 I'm Polly Russell, leader curator of Unfinished Business, the Fight for Women's Rights exhibition here at the British Library. It's a pleasure to welcome you all to this evening's event. There are so many items in the Unfinished Business exhibition that speak to the huge sacrifice made by women in the past for the rights of women today. Perhaps one of the most haunting is the Holloway prison toilet paper written upon by the imprisoned Sylvia Pankhurst. We are so lucky tonight to host Rachel Holmes, whose epic new biography of Sylvia Pankhurst was reviewed in the Times as follows. It's impossible to summarise adequately a book so magnificent. Rachel joins us in conversation with Shammi Chakrabati. Good evening everybody and welcome to the British Library if only virtually. It's a huge privilege and a solace to be with all you readers in these difficult times. Not unlike our subject this evening, Rachel Holmes is a writer and an activist. In addition to so much else, she's written four acclaimed biographies. One about the 19th century trans icon, Dr James Barry. Then one about Sarah Bartman, otherwise known as the hot and top Venus. 2014 Eleanor Marks A Life and Just This Autumn. Sylvia Pankhurst, natural born rebel, as we've heard published to rave reviews described by Lucy Davies in The Telegraph as stirring by Amanda Foreman in the Sunday Times as genius and of course by Gerard De Groot in the Times as magnificent. Rachel, congratulations. Well thank you and thank you very much for that generous welcome and also in this new way of doing things. Just hello to all of the audience whose faces I can't see but I'm trying to visualise and imagine there. Well look, we're obviously here to discuss the biography and its great subject but I think also quite rightly to celebrate the British Library where you made some important discoveries towards the project. And as we've heard the unfinished business exhibition in which Sylvia, the socialist, internationalist, anti racist force of nature features. Now one of the images in the exhibition is of Sylvia holding her infant son Richard in probably about 1928 given his date of birth. Rachel, yours is a wonderful political biography which is a rare thing in relation to a woman, let's be honest. And it's also almost a world history of the 20th century that family matters and the Pankhurst family matters do feature a great deal with some importance don't they? Well I think that the Women's Social and Political Union which was the militant suffragette organisation that the Pankhurst founded in conjunction with others from the independent Labour Party of which they were part and also trade union garment workers was known as the family party. And that sort of gives you that link because everything, one of the fascinations about them and one of the things that's so interesting and instructive is that whilst they are very very tight knit and indeed in the early years all work very very closely together the way they diverge in a if you like a sort of epic as you say family but also political, personalist political way if you like is that their schisms, their differences, their political differences really mirror and play out what the broader political differences are within the women's movement but then within politics nationally and you could even argue internationally but like you know like as in most great family sagas you know there are three sisters and and there's a very mercurial and fascinating and inspirational but also complicated mother who is of course Emmeline Pankhurst, Christabel Pankhurst who's the lawyer who's Sylvia Pankhurst's elder sister, Sylvia the middle sister and then the younger sister Adela and indeed the surviving for a while brother Harry Pankhurst who's who was a really really important suffragette activist in his own right before he sadly died when he was 20. And of course you chose at the jumping off point for this big book about this even bigger life you chose a really traumatic moment when Sylvia 16. The book opens with her father dying and I think you know I, he their feminism and indeed Emmeline Pankhurst feminism and thus her daughters is built on on Richard Pankhurst who was the father who was a human rights lawyer he drafted legislation with John Stuart Mill. He was an internationalist he was a many, many times failed parliamentary candidate and as everybody observed far too radical and revolutionary to to ever get to get elected at the time but he was incredibly important in the formation of her politics and and and and psyche and consciousness as as he was indeed to to shaping Emmeline but the book opens with his with his untimely and unexpected and shocking death when Sylvia was 16 which I think is a very very defining moment for her the circumstances are very very difficult for her she's on her own because her mother and sister her elder her elder sister and her mother are away and she's unaware of of the the extremity of the situation her father's in and as a consequence I think she feels later of giving into authority when she asks for help she she listens to what people whether it's whether it's the cook who's really in charge when her mother's away or whether it's whether it's the doctor she she believes them and I think this actually strikes quite a defining moment for her in her relationship to authority if you listen to what other people say unquestioningly bad things will happen. And of course subsequently and in a way tragically the family party splits and this this this family, you know, without the red doctor pan cursed split so they all started very firmly on the radical left. And then emilyn mummy emilyn and older sister crystal move more to the right. And