In The Road to Representation: Essays on the Women’s Suffrage Campaign , I wrote a piece about how businesses made money from the suffrage campaign ( Making Money From the Suffragettes ). In it I mentioned how for some companies, the campaign was a fruitful marketing opportunity. I also referred to an advert produced by The Keeloma Dairy Company. So I was amused when I recently bought a copy of an advertisement by another dairy company which also used women’s suffrage in its marketing campaign. The company was Aplin & Barrett and the advertisement was for their St Ivel brand. Such was their faith in their product, they claimed it could even win women the vote.  In this adventure, the knight St Ivel meets a group of suffragettes, who ask him for his support. "Beshrew me!" he replies, "Ye have the goo-goo eye which likes me well. Right gladly would I wield my trusty blade on behalf of damsels so buxom. But I wot not what ye want." The women expla...

Today’s guest was Bristol artist Jenny Urquhart. Jenny creates contemporary, vibrant paintings of her favourite places, working with acrylic, ink, collage, computer-based graphics, and photography. She is best known for her paintings of Bristol scenes with balloons. Her paintings also feature scenes from Devon, Cornwall and North Wales. One of Jenny’s favourite Bristol subjects is the Bristol Suspension Bridge. If you are travelling through Temple Meads any time soon you will see some of her work, and that of other Bristol artists, on display in the station. Jenny taught biology for ten years before switching careers and painting full time. In 2015 she painted two Shaun the Sheeps for the 2015 Shaun in the City campaign to raise money for sick children. Her Shauns are Lambmark Larry, which was displayed in London Paddington Railway Station, and Baalloon, which was displayed in Bristol. Jenny has recently published a Bristol colouring book featuring some of her best-lov...

A few days ago I went to the Thomas Lawrence exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. I was especially interested in Lawrence, many of whose paintings I had seen in books on the eighteenth century. It was Lawrence who captured a moment of radical history in his chalk sketch of William Godwin and Thomas Holcroft at their friend John Thelwall’s trial for treason in 1794. I had also read about the artist in his friend Joseph Farington’s diary, where (as I mentioned previously) he is described as “a male coquet”. Lawrence was born in Bristol in 1769. The family moved to Devizes in 1773 and he was brought up in the coaching inn The Black Bear. Lacking formal education and training, he was something of a child prodigy who sketched and charmed many of the inn’s visitors, Frances Burney amongst them. When his father was declared bankrupt the family settled in Bath, where young Lawrence began his career as a portraitist. In 1787 he went to London and joined the Royal Academy schools, but di...

I love reading other people’s diaries. Obviously I mean the historical ones, which makes it alright to pry. Or, if I was interested in the living, then it would be fine to read a diary intended for publication by its author – which raises the question about how far any diarist intends his or work for an audience. Did Pepys, as he scratched the smutty bits in his secret shorthand, really hope that no one would ever read them? Did Frances Burney when she addressed her diary to “Nobody” really accept that only Nobody would read it? I don’t know, but I do know that both diaries are terrific reads. Diaries are wonderful for all sorts of reasons. They are great for historians. They’re great for historical fiction writers. And they have a meaning all of their own, though what that meaning is is hard to define. I’ve been reading the diary of Joseph Farington RA (1747 to 1821) for the years 1796 to 1798. Farington was a landscape painter, an active member of the Royal Academy, a husband, a memb...