magda_lamb

📚👉 📖

[Lily Craven @TheAttagirls]

Woman of the Day motoring journalist and driving instructor Aileen Graham-Jones, (1889-1974) of Co. Armagh, the first woman in the UK to qualify for a Royal Automobile Certificate and Emmeline Pankhurst’s first lady chauffeuse.

When her father died, Aileen’s newly widowed mother moved her children from Northern Ireland to Richmond. Mum had her own ideas about women’s inequality. As head of the household during the 1911 census, she firmly wrote “Unenfranchised” in the “Infirmity” column for every female member of the household, including her three servants. (I quite like the sound of Mum).

Aileen’s interest in motoring led her to enrol for a motor mechanics course at a local motor works which caused conniptions, but when the men realised she was serious about learning, they decided to help her. “I emerged with a fair understanding of how a combustion engine worked.” Driving lessons followed and Aileen became the first woman to qualify for a Royal Automobile Certificate.

The next hurdle was finding a job as a driver. At that time, the Morning Post (now the Daily Telegraph) was the most popular paper in Britain. Aileen took a chance and placed this ad in its Classified Ads section:

“Lady chauffeuse, RAC certificate and running repairs. What offers?”

She received three replies. The first was from a doctor in Bristol who wanted her to drive him to his home visits in the mornings, take his lady wife to her many social events in the afternoons and walk the dog in the evenings. The second was from a Guards officer who had always fancied the idea of a lady chauffeuse and “offered to meet me in a hotel in the Kings Road to ‘discuss the proposition’.” (Oh yes, even in those days, creeps abounded).

The third was by far the best. Emmeline’s secretary wanted someone “to drive the great lady of the militant suffrage movement for five months on a campaign throughout England, Wales and Scotland. That appealed to me greatly.”

Aileen took the job. “My family were livid. They thought I was going straight into the dark arms of Hell - to be going to that dreadful woman, as her chauffeur. It was an awful blow, but I thought it was the most wonderful job. At a pound a week, it was wealth.”

When she reported for duty, she found “an enormous car [a donated Wolsesley] placed at our disposal…Five women, baggage and much literature…Of course we were swathed in motoring veils and swamped in dust…” and they set off in April 1911. She described the shocking state of the roads, the very hot weather, plus “garages were not plentiful”.

“I learned early on in the tour that Mrs P must be got on time to her meeting so there were some harrowing moments. She was always deeply concentrated [on her work] and so in the event of any puncture, I would have to jack her up, as well as the car!”

Going over the Kirkstone Pass in Cumbria was a challenge. It was an unmade single track road which Aileen had to navigate very slowly. “Even in first gear, I do not use the brakes for fear of overheating…Overheating results in fire..It was a very hazardous journey.” Cattle gates were an obstacle. She did not dare stop, so a suffragette would jump off the car, open the gates, close the cattle gates, and jump back onto the running board “all in a long skirt…It was an unforgettable experience.”

After her five month tour of the country, Aileen started her own motor school and was keen to teach other women the basic rudiments of motor mechanics and how to drive. Business was good. A Miss Carver became her business partner and she advertised in Votes for Women ‘The modern girl is admirably suited for the life, and as a chauffeur should receive a salary of 30 shillings to £2 a week – the same, of course, as that paid to a man.”

When WW1 broke out, Aileen joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment and served for eighteen months, took a year off to marry an Army doctor, and rejoined the VAD in April 1916 when she was put in charge of the first all-women ambulance unit at a hospital in northern France - 13 women drivers - and was mentioned in despatches.

Of Emmeline, she said, “Life is dedicated to her cause and we all gave our best.”