this is quite a this is quite a painful schism in the family but also arguably in feminism, even even to this day. Well, it, again, it's it's absolutely part of the of the story of their personal lives and family but it is also part of what happens in the broader movement, which is, of course, what makes it what makes it relevant. And they, I think it's important to also focus on the fact that they weren't very successfully and for very long time together, and that even though they had differences of approach and opinion, they held their unity publicly and and when they began to diverge Sylvia, in particular, and and indeed Keir Hardy, who of course was was very much, you know, a supporter and part of their movement, would argue internally they would argue within the leadership as and there were others as well over different positions, particularly over the participation of working women the importance of focusing on on on the working women's vote on working class women and including them, Sylvia, and Keir Hardy very much in favour of that over time crystal bell and emilyn moved away from that position. And then also the change from the the WSP you the one social and political union being a democratically run organisation to the decision again by emilyn and crystal bell to make it an autocracy to make it autocratic and undemocratic. And the differences that opened up over that were reflected elsewhere, but crucially the first world war became became the break the breakpoint and Sylvia was a pacifist, anti militarist and the emilyn and and crystal bell were very bellicose they were they were very pro the war and that split again played itself out more broadly within women across different parts the women's movement who particularly in the earlier stages of the war there was a lot more support for it as as things you know got harder over time that retreated. But yes in the end of course emilyn having started res you know she she went to school and in Paris. She was very she was very much a francophile she was very much you know very very much part in this kind of characterises in her way she was very very interesting the French Revolution very much pro that kind of way of doing things, but eventually she moves away from from her from her earlier socials position and ultimately stands as a as a conservative candidate in white. And also spends Sylvia and and Sylvia's son Richard and and spends Sylvia's life choices in in in becoming a single mother as in the photograph at the age of 45. Well she does and and that's it's so it's so it's so interesting and in some ways incomprehensible because emilyn is so fascinating and in many ways a very very sympathetic and obviously very inspiring person and character, and her rejection of Sylvia for having a child, as was said in the language of the time out of wedlock. And it was extraordinary Sylvia was 45 at the time that she had her first and only child Richard with her partner and soulmate by then Sylvia Corio, who was an Italian anarchist syndicalist political refugee exile, which was probably emilyn's problem, and he also had three other children with with two other women that was the way they rolled. But that that was not in keeping with how emilyn had been when she was a younger woman and in fact one of the things that Sylvia records in her memoirs, as do other people about her is that emilyn's home was always a refuge for her women friends who were trying to escape abusive marriages. They are having difficulties getting custody of being able to have access to their children because of being suffragettes or just, you know, generally she was she was not the sort of judgmental person in that way so that rejection of Sylvia, which she never comes back from is very very hard and she rejects Sylvia when she's pregnant, literally on the doorstep of the house and then eventually unfortunately dies before. And it's incredibly poignant. It's incredibly poignant in the book Rachel and if I may say so one of the great things about your wonderful book is we've got the winds of history and empire and world wars and great political figures but we've also got that that intimate life of so many people too. And with that in mind, again rather wonderfully, the unfinished business exhibition also features one of Sylvia's paintings. And of course you describe with, you know, with some care, her first vocation as an artist. And had things been different, had her family been different, the times been different, she might well have been remembered today as a great artist rather than a great activist. Do you want to say a bit more about that? Yeah, and she's clearly that she's a very, very talented artist and she's by temperament as well as talent, an artist. And she gets scholarships, doesn't she? She gets scholarships which extraordinary for a woman at that time. Yeah, she gets national scholarships and as you say unusual for women, for anybody at the time and they were hard to get, first of the Manchester School of Art, wonderful radical art school and then to the Royal College of Art in London. Having been clear, you write a beautiful scene about her being convinced that she's done appallingly in the entrance exam. A completely young woman or any woman imposter syndrome, so she's absolutely convinced that she's flunked the entrance exam completely and sort of crawls back in through the window because everybody else is out and sort of lies and cries in bed and really thinks she's messed it up but of course hasn't. But she was immensely talented as an artist and this wonderful painting, I think it's the one in the Unfinished Business Exhibition of a woman chainmaker in Pradley Heath and Staffordshire. 