Diane Atkinson – författare

This book draws extensively on the little-known but important Suffragette Fellowship Collection of archive photographs, newspapers, personal correspondence, artefacts and memoirs, to present a vivid picture of Suffragette life. The strength of the book is its rare images of the Suffragette campaign leading to the outbreak of the First World War. The book also documents leading personalities in the Suffragette movement, such as Emmeline Pankhurst, Annie Kenney and Emily Wilding Davison, the behind-the-scenes activities at the Women’s Social and Political Union, their public propaganda work, the brilliant set-piece demonstrations and the escalation of militancy from ‘pestering the politicians’ to burning down buildings and attacking works of art. The book also explores what happened to these incredible women after their war was won and the vote was granted to them.

A Telegraph Book of 2018An Observer Pick of 2018A New Statesman Book of 2018A definitive history and anarchic celebration of the fight for women’s right to vote; ‘A huge achievement’ Rachel Cooke, Observer‘Glorious’ Sunday Times ‘A definitive history of the suffragettes’ The Times‘Magisterial’ TelegraphBetween the death of Queen Victoria and the outbreak of the First World War, while the patriarchs of the Liberal and Tory parties vied for supremacy in parliament, the campaign for women's suffrage was fought with flair and imagination in the public arena. From their marches on Parliament and 10 Downing Street, to the selling of their paper, Votes for Women, through to the more militant activities of the Women's Social and Political Union, whose slogan 'Deeds Not Words!' resided over bombed pillar-boxes, acts of arson and the slashing of great works of art, the women who participated in the movement endured police brutality, assault, imprisonment and force-feeding, all in the relentless pursuit of one goal: the right to vote.A hundred years on, Diane Atkinson celebrates the lives of the women who answered the call to 'Rise Up'; a richly diverse group of actresses and mill-workers, teachers and doctors, bootmakers and sweated workers. Meticulously researched, vividly rendered and definitive, Rise Up, Women! brings these women to life in a stirring celebration of their grace, resilience and determination that changed the world forever.

Marking the centenary of female suffrage, this definitive history charts women''s fight for the vote through the lives of those who took part, in a timely celebration of an extraordinary struggle An Observer Pick of 2018A Telegraph Book of 2018A New Statesman Book of 2018Between the death of Queen Victoria and the outbreak of the First World War, while the patriarchs of the Liberal and Tory parties vied for supremacy in parliament, the campaign for women''s suffrage was fought with great flair and imagination in the public arena. Led by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia, the suffragettes and their actions would come to define protest movements for generations to come. From their marches on Parliament and 10 Downing Street, to the selling of their paper, Votes for Women, through to the more militant activities of the Women''s Social and Political Union, whose slogan ''Deeds Not Words!'' resided over bombed pillar-boxes, acts of arson and the slashing of great works of art, the women who participated in the movement endured police brutality, assault, imprisonment and force-feeding, all in the relentless pursuit of one goal: the right to vote. A hundred years on, Diane Atkinson celebrates the lives of the women who answered the call to ''Rise Up''; a richly diverse group that spanned the divides of class and country, women of all ages who were determined to fight for what had been so long denied. Actresses to mill-workers, teachers to doctors, seamstresses to scientists, clerks, boot-makers and sweated workers, Irish, Welsh, Scottish and English; a wealth of women''s lives are brought together for the first time, in this meticulously researched, vividly rendered and truly defining biography of a movement.

When they met at a motorcycle club in 1912, Elsie Knocker was a thirty year-old motorcycling divorcee dressed in bottle-green Dunhill leathers, and Mairi Chisholm was a brilliant eighteen-year old mechanic, living at home and borrowing tools from her brother. Little did they know, theirs was to become one of the most extraordinary stories of the First World War.In 1914, they roared off to London 'to do their bit', and within a month they were in the thick of things in Belgium driving ambulances to distant military hospitals. Frustrated by the number of men dying of shock in the back of their vehicles, they set up their own first-aid post on the front line in the village of Pervyse, near Ypres, risking their lives working under sniper fire and heavy bombardment for months at a time. As news of their courage and expertise spread, the 'Angels of Pervyse' became celebrities, visited by journalists and photographers as well as royals and VIPs. Glamorous and influential, they were having the time of their lives, and for four years, Elsie and Mairi and stayed in Pervyse until they were nearly killed by arsenic gas in the spring of 1918. But returning home and adjusting to peacetime life was to prove even more challenging than the war itself.

Caroline Norton, born in 1808, was a society beauty, poet and pamphleteer. Her good looks and wit attracted many male admirers, first her husband, the Honourable George Norton, and then the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne.After years of simmering jealousy, George Norton accused Caroline and the Prime Minister of a ‘criminal conversation’ (adultery) resulting in a trial referred to as ‘the scandal of the century’. Cut off and bankrupted by George Norton, she went on to become one of the most important figures in changing the law for wives and mothers.

With the outbreak of World War I, German-born Kitty Marion, suspected of being a German spy and placed under surveillance, sailed from Liverpool for New York. She left a dramatic and colourful life behind: a hectic and fascinating 20-year career as a performer crisscrossing Britain first as a singer, dancer and actress on the musical comedy and pantomime stage, and then in music hall as a ‘refined comedienne’. She campaigned against the sexual abuses rife in the theatre of the day which led her eventually into the suffragette movement where she became a ‘notorious’ militant, responsible for numerous acts of arson. She was imprisoned, went on hunger-strike, and was force-fed more than 300-times. In America, she became a celebrated ‘foot-soldier’ in Margaret Sanger’s birth control movement. Her autobiography, written in the 1930s is published here for the first time.