[Rachel Rooney @RooneyRachel]

I'm not sure Louie read the same article that I did. There's no trend to cancel or ban author visits - unless she's thinking of the time her and her author chums publicly called for me to be taken off my agency's books bc I'd written MBIM ( despite the fact I only taught poetry)

[Sharron Davies HoL MBE @sharrond62]

Dartmoor ponies saved after Natural England cull U-turn. And a bit of good news. https://t.co/qjR43nCulQ

[Lily Craven @TheAttagirls]

Woman of the Day investigative journalist, teacher, and human rights activist Ida B. Wells, born in OTD 1862 in Mississippi, in slavery. A lifelong campaigner for equal rights for black Americans and for women’s suffrage, she co-founded the NAACP.

Ten weeks after her birth, Ida was among those freed by Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. She was orphaned at 16 when both parents died of yellow fever. Determined to keep her four surviving siblings together, she worked as a teacher in an elementary school for black pupils but life was a struggle.

When she was 24, a train conductor ordered her to give up her seat in the ladies carriage and move to the crowded smoking carriage. She refused - there was no valid reason for the order other than her ethnicity - but the conductor and two other men physically dragged her out of the train carriage. Ida instructed an African-American lawyer to sue the railway but he was paid off by the train company. She hired a white attorney who won her compensation of $500 (about £42k in today’s sterling).

The train company appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court. It overturned the original court decision, branded her as a compensation chaser and harasser who had not acted in good faith, and awarded costs against her. "I felt so disappointed because I had hoped such great things from my suit for my people…O God, is there no justice in this land for us?"

Still working as a teacher, Ida began a second career as a journalist writing articles for a newspaper criticising Jim Crow policies. Her pseudonym was “Iola”. In 1891, two years after she became editor and co-owner of a small newspaper in Memphis, the state board of education sacked her for criticising conditions in the segregated black schools in their area.

What galvanised Ida to start her anti-lynching campaign was a shocking incident in Mississippi in 1892 when 75 masked men took three black defendants from Shelby County jail and shot them. Ida urged African Americans to leave Memphis altogether, writing, “There is, therefore, only one thing left to do; save our money and leave a town which will neither protect our lives and property, nor give us a fair trial in the courts, but takes us out and murders us in cold blood when accused by white persons.”

Her editorial provoked the sort of response we see echoes of today in quite a different context. She was absolutely vilified in the press. The headlines are truly shocking. A white mob destroyed the newspaper’s building and contents and forced her co-owner to flee. Ida was in Manhattan at the time but there were reports that the trains were being monitored for her return. It just wasn’t safe. She never went back.

In 1893 and 1894, Ida took her anti-lynching campaign to Britain and got a more sympathetic response. Abolitionist networks were already well established here, many of those organised by women who used their connections to fight the case for women’s suffrage and now invited her to go on speaking tours. News of widespread lynching had already reached this country and her tours influenced British public opinion to such an extent that textile manufacturers boycotted Southern cotton as a way of applying pressure to stop the lynchings.

In 1909, she co-founded the NAACP.

Ida campaigned for women’s suffrage and like all suffragists, believed in the right of all women to vote, but she also knew that the only way to foster change for African Americans was if black women became politically involved and used their votes tactically. Her strong political opinions provoked many with her views on women's rights: "I will not begin at this late day by doing what my soul abhors; sugaring men, weak deceitful creatures, with flattery to retain them as escorts or to gratify a revenge."

She faced discrimination from some white suffrage organisations. When the National American Woman Suffrage Association organised a suffrage parade in 1913, the day before Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration, Ida attended with other suffragists from Chicago but was told by the woman leading the Illinois delegation that the NAWSA wanted "to keep the delegation entirely white". African Americans were to go to the back to form a "colored delegation".

Compare and contrast with the British approach — arranging processions in order of class, not race. It explains much about the history of our respective nations.

Ida blended into the crowd and bided her time. When white members of the Illinois delegation passed by, she stepped in and linked arms with two of her white suffragist sisters for the rest of the parade.

Throughout her life, Ida was vilified on all sides in a way that we, sadly, would recognise today as being reserved for women and especially reserved for women of colour.

Ida died in 1931 at the age of 68. She saw the vote granted to women but not the end to Jim Crow laws. They were only overruled by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 but she loosened the mortar so others could in time bring down the wall.