1907, 1908, funded by Emilyn Pethwick Lawrence, of course Emilyn and Frank Pethwick Lawrence, very important characters as well in this history and story. And they fund her to go on this, if you like, artistic pilgrimage round the sort of industrial heartlands of England and Scotland and Sylvia goes and she, you know, she boards with the women in whose factories and potteries and shoe factories and so on. She's actually painting and sketching and documenting so she's embedded if you'd like to put that where she beds in. But as well as painting these extraordinary paintings and sketches and doing the visual capture if you like and visual descriptions, she also documents in great detail with an economist mind exactly what the work conditions are, what the salaries are, the women are being paid, what their lives are like and their leisure and so on. And she, it's a really on its own, that would have been, and it's unprecedented for a British woman artist to do that and very excitingly in fact the tape last year, well I say last year, time has gone a bit peculiar. We saw an off the Gregorian calendar again. Inside the last year of the year before, the PC, the pre-COVID calendar acquired four paintings from this, which are absolutely magnificent and will be on public display but that was extraordinary work but what she did was that because she had to pursue the politics of the day, there was no choice. The rights had to be fought for. What she did was transmute that artistic talent immensely creatively into turning it to the suffragette campaign. And she used her artistic talents to design the iconography of the campaign and medals for hunger strikers you've been in prison and tea sets in the days before t-shirts and so on and so forth. Yeah, very much the t-shirt before the t-shirt and she had this, she had this sort of Blakey and she's actually quite very much like Blake but she has this talent and interest in great big installations in public art. And so she does those sort of wonderful women's festivals but as well as that, it's the creative and aesthetic look of those great rallies and I think it's hard to imagine but some of the photography does deliver it to us. There's wonderful Christina Broom photographs that were discovered and displayed by the Museum of London a few years ago but the pageantry, the way that the suffragettes were able to capture the visual imagination. And so whether it was Sylvia's Liberty Caps or whether it was the paintings on the banners, you mentioned the pork colours and arrow motif which was the broach which also became the medal of honour for the hunger strikers, the suffragette hunger strikers. But also on the grand scale but also on the smaller scale the decoration of tea cups or tea services and things that would capture people's engagement with it. So I think she had this immense capacity for first of all bringing creativity and an aesthetic pleasure and engagement that captured the imagination. I mean these rallies were the biggest national, and when I say national I don't just mean across the whole of Britain rallies and organised movements that have happened since the Chartists but they were colourful. They were flamboyant, they were everything. So it captured the price of imagination, it captured tension and it also muddled with people's perceptions of what, I mean in contemporary terms what does a feminist look like, the white dresses, the colours and so on and it also brought a sense of sort of joy. And it was a lot of imagination whether it was hiring a steamboat and going up the Thames and hollering at Westminster to politicians on the terrace or whether it was Muriel Matys who was a friend of Sylvia's and suffragette colleague in East London who had a balloon and sort of bombed London with votes for women pamphlets. There was a lot of creativity and energy in this direct action. So she certainly brought her art to her activism but her writing very much as well and I've been thinking since reading the book a lot about the challenge and opportunity of writing about the life of such a prolific writer, which brings me back to the collection at the British Library and indeed to the toilet papers and to the treasure that you in particular unearthed with your meticulous transcribing of some of that very, very precious material. It's not just in a pandemic that Lou paper is precious people. Well, it's a rather unelegant coinage of mine, the toilet papers, but as that cash didn't, as that part of it, the package that Richard Pankhurst had later given to the British Library didn't, the manuscripts didn't have any names. So for want of a better term, I call them the toilet papers and it is wonderful. It's really, really terrific to see that there is a piece of his majesties as it was at the time standard issue government Holloway prison toilet paper with a draft of one of Sylvia's poems alongside the front is peace to written cold slate, which was the collection of her prison poetry, which was published. And in the book, Rachel, you describe how it's written on cold slate, but it's only when you did the meticulous work in the British Library that you realise that it wasn't, of course, all written on cold slate. To at least to begin it, you know, that was the conceit again, the gate, the great PR campaigner, it's written cold slate, but a lot of very important work was written on this toilet paper and concealed and and got out of the prison. And also there's a sort of there's a very sort of Sylvia espionage aspect to it as well, because I mean that that is a whole other aspect of her life in the 20s and 30s once she got involved in, you know, in the Russian Revolution and with the Bolsheviks and with Lenin and so on. That