In 1915 the best-selling novelist Mrs Mary Humphrey Ward published Delia Blanchflower . In many ways it’s typical romantic fare: a stern guardian to a wilful young heiress must save her from bad influences before their love can blossom. Much of the plot revolves around a beautiful old mansion called Monk Lawrence. It belongs to an anti-suffrage Government minister. A militant suffragette called Gertrude Marvell has her eye on the old place. Gertrude is a harsh, ruthless woman who is unmoved by Delia’s pleas to spare the “beautiful and historic” house. The inevitable happens: the house goes up in smoke and with it the “beauty of four centuries”. A crippled child also dies in the fire, as does Gertrude herself. Behind the melodrama is a very real sense of loss, and although Monk Lawrence is fictitious, Delia Blanchflower expresses something of people’s actual experiences of suffragette militancy. Begbrook Mansion in Frenchay, near Bristol was a fine old house until it was dest...

I was delighted to be at Bristol Cineworld cinema in Hengrove for the screening of Suffragette on Monday 12 October 2015, when the film went on general release, to give two pre-screening talks about the suffragette movement.  With the lovely cinema staff at Bristol Cineworld, Hengrove before the event.  We also set up a display in the foyer.  Part of the display about the suffragette movement in Bristol and the west country.   Suffragette : The Time is Now! Suffragette is the first feature film to tell the story of women’s fight for the vote. Starring Carey Mulligan and Helena Bonham Carter as early footsoldiers of the feminist movement, it tells the story of the working-class British women who, inspired by the suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst (played by Meryl Streep), took their fight for enfranchisement to Westminster.   The film has already made headlines for being the first time a commercial crew has been allowed to shoot i...