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, and it does seem to me that notwithstanding all these social agencies and activities, there is not that vigilance which should be exercised in the preservation of our rights.”

[Prickle Lodge - Hedgehog Rescue @pricklelodge]

With 23 Hoglets & 6 Adults in our hospital, we’re getting through a huge amount of food & supplies. To all who support us THANK YOU from the bottom of our hearts, you help us to continue to do what we love most. To anyone who’d like to help THANK YOU 2 🤗https://t.co/zjTGPjFJjH

[Hedgehog Cabin @HedgehogCabin]

WOW!!
23 babies!!👩‍🍼
That is so much work, and they will be going through so much food.
Folks, I unreservedly recommend this fabulous hedgehog hospital. They are doing so much good, all with such willing, loving hearts.
But love doesn't pay the bills, and they really need our help.
Wishlist: https://t.co/wSVV7bfMMJ
Donations: https://t.co/26Zgyvg07L
Thank you.❤️

[Lily Craven @TheAttagirls]

Woman of the Day nightclub hostess Ruth Ellis died OTD in 1955 at HM Prison Holloway, the last woman to be executed by hanging in Britain. Her death prompted a public debate about capital punishment.

Ruth was born in Rhyl in 1926 and her family frequently moved when she was a child. They often changed surnames too. There are all sorts of possible reasons for this but one thing is certain. Her father preyed on and sexually abused Ruth from the age of eleven — she tried to fight back — as well as raping her elder sister Muriel who bore his child when she was 14. As a result of his unorthodox relationship with another young girl and his own predatory behaviour, Ruth had a very early introduction to alcohol and men.

Pregnant at 17 to a married Canadian soldier, she ended up in dead-end factory jobs to support herself and her baby daughter. Not long after, the teenaged Ruth started nude modelling, followed by escort work, and at age 24, became a nightclub hostess. During the period leading up to, during, and after her trial for the shooting of David Blakeley in April 1955, she was excoriated in the national press for her “lifestyle”, her looks, and her working class background.

Why are abused women drawn into relationships with abusive men? You’ll have your own thoughts and I have mine, but when Ruth married in 1950, her husband was a violent alcoholic 16 years older than her who knocked her around and refused to acknowledge he was the father of her second daughter. They split up. On the breadline again, Ruth started selling herself to make enough to get by.

She tried to improve her prospects. She took etiquette and elocution classes and was promoted to nightclub manager in 1953 when she was 27. This brought her into contact with celebrities and people with money. That’s how she met David Blakely, a privately educated racing driver as well as a promiscuous bisexual and violent alcoholic. He was engaged at the time. Ruth herself was also in a relationship with Desmond Cussen, another alcoholic. None of this is promising, is it?

In January 1955, Blakely punched Ruth in the stomach so hard that she miscarried. She often gave him money to placate him. He would often attack her when he was drunk. “He would smack my face and punch me…[and once] lost all control. His fist struck me between the eyes and I fell to the floor. Savagely he beat me as I lay there.”

On 10 April 1955, Ruth went to a Hampstead pub where Blakely was drinking with friends. When he and a friend left the pub at 9.30pm, Ruth took a revolver out of her handbag and shot him five times, three times in the back. A sixth shot ricocheted and took off the thumb of a bystander.

An off-duty police officer ran outside to find Ruth standing next to Blakely’s body. She said, “Phone the police.” Arrested and taken to the police station, she said, “I am guilty: I am rather confused. It all started about two years ago” and thanked the Detective Chief Inspector when she was charged.

You know the rest. Less than three months later, Ruth Ellis stood trial at the Old Bailey for Blakeley’s murder. When Christmas Humphreys, counsel for the prosecution, asked her why she had shot him, she infamously said, “It’s obvious when I shot him I intended to kill him."

It took 23 minutes for the jury to return a guilty verdict for murder, a capital offence.