was there were considerable period of her life from that time forward, where she was in by of necessity, involved in clandestine activities, which had to be kept under the radar and hidden from the state she'd been under surveillance since she was a suffragette and that continued even more. So in that in that title poem in written cold slate, there's almost a there's a there's a sort of secret written into it and she says, you know, how can I, how can I capture these lines that are just going to be washed away from this cold slate and of course she drafted ideas on her slate and no doubt. But but what this discovery reveals is that well, I'm going to stop you there because it's all in the book and people really, really need to get this book and in uncertain times with, you know, with with with some times to read it that way ahead of us. This is the perfect perfect Christmas present for any great readers in in the family. But but I want to just touch on, you know, the great span of the life. We talked a bit about the suffragette period of course that the written cold slate period is post suffragette. This is when she's in prison for sedition. She's a newspaper editor, a newspaper editor, young male journalists, two white journalists and one black journalist, Claude Mackay, who in fact she these days newspaper newspaper people complain of extinction rebellion and like making noise outside their windows that but but but but she actually went to she actually went to prison for journalistic freedom. And so an extraordinary courage, but she also took on and engaged with some of the great men, the great historical men of the 20th century Churchill Lenin, highly salacy towards the end of her life. I mean, extraordinary. Yes, those men, I suppose, or those those male political figures do actually sort of punctuate critically some of the issues and movements and campaigns that she was preoccupied with. And in fact throughout her life, I mean, she, she knew she first met Churchill rather disaster see actually because he he he assaulted her on the stage I'm afraid when she was 20. So this was so Churchill is obviously very much on people's minds again because earlier earlier this year, you know protesters said he was a racist as part of Black Lives Matter and whatever. But he was also he wasn't, you know, he was he was prone to a little misogyny too wasn't he so he assaulted her when she she heckled him at a meeting. Yes, that that was when she was 21. And what's but what's fascinating is that their relationship and it continues literally to the end to the end of her life because over time. I mean, he Churchill changes his as he did on many things he changes his position. Then they find his party changes his party. So, but they find they find common cause having been at loggerheads and unfortunately and disastrously when when Churchill won, you know, eping he he Woodford and eping he discovered that Sylvia Pankhurst was now his constituent his constituent and male bags full followed and of course there was there was a great deal of a very serious contestation over the question of Mussolini and anti fascism and Ethiopia Sylvia was constantly urging Churchill pleased to pay attention to this. But over time that shifted again because they did ultimately find common cause in a long in long political lives that intersected very directly over over narcissism fascism in the second the second world war specifically. And even towards the latter period of of when matters were finally for once for a shorthand were more resolved over over Ethiopia. You do we actually even get to a point where that that Churchill who the day after having literally yang Sylvia's arm on the stage behind her behind and yanked her down in the chair and then had his fuckstaker off the stage. And lock her up in a room. And then the next day saying of the women's vote I will not be heckled into a question of such a hen pect. I will not be hen pect into a question of such importance very misogynistic phrase, but you know they're there. But laterally in the career there are there's respectful correspondence and he actually writes a very considered or dictates from his office a very considered letter which which responds and and Adam breaks. The accuracy of her resistance to fascism. You also mentioned Lenin Lenin. Yes, they meet later. She's she's the first to publish Lenin's journalism and work in in her newspapers in what was the women's dreadnought initially and then the workers dreadnought. She goes to Moscow to the Moscow Congress in 1920. She's she's there as a as one of the British delegates. But ostensibly it is also to resolve a fight that the disagreement that she has with Lenin. And it's that side of Sylvia is very interesting as well because she was a great traveller. It's something that is not often thought about her and she she's a really interesting travel writer and a very intrepid traveller. And she has to travel by a clandestine route to Moscow because she doesn't have a passport. She's not allowed to leave Britain. And so she has to go a very, very securitise route on on ropey boats and and trains catching fire and so on. And then highly salacy, you mentioned, of course, index as her long relationship to the anti fascist and anti racist struggle. She knew him from the early days in London and indeed towards the end of her life. Of course, she was living in Ethiopia, but that was a friendship and a political relationship which stretched across many decades. And also, and these are the great political figures, but also men of letters. Bernard Shaw. Bernard Shaw, Israel, Zanguil, and so on. And of course, these, you know, you're talking about the male figures, but