I’ve just read two fascinating works by Cicely Hamilton, actress, writer and suffragette and one of my feminist heroes. Hamilton (1872–1952) wrote the words to the suffragette anthem, The March of the Women , as well as a number of sharp, funny suffragette plays. She also wrote Diana of Dobson’s , a play about a shop girl who comes into some money, and Marriage as a Trade which railed against the Edwardian women’s enforced inability to support themselves in any other way but marriage. The books are Theodore Savage , a novel published in 1922, and a play, The Old Adam , which had its first performance (as The Human Factor ) at Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1924, and later played at Kingsway, London. Like her 1919 novel, William: an Englishman both are concerned with war and man’s destructive, violent nature. Both could also be described as science fiction for the prominent role of technology in them. In The Old Adam , two neighbouring fictional states are on the brink of war. De...