Category: history

Blog, history

Women’s History Month

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March 1st marks the beginning of Women’s History Month in the USA. This began life in 1978 as a local celebration in Santa Rosa, California. It was originally only Women’s History Week, but was so popular it was copied by towns and cities across the country. In 1987, Congress designated March each year as Women’s History Month.

According to the National Women’s History Museum the theme this year is “Visionary Women: Champions of Peace & Nonviolence.”  All over the USA events will honour “women who have led efforts to end war, violence, and injustice and pioneered the use of nonviolence to change society.”

Image via Pixabay

One group of women from San Mateo, California did a lot to raise the spirits of their sisters during the bleakest days of the Second World War. The Daughters of St George sent Christmas parcels to the Bedminster Emergency Station, Bristol. Packed with rare treats like candy , American comics and magazines these were distributed at New Year 1941 among those who had been bombed out of their homes.

You can find out more about city life during the Second World War in my new book, Struggle and Suffrage in Bristol which is available direct from the publisher, Pen and Sword Books, and from Amazon.

Blog, Bristol, history

Struggle and Suffrage—The Movie…

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Well, all right, not so much a movie as a promotional video! I’ve been experimenting with Animoto, and here’s the result…

Animoto are working on the reason for the pale cover, by the way!



Animoto gave me a Promo code to share—you can get a free month if you copy and paste this code  https://animoto.com/ref/Pip-693f6dd5b into your application when you subscribe.

Bristol, history, Reference, Struggle and Suffrage: Women's Lives In Bristol 1850-1950

Review: Women and The City: Bristol 1373-2000, Edited by Dr Madge Dresser

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https://www.amazon.co.uk/Women-City-1373-2000-Madge-Dresser/dp/190832631X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1514970849&sr=8-1&keywords=madge+dresser
Find out more at http://amzn.to/2Cgv5r0
Women and the City: Bristol 1373-2000 is a collection of essays by respected academics. It’s a lively, absorbing read. A good balance has been struck between well-written prose and contemporary illustrations. The book and its content is presented in a way that invites even a casual reader to keep turning the pages. There’s a handy list of abbreviations right at the front, which is much easier than having to flick through to the index, or notes, each time a set of initials pops up in the text. Other academic works would do well to follow this example.
 
I bought Women and the City: Bristol 1373-2000 to help with research for my own book, Struggle and Suffrage: Women’s Lives in Bristol 1850-1950, but after studying the sections relevant to my own work I went straight back to the beginning of the book and read it all. It’s a mine of information for anyone with an enquiring mind. I’d particularly recommend it to aspiring historical novelists in search of inspiration. The fact that a woman (Ann Barry) held the lease of that stronghold of “Enlightened” masculinity, the Exchange Coffee House in Corn Street offers all sorts of dramatic possibilities, for example. It’s often forgotten that Bristol women struck a significant blow in the fight against slavery. The formation of the Bristol and Clifton Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society is never as widely reported as Bristol’s part in that terrible trade. This book helps to put that right. 
 
Women and the City: Bristol 1373-2000 is curated by Associate Professor of History at the University of the West of England and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Dr Madge Dresser. The breadth of its content and unique style of each contributor makes for a fascinating read. It offers great insight into the history of Bristol and its people. Anyone who knows the city will look at local landmarks with new eyes after reading it.  
 

 

To sum up, this is an invaluable collection for historians, and anyone interested in women’s studies. It’s also an inspiring read for the rest of us.
Barnardos, Docklands, history, My Dream Guy, Pokemon Go, Thames

Time, Tide And Technology…

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This is Canary Wharf, in London’s Docklands development. OH took this photo from the balcony of our hotel the last time we stayed there. We had a beautiful suite, with the Thames running below our windows, and a perfect view of the city. At low tide the shore was exposed, along with all sorts of flotsam and jetsam.

It was on that mud, just over a hundred years ago, that my grandfather’s family scraped a living. In the early twentieth-century version of repair, re-use and recycle, they salvaged everything they could to sell on, or use themselves. They went everywhere on foot, and lived in conditions you only see in the film Oliver! nowadays. As a child, my grandfather was saved from his awful hand-to-mouth existence by the charity Barnardos, and later by signing up with the Royal Corps of Signals in the British Army.

Grandad wouldn’t recognise the old place now. These days, Docklands is a place of high finance and expense-account lunches. Planes skim over the sight of his miserable early life every few minutes, on their way into London City airport. Nobody walks anywhere, unless they are so hard-up they can’t afford public transport.  The National Health Service, together with networks of rules, regulations and safeguards should mean no family struggles as my grandfather’s did.

http://mybook.to/MyDreamGuy
Find out more at myBook.to/MyDreamGuy

That’s a relief, but with big gains has come at least one loss.  The only thing Grandad liked to remember about this early life was the community spirit. Everyone struggled to survive, but they did it together. There was always time to talk with your neighbours—if only to tell them the bailiffs were coming!

They used to say it takes a whole village (or in Grandad’s case, warren) to raise a child. These days we have electronic babysitters, with screens instead of faces. With sipper bottles, onesies, adult colouring books and Haribo adverts, nobody has to grow up if they don’t want to. There’s no time to talk to anyone, and no need, either—if you’re glued to Pokemon Go, nobody’s going to disturb you.

It’s a form of escapism. I’d rather lose myself in a book!

What do you think is the best thing about life today, and what’s the worst? There’s a copy of my feel good, light-as-a-summer breeze romance, My Dream Guy, for a comment pulled out of my beekeeping hat by midnight on 8th August. If you can’t comment, email me instead! christinahollis(at)hotmail.co.uk