equally in an international context, the the women figures naturally all the the great British, you know, feminist suffragettes. And, and also, most importantly, the women that she, you know, that she worked with and alongside whether, you know, in the suffragette movement in the East London Federation of Suffragettes, once she moved to East London definitively. But I think the other thing that's really striking about Sylvia in terms of her internationalism is how strong her international feminist network was. So she went on fascinating tours of Norway and Sweden that that she that she wrote about extensively and met leading feminists in. And even, you know, at that time, Scandinavia was seen as very sort of cutting edge and advanced in terms of feminism. And she, she, you know, she wrote extensively about that. But she also travelled in America, where she met all the and worked with a lot of the leading feminists across the political spectrum. And of course she knew Clara Zekin, and she, she published the works of Rosa Luxembourg. And so she knew a lot, knew and worked a lot with the European women feminists and anti war campaigners and pacifists. So I think it's really important to remember that, that, that context as well that it, that there were, it was very, it was very international in reach that network that she followed. For a woman of her time and her background, so ahead of her time on race, extraordinary really. I mean, I think, again, another enormous fan of, of your book, our great British Ethiopian poet. Lemsise wrote again so fondly of the book and said that she was protesting the black lives matter before the term was invented. And I think anyone who reads the book will, will see, will see the force of, see the force of that. Someone already has suggested one of our, one of our audience on this, on this call has asked about how she ended up in, in Ethiopia. And the relationship with Haile Selassie. It's a, it's a, it's a terrific question. So, so thank you for that. And that, that's the thing about Sylvia, isn't it? She's a, she's a teenage militant suffragette when you've got this new young generation of women. And of course, this is what, this is what Emmeline Pankhurst and the other mothers recognise that this was a new generation who were going to push in a different way. It's incredibly important part of her career, but it's really important to remember that in terms of anti-racism and anti-colonialism and supporting those liberation struggles. But Ethiopia in particular, I mean that was 30 years consistently of her life. And she originally became involved in, in Ethiopia specifically because of Mussolini's imperial racist, you know, intentions there. It's important I think also to put it, just to put it in context that ahead of her time or in her time because of course she's from Manchester. She's born in 1880s Manchester to a radical family. And the connections between Manchester in particular, of course other parts of the country, but Manchester particularly in Liverpool and the abolitionist movement were very, very strong. And so there were American abolitionists who would come and stay indeed in the Pankhurst home and who would, you know, black abolitionists who would speak on behalf of women's rights in Britain. And there were reciprocity there. So I think it's really important to remember that the anti-racist movement was embedded in that tradition. And so these people who think that Black Lives Matter is a flash in the pan or whatever need to see the through line that goes right back. It's a movement of 600 years not a moment, yes. And by the way to those people who are engaging from all over the place, we're now beginning to collect comments and questions and my favourite of course, which is a comment thinly veiled as a question. So you put your point and then say don't you think and you can do that you can do that in writing just as much as you could. You could have done it standing up at the British Library said do please begin to to feed in your questions because we've just got about another 25 minutes together. But I'm very interested in her physical courage that goes with the moral courage. We often considered great political figures and activist figures to have moral courage. But this woman is imprisoned a great many times and is tortured at one stage more than any other suffragette because force feeding is torture, right? State sanctioned torture in North Wales. State sanctioned by charming liberal Tory governments. Well with liberals at that time, yeah. Not so long ago in this country and she endures all of us and goes on to still live really to be quite a grand old lady and outlives a lot of her friends and comrades who fall along the way with all that danger and ill health and ill treatment. I think that that's true and I say somewhere in the book that one of the most frightening things about Sylvia is her fearlessness. Put in context and as you say that other people fell along the way it's really important to remember how much suffering there was and a lot. We spoke at the beginning about the sacrifices in the context of unfinished business, the exhibition, the sacrifices that women and indeed many men who were also imprisoned made for rights for all and for women's rights as well as for men's rights. And in that context, there were many very, very brave and resilient women of all classes, actually. Obviously the brunt of it fell on those who were less protected, who were poorer, who had working class women did get the brunt of it, but it shouldn't be forgotten that particularly in terms of the prison population of suffragettes, women of all classes bonded. I think you say at some point. You say at