Narrator: Imagine settling down with a thick history book, eager to understand the sweep of modern Britain. But as you turn the pages, a strange and frustrating pattern emerges. Apart from a queen or a prime minister, women are almost entirely absent. They are relegated to a footnote, packed away in a cupboard marked ‘Lowly, Ancillary Roles; Housewives, etc.’ This was the exact experience that drove journalist Cathy Newman to investigate the stories that have been systematically ignored. The result is her book, Bloody Brilliant Women: The Pioneers, Revolutionaries, and Geniuses Your History Teacher Forgot to Mention. It’s a powerful corrective, a journey to recover the lost legacies of the women who didn't just live through modern British history but actively built it.

Narrator: The book begins by challenging a core assumption: that women's history is a simple, linear march toward progress. Newman argues that to understand the 20th century, one must first look back a thousand years, to a time of surprising female power. In Anglo-Saxon England, women enjoyed a level of autonomy that would be unthinkable centuries later. Legally, a woman could own property outright. Upon marriage, her husband owed her a morgengifu, or ‘morning-gift,’ which was hers to control completely. If a marriage was unhappy, she could walk out, and if she took her children, she was entitled to half the marital home.

This era wasn't just about legal rights; it was about tangible power. Women were not confined to embroidery. When her husband died, Aethelflaed, daughter of King Alfred, assumed control of Mercia. For seven years, she ruled as a formidable warrior queen, building fortifications and fending off Viking attacks, described by one chronicler as a leader who ‘protected her own men and terrified aliens.’ Abbesses like Hilda of Whitby wielded immense influence, advising kings and princes and fostering artistic talent. This historical context is crucial because it proves that the subjugation of women was not a natural or eternal state. In many respects, a woman in 800 AD was better off than her counterpart in 1800 AD, making the fight for rights in the modern era not just a push forward, but an effort to reclaim what was lost.

Narrator: By the Victorian era, the autonomy of the Anglo-Saxon woman was a distant memory, replaced by a rigid ideology known as the ‘doctrine of separate spheres.’ This was the world of the "Angel in the House," where a woman's purpose was to be a moral, domestic servant to her husband. As the poet Coventry Patmore wrote, "Man must be pleased, but him to please is woman’s pleasure." This doctrine was legally enforced through coverture, where a woman’s legal identity was subsumed by her husband's.

But beneath this veneer of domesticity, women were fighting back. The book highlights figures who chipped away at this oppressive structure. In 1891, the Jackson Abduction case became a public sensation. After his wife Emily refused to move to New Zealand with him, Edmund Jackson kidnapped her and held her prisoner. When the case reached the Court of Appeal, the judges delivered a landmark ruling: a husband had no right to imprison his wife to enforce his "conjugal rights." It was a stunning legal blow against the idea of a husband's absolute dominion. In the industrial world, activists like Ada Nield Chew, a factory worker in Crewe, used anonymous letters to the local paper to expose the exploitative pay and conditions faced by female workers, a brave act that cost her the job but launched her career as a trade unionist and suffragist. These women weren't just waiting for the vote; they were actively dismantling the social and legal cages built around them.

Narrator: The two World Wars are often seen as moments when women were graciously ‘allowed’ into the workforce. Newman reveals a more complex and challenging reality. Women didn't just fill jobs; they forced their way into roles that society, and the military, deemed unsuitable for them. In World War I, 18-year-old Dorothy Lawrence, frustrated at being denied work as a war correspondent, disguised herself as a male soldier, Denis Smith. With the help of a friendly miner-turned-sapper, she spent ten days on the front lines before the strain became too much and she was discovered, arrested, and sworn to secrecy.

In the Second World War, women’s contributions were equally vital and often just as unacknowledged. Engineer Beatrice Shilling became a legend in the Royal Air Force. Early Spitfire and Hurricane fighters had a fatal flaw: their engines would cut out during a steep dive, a deadly disadvantage during dogfights. Shilling diagnosed the problem and invented a simple, brilliant solution—a small metal restrictor that looked like a thimble. The device, nicknamed ‘Miss Shilling’s Orifice,’ was rapidly installed across the RAF, directly contributing to victory in the Battle of Britain. Yet despite these heroics, inequality was rampant. Women in engineering earned only 55% of a man’s salary, and racial prejudice persisted, as seen when Amelia E. King, a black British woman, was rejected from the Women's Land Army because local farmers didn't want her. The wars opened doors, but women had to constantly fight to keep them from slamming shut.

Narrator: If the first half of the century was defined by gradual reform, the 1960s and 70s were defined by a roar of collective action. The introduction of the birth control pill gave women unprecedented control over their fertility, but true liberation required challenging the economic and cultural structures of patriarchy. This shift is perfectly captured in the 1968 strike at Ford’s Dagenham plant. The 187 women who stitched car seat covers were classified as ‘unskilled,’ paying them 15% less than men in equivalent roles. As one striker told a reporter, "really it’s about sex discrimination." Their three-week walkout brought the entire factory to a halt and forced the government’s intervention. The strike was a direct catalyst for the 1970 Equal Pay Act.

This new, assertive feminism took its fight to the culture itself. In 1970, the newly formed Women’s Liberation movement targeted the Miss World competition. As host Bob Hope took the stage, protesters in the audience unleashed a volley of flour bombs, stink bombs, and leaflets, disrupting the live broadcast. They weren't just protesting a beauty pageant; they were protesting the reduction of women to objects for male consumption. These actions, moving from the factory floor to the television screen, signaled that feminism was no longer asking politely for a seat at the table—it was demanding a complete overhaul of the house.

Narrator: The book culminates by exploring the ultimate paradox of female power in Britain: the rise of Margaret Thatcher. Her ascent to become the first female Prime Minister in 1979 was a historic milestone, a seemingly definitive shattering of the highest glass ceiling. On the steps of Downing Street, she quoted St. Francis of Assisi, saying, "Where there is discord, may we bring harmony," positioning herself in a tradition of female peacemakers.

However, Newman presents her as a complex and divisive figure for feminism. Thatcher famously declared, "I owe nothing to women's lib." She rarely promoted women to her cabinet and her policies, which dismantled parts of the welfare state, were seen by many as disproportionately harming women. Her story raises a critical question that resonates to this day: Does the presence of a woman in power automatically advance the cause of all women? Thatcher’s legacy demonstrates that individual achievement, however brilliant, does not necessarily translate to collective liberation. It highlights the difference between a woman gaining power within a patriarchal system and the more radical goal of transforming the system itself.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from Bloody Brilliant Women is that the history we have been taught is not merely incomplete; it is fundamentally wrong. Women were not passive observers waiting for men to grant them rights. They were inventors, activists, soldiers, and reformers who drove social, political, and scientific change at every turn. Their erasure from the mainstream narrative is not an accident but a consequence of a history written by and for the powerful.

Cathy Newman’s work is more than a history lesson; it is a call to action. It challenges us to question every story we are told, to look for the voices that have been silenced, and to understand that the fight for recognition is as vital as the fight for rights. It leaves us with an urgent question for our own time: Who are the bloody brilliant women shaping our world today whose stories we are in danger of forgetting?