The Manchester Evening News reported, “And as Mr. Justice Havers put on the black cap, Mrs. Ellis, the mother of two children, turned to the prison nurse standing beside her and smiled gently. Then she turned and with a wardress’s hand under her arm, walked calmly down the steps to the death cell.”

Within two days, her execution date was ”fixed for Wednesday, July 13, at Holloway Prison.” Her only chance of reprieve lay in the hands of the Home Secretary who was “set to study all the papers in the case.”

There was no reprieve.

Ruth was woken at 8.30am 71 years ago today at Holloway. She refused breakfast but accepted a glass of brandy from a woman prison officer, and accompanied by the prison governor, the prison doctor, a chaplain and the executioner, she was led to the place of execution. It was the shortest longest walk you could ever imagine.

Prison staff described her as “the calmest woman who has gone to the gallows.” The Coventry Evening Telegraph reported: “Women wept and others prayed outside Holloway Prison”.

Ruth was 28.

Did she deserve to die? You’ll have your own thoughts about this too and I have mine. What I will tell you is that I knew the prison officer who sat with her the night before, a duty we called the death watch. I worked with that officer many years later. She never spoke of it except to say one thing. She had gone into that cell that night strongly in favour of capital punishment. She came out the next morning vehemently opposed to it.

Ruth said: “Only a woman who had led a similar life to mine could understand how I was irresistibly compelled to do what I did.”

[Aja ♀️🇬🇧 @AjaTheEmpress]

I see the be kind bridge are celebrating the murder of a 78 year old woman in her own home.

[Rachel Rooney @RooneyRachel]

Forget politics for a minute.
I'm just counting dead women.
RIP AW

[𝙳𝚎𝚖𝚎𝚝𝚎𝚛𝙴𝚟𝚎 @TheDiscreetEar]

Hard to think of anyone who's dedicated so much energy, time, & genuine selfless love for the natural world, to protecting our incredible British wildlife and the amazing little hedgehogs about whom she's so knowledgeable, as Pauly of Hedgehog Cabin. Never asks us for anything other than that we try to do the simplest things for the animals we share the planet with - place fresh water for them in a heatwave, trust the advice of true experts over AI. You're a joy, Pauly. Thank you for everything you do x
✨🦔🐾💜✨

[Lily Craven @TheAttagirls]

Woman of the Day Lady Jane Grey, born circa 1537 in either London or Leicestershire, who took the throne of England for nine days OTD in 1553. She didn’t want to wear the crown.

“The crown is not my right, and pleaseth me not. The Lady Mary is the rightful heir.”

It is still debatable whether she was ever really Queen but she was of royal blood. Her grandmother was Mary Tudor, sister of Henry VIII, which made her relationship to Mary I, Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots just the same: first cousin once removed.

The Protestant Edward VI made Jane and her male heirs successors to the Crown in his will, mainly because his half-sister Mary was Catholic whereas Jane was also staunchly Protestant, but it overrode the Third Succession Act which had restored Mary and Elizabeth to the line of succession while simultaneously upholding their illegitimacy.

Tangled? Oh yes. Henry VIII and his obsessions and his serial — and sometimes parallel — marriages left a right royal mess.

Jane was held in the Tower of London for eight months, charged with high treason which carried a death sentence. She was succeeded by Mary I who was reluctant to have her cousin executed. However, when the hotheaded Sir Thomas Wyatt plotted to remove Mary from the throne and replace her with her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth I, Jane’s ruthlessly ambitious father, the Duke of Suffolk, got involved with what is now known as Wyatt’s Rebellion.

Jane wasn’t involved. She wasn’t even aware of the plot. It didn’t matter. Her existence was too much of a threat.

How much influence did she have over events? Probably as much as she did over her short and unhappy life. She said:

“For when I am in the presence either of father or mother, whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand or go, eat, drink, be merry or sad, be sewing, playing, dancing, or doing anything else, I must do it as it were in such weight, measure and number, even so perfectly as God made the world; or else I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened, yea presently sometimes with pinches, nips and bobs and other ways (which I will not name for the honour I bear them)…that I think myself in hell.”

