Helen Kay – författare

How do people on low incomes make decisions about employment and benefit claims? Interview material and economic analysis combine with new theories of the relationship between moral and economic reasoning.

The 1066 Norman Bruisers conjures up the vanished world of England in the late Middle Ages and casts light on one of the strangest quirks in the nation’s history: how a bunch of European thugs became the quintessentially English gentry.In 1066 go-getting young immigrant Osbern Fitz Tezzo crossed the Channel in William the Conqueror’s army. Little did he know that it would take five years to vanquish the English, years in which the Normans suffered almost as much as the people they had set out to subdue. For the English, the Norman Conquest was an unmitigated disaster, killing thousands by the sword or starvation. But for Osbern and his compatriots, it brought territory and treasure – and a generational evolution they could never have imagined.Osbern’s descendants settled in Cheshire, which played a pivotal role in medieval England as the launch pad for Edward I’s Welsh wars, the chief recruiting ground for royal armies and Richard II’s regional powerhouse. Successive members of the Boydell family fought for monarchs and magnates, oversaw royal garrisons, travelled abroad as agents of the crown and helped to administer the laws of the land. When they weren’t strutting across the stage of northwestern England, mingling with great men and participating in great events, they engaged in feuds, embarked on illicit love affairs and exerted their influence in the small corner of the country they had made their own. By 1378, when William Boydell died from wounds sustained in combat, the nation he defended was England and the enemy he opposed dwelled just forty miles from the place where Osbern had probably grown up.

This historical biography of Chrystal Macmillan, one of Scotland's most prominent campaigners for women's equality, justice and peace in the early twentieth century, is the first account of her life and work.?It describes her early life in a comfortable home in Edinburgh, her school and university years in Scotland, and her rise to prominence as the main appellant in the 'Scottish Women Graduates' Case' when it went to appeal in the House of Lords.She was an important figure in the suffrage movement both in Scotland, and in England where she lived from 1913, becoming influential in several national and international women's organisations. She used her legal skills and training to scrutinise, draft and suggest amendments to legislation that had direct impact on women's lives, including their right to their own nationality, to become members of the legal profession and to be treated equally with men in the workplace.In 1915 she was an organiser of the International Women's Congress at The Hague, which urged political leaders to use mediation to stop the war. In 1924, she qualified as a barrister in London and was active on the Western Circuit and London courts. Although she left no diary, the recollections of friends, obituaries and memorials provide a vivid image of a woman of considerable ability, commitment and courage.