talk
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- No Vote No Census. National Archives talk on the suffragette boycott of the 1911 census
- Parliamentary Radio: Interview in the House of Commons about Emily Davison on 4 June 2013
- The Royal Society of Medicine: Talk on 'Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and her Hospital'
- UK Parliament Videoed Talk 'Vanishing for the Vote', together with Dr Jill Liddington and Prof Pat Thane
- UK Parliament: Videoed talk in the House of Commons: Campaigning for the Vote: from MP's Daughter to Suffrage Organiser – the diary of Kate Parry Frye
Guest Blogs
- British Library Untold Lives: Emily Wilding Davison: Perpetuating the Memory
- Feminist & Women's Studies Association Blog: Kate Frye: A Feminist Foot Soldier
- History of Government Blog: No 10 Guest Historian Series: We Wanted To Wake Him Up: Lloyd George And Suffragette Militancy
- History Workshop Online: Campaigning for The Vote: Kate Parry Frye's Suffrage Diary
- OUP Blog: Why Is Emily Wilding Davison Remembered As The First Suffragette Martyr?
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