Today, we would recognise that as child cruelty.

Jane was beheaded in February 1554. She tied her own blindfold on. She was 16 or 17.

[Wimbledon @Wimbledon]

Throwing it back to the iconic 1978 Ladies’ Singles Championship ✨

On this day 48 years ago, Martina Navratilova claimed her first Grand Slam singles title, defeating legendary rival Chris Evert in the final.

[Lily Craven @TheAttagirls]

Woman of the Day biologist and geneticist Nettie Stevens, born in OTD in 1861 in Vermont, discovered the chromosomes we now know as X and Y, and published a research paper in 1905 establishing that XX chromosomes = female and XY = male.

Unusually for those times, her father was keen for his daughters to have a good education. Nettie thrived at school, worked hard, was always top of her class. After a spell as a teacher, she enrolled at a teachers’ college in Westfield, Massachusetts, completed the four year course in half the time, and achieved perfect grades in algebra, chemistry and geometry.

Teaching then was one of the very few professions open to women and she returned to it in 1884, but science still called to her. She once told a student, "How could you think your questions would bother me? They never will, so long as I keep my enthusiasm for biology; and that, I hope will be as long as I live."

Nettie saved hard and secured a place at Stanford University in 1896, majoring in physiology, and graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 1899. Her summers were spent at Stanford’s Hopkins Seaside Laboratory, studying the microscopic anatomy of organisms (histology) and cells (cytology). In 1900, she earned a master’s degree at Stanford with her thesis Studies on Ciliate Infusoria and had discovered two new species of single-celled organisms.

Early in 1901 and at the age of 39, Nettie began working for a doctorate in cytology at Bryn Mawr. By then, Mendel’s Laws of Inheritance had established that an offspring inherits equal numbers of chromosomes from each of its parents — observable by microscope — but nobody knew how sex was determined.

Most scientists then believed sex was not decided at conception but by non-biological factors such as temperature or nutrition acting on a fertilised egg. Fast forward about a century or more and we have a new cohort of supposedly intelligent people still trying to argue that sex is determined by feelings or clothing or hair slides, despite the vast body of wholly conclusive evidence.

Nettie applied for funding for her Ph.D, saying, “I am especially interested in the histological side of the problems in heredity connected with Mendel’s Law, and I know that there is need of a great deal of painstaking work along that line.”

She was granted $1000 (£80k in today’s sterling) and topped that up with a further $1000 when she was awarded the Ellen Richards Prize in 1905 for the best scientific paper written by a woman. At this stage, she still hadn’t made her breakthrough discovery but so meticulous was she that she had refashioned her microscope to get a clearer image of her research material.

Despite being excluded from scientific dialogue, talks and seminars — you know the reason why — Nettie was ready in 1905. She published a series of papers demonstrating that sex is determined by the chromosomes you inherit from your parents.

“We find that the evidence is overwhelmingly on the side of the view that sex is determined in the egg; but to the question of how sex is determined in the egg, no thoroughly convincing answer has yet been given”.

“Since the male somatic cells have 19 large and 1 small chromosome, while the female somatic cells have 20 large ones, it seems certain that an egg fertilised by a spermatozoon which contains the small chromosome must produce a male, while one fertilised by a spermatozoon and containing 20 chromosomes of equal size must produce a female.”

The Matilda Effect took over. Edmund Wilson, who had been working on the same line of research (he had ignored eggs as “too fatty” for his methods and examined only sperm) was credited with Nettie’s discovery *after* changing his own research paper to incorporate her findings.

He did grudgingly acknowledge her work. In a footnote. That’s where you can still find the history of women: in footnotes.

A second man, Thomas Hunt Morgan, was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1933 "for his discoveries concerning the role played by the chromosome in heredity" and admitted that Nettie had "a share in a discovery of importance”, but not until after her death.

