Rachel Holmes is the author of Sylvia Pankhurst, Natural Born Rebel. ‘It’s impossible to summarise adequately a book so magnificent,’ commented The Times . She also wrote Eleanor Marx: A Life, The Secret Life of Dr James Barry and The Hottentot Venus: The Life and Death of Saartjie Baartman. She is co-editor, with Lisa Appignanensi and Susie Orbach, of Fifty Shades of Feminism and co-commissioning editor, with Josie Rourke and Chris Haydon, of Sixty-Six Books: Twenty-First Century Writers Speak to the King James Bible.
Sylvia Pankhurst
Natural Born Rebel
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This event took place on 27 October 2020
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Sylvia Pankhurst
Natural Born Rebel
Watch event again now
This event took place on 27 October 2020
Sylvia Pankhurst was born into one of Britain's most famous families but she always carved her own way. As well as a militant campaigner for women's suffrage, she was a gifted artist and orator, a designer, newspaper editor and radical visionary.
Her activism landed her in Holloway prison where she was tortured, and her notes from this episode are featured in our upcoming Unfinished Business exhibition. Pankhurst's life of campaigning led her to America, Soviet Russia, Scandinavia, Europe and East Africa.
Biographer Rachel Holmes shares her adventures from inside the British Library’s Unfinished Business exhibition space, in conversation with Shami Chakrabarti.
This event was part of Unfinished Business: The Fight for Women's Rights, a UK-wide exhibition by the British Library and public libraries.