Nettie died in 1912 of breast cancer, aged 50, just before she could take up a research professorship.

[Hedgehog Cabin @HedgehogCabin]

It may not seem like it some days, but I can tell you the world is still full of truly good people with kind, loving hearts.
There are people who see the broken hedgehogs here, and want to help mend them, so they send supplies from my Amazon wishlist, or donate towards the cost of medicines via PayPal.
Without being asked, without expecting reward or praise.
Without fanfare.
Every day I am reminded of the sheer depth of humanity that abounds, despite eager reports to the contrary.🥹
Thank you to everyone who spares time, money and effort to help the hedgehogs, either in their own garden or by retweeting my infograms, or donating.
Plus all your words of loving encouragement.
Whether or not you realise it, you are all quite extraordinary.
You are my heroes, life savers.
And I couldn't do what I do without you.
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
The parcels with notes were from Kay W, Wendy B, Phil E, Karen and Bertie, Susan R, In honour of Christopher Viney, Ray and Sue H, Christine R, Susan D, Amy C, Jennifer R.

[Lily Craven @TheAttagirls]

Woman of the Day Amy Johnson CBE, pioneering aviator, engineer, born OTD in 1903 in Kingston-on-Hull, the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia. During WW2, she joined the Air Transport Auxiliary ferrying planes from factories to RAF airfields.

After graduating with an economics degree, Amy worked as a typist for a firm of solicitors. It bored her to tears. One Sunday afternoon, she caught a bus to Stag Lane Aerodrome in North London to watch biplanes take off and was captivated. “Dad, I want to be a professional pilot. I want be a pilot and an engineer and I shall make it happen. I cannot bear to sit behind a desk for the rest of my life. I shall find a way of always doing what I love.”

All of her spare time was spent at the aerodrome learning everything she could. She gained a ground engineer’s ‘C’ licence and, with her father’s financial support, aviator's certificate No. 8662 on 28 January 1929, and pilot's ‘A’ licence No. 1979 on 6 July 1929. Her first plane was a secondhand Gypsy Moth, call sign G-AAAH, which she named Jason. “I’m quite the novelty at the airfield, a female pilot. Some of the men look at me crossly, as if to say “look at her! Who does she think she is?” I just smile and think quietly, “I’ll show them. A woman can do anything you can do just as well – if not better!”

On 5 May 1930, Amy took off from Croydon aerodrome in G-AAAH Jason. Nineteen days and 11,000 miles later, she landed in Darwin, Australia. She had no radio link, no information about the weather and only basic maps; she had plotted the most direct route simply by placing a ruler on the map. She flew over some of most inhospitable terrain in the world for at least eight hours a day in an open cockpit to reach her next fuel stop. It was a gruelling test of endurance.

Over the desert in Iraq, she made a forced landing in a sandstorm. In India, she landed on a parade ground, much to the surprise of the army garrison. During a monsoon in Burma, a forced landing damaged the propeller and tore a hole in one wing which a local technical institute repaired with pieces of shirts made from aeroplane fabric salvaged during WW1.

Amy received worldwide fame, a No. 1 civil pilot's licence under Australia's 1921 Air Navigation Regulations, the Harmon Trophy and a CBE for her extraordinary achievement.

In 1932, she set a solo record from London to Cape Town and, after marrying Scottish pilot Jim Mollison (he was a good pilot but an alcoholic and they later divorced), they set numerous long-distance records including an Atlantic crossing in 1933. They crashed in Connecticut but were given a ticker tape parade in New York.

In 1934, 31 year old Amy became the youngest president of the Women’s Engineering Society, but it was becoming harder to find new flying records to break and she tried modelling clothes for a while. It was okay but still wasn’t what she wanted to do. “When I first discovered flying, it was like coming home, like belonging somewhere. I’ve always been slightly out of step with the rest of the world, haven’t I? I’ve never needed people, not really. Planes are easier than people. They don’t let you down.”

When WW2 broke out, Amy was piloting short flights over the Solent for a small aviation company but when the government requisitioned all suitable aircraft, she became an Army Cooperation Pilot — a human target for anti-aircraft batteries to practise on. This meant flying every night for three or four hours after midnight for months on end along a stipulated route without lights while anti-aircraft guns searched for her aircraft.

The ATA started recruiting women pilots in 1940 and Amy applied. Asked, “Have you any foreign experience?”, she replied, “Nearly all, except South America”. She had daytime flying hours of 2000, 500 hours by night, and had flown about 50 light types of aeroplane. She joined on 25 May 1940, ferrying planes around the country for the RAF.

On 1 January 1941, Amy wrote her last letter to her friend, electrical engineer and sister member of WES, Caroline Haslett. “I hope the gods will watch over you this year, and I wish you the best of luck (the only useful thing not yet taxed!)”

Four days later, while flying an Airspeed Oxford from Prestwick to RAF Kidlington, Amy went off course in adverse weather conditions and crashed into the Thames Estuary near Herne Bay.

A convoy of war vessels in the Thames Estuary spotted her parachute coming down and saw her alive in the water, calling for help, but conditions were poor – a heavy sea, a strong tide, snow was falling and it was intensely cold. A Lieutenant Commander navigated his ship towards her to attempt a rescue and the crew threw ropes out to her but she was unable to reach them. He died in the attempt. Amy’s body has never been recovered.

The official version is that her plane ran out of fuel. Amy was 37.

“I think about the difference between men and women much more than I ever used to. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong in admitting men and women are different. After all, two men (if they’re decent sorts) admit they have differing skills. If one engineer isn’t strong enough to do something on his own, he simply fetches a bigger man to do it for him, quite unashamedly. Men and women should be like that, shouldn’t they? After all, we’re all doing the same thing, just trying to be the best we can be.”

[Rosie Kay @RosieKayK2CO]

@CourtyardArts @HerefordFest @ArmyBenFund @BritishArmy @RiflesRegiment @PoppyLegion @SSAFA @VeteransGateway @VeteransUK_MOD @VeteransGovUK could you help share this with veterans and military families? We urgently need to reach the people this film was made for.

[Rosie Kay @RosieKayK2CO]

X - I need your urgent help.

My new film 5 SOLDIERS is due to screen at Hereford Military Festival at The Courtyard on Sunday 27 September.

It has been on sale since 7 May.

I have just been told it has sold ZERO tickets.

Zero.

This is a film about soldiers’ bodies, training, injury, courage, fear, comradeship, trauma, recovery and service. It was made after years of working with soldiers, veterans and military families. It is not party political. It is humane, serious and, I believe, necessary.

If we cannot sell tickets, the screening may not go ahead.

So I am asking directly: please help me save this screening.

Buy a ticket. Bring someone. Share this. Tag anyone in Hereford, the Armed Forces, veterans’ networks, military history circles, dance, film, culture or anyone who believes that art about soldiers still matters.

Zero tickets is not normal.

Let’s change that.

Hereford, Sunday 27 September, 2.30pm.
Booking link:
https://t.co/Le2BUp5gfb

Please RT and share!

[Amanda Craig @AmandaPCraig]

Fiercely truthful piece about the corruption of children’s publishing and the @SEENinpublishing report on advocacy for transitioning by @GillianPhillip, cancelled children’s authir https://t.co/bYvsXsxJVy

[Gill, Nebraskan Land Seal 🇮🇱🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇬🇧 @Gillian_Philip]

“Children’s publishing might as well douse itself in petrol and strike a match.” I talk about the vital @SEENPublishing report ‘Through The Looking Glass’ in the Spectator.

[Bookbird71 @bookbird71]

Great piece from @Gillian_Philip about the dire state of kids publishing. See the new report from @SEENPublishing @Transgendertrd & @biologyinmed (link in comment).

How ideology hollowed out children’s literature https://t.co/QZGH6t9X5q