some point on the book it's not dissimilar to the to the cross class experience that the men have in the trenches. Oh, it's exactly the same. Yeah. It's exactly the same and it breaks down that for as many and I think it's important to remember that because because there's such a class split which has such a long term effect more because of the war on the feminist movement to that point. It's really, really important to remember that that many women and aristocrats middle class women working class women wrote about how they came into contact with each other in prison and it broke down those barriers and people became equals and humans to each other. But in so so there was suffering across the board and also in Sylvia's own in the Pancers family. I mean her Aunt Mary died horribly of a brain hemorrhage literally on Christmas Eve Christmas Day. I think it was after Christmas dinner after she just she'd come out and served another prison term. We know some of the other more famous examples, but it's really important to remember that both in terms of the injury and abuse that was dished out on the street. Whether it was by our young provocateurs, whether it was by the police that physical attack physical assault in, you know, in terms of those contexts happen, but it did also the suffering and damage that was caused by what was was experienced in in in prison had an effect. And indeed, Zeely Emerson, the American feminist who co-founded the East London Federation of Suffragettes along with Women East of East London and others with Sylvia. She had a terrible brain fracture as a consequence or some of a run in with some police and eventually actually had to go back to America as a consequence. Do you know, Rachel? I was just thinking, you know, it's easy to sort of, you know, to get quite grim about you had to write about some very, very grim things in this book, as well as wonderful travel and panoramas and colourful history and so on. It's quite hard balance to strike, isn't it? Getting all the history right, covering the great span of the great life, but also revealing the personality and the intimate life and the psychological life, holding that all together in one. But for example, I love the way, and I know that one of your reviewers remarked on this too, I love the way that you deal with things as simple as food. We are animals with you. She hated porridge. She hated porridge, poor thing. What an irony, what a bitter, unfair irony. She hated porridge as a child and and then had that horrific treatment, but also food is a very interesting feature. Both the lovely hospitality that she and Sylvia gave to people, but also her rather sort of do a existence by necessity, but also perhaps partly as an art student and so on. What kind of person was she? Well, I'm going to answer the food question or respond to that. She was mostly a vegetarian, except during wars and of course she lived through several significant wars and of course she lived through the First World War and the Second World War and so when you could only eat what you could get then she would stand down on that. But she was vegetarian and famously Annie Kenny, wonderful, wonderful militant suffragette leader and working class by origin Irish and she was just like horrified when she and Sylvia were having to live together and Sylvia's, you know, artists Garrett as you said in London. And she, Annie Kenny wrote about Sylvia's sort of watery Egyptian lentils and her cocoa and the fact that everything was on season. And every now and again, Annie, Annie used to say, can we not go along to the to the lions restaurant perhaps on the strand and just, you know, have a have a have a little dinner. But there's a lot. I think there's a lot of politics of food generally it's actually quite important. I mean, there's a serious side to it as well because there were a lot of feminist historically, as indeed in other social democratic and indeed socialist traditions who drawn links between the abuse of animals and the abuse of women or people in general. She did have this particular aversion to porridge and it and if you spend time as a biographer must indeed living living with her for many years this this does become a motif and when she was a child she would refuse to eat it and be tied to her bed post very Victorian punishment. And she she absolutely refused it. And there's a there's a there's an interesting comment that Emily and her mother makes and Sylvia overhears her making it to some friends and she said well I gave up punishing trying to punish Sylvia some years ago because I realised that she would literally die before she would give in. So, I'm, you know, I'm, and I saw wise woman, wise woman insight into her daughter. So I have, I have, I have a question here. Sorry to interrupt from from from one of our number who who says that you talk in the book about an incident that connects your current subject with your last one, Eleanor Marks. Do you want to say a little bit more about that about that political relationship and also that incident Eleanor Marks and Sylvia Pancas the torch handed on. Well that's a that's a lovely generous and warm question and I'm grateful for that because it speaks very much to the occasion of me realising is that there's that moment for a biographer when when the person always someone known to you. Who's been there in one way or another but suddenly steps forward from the chorus if you like and comes into sharp focus. And that was exactly what what happened to me I think it's something that Virginia Wolf referred to as the fertile fact there's just this kind of sense that I haven't or about it. Who at the time this event happened was a was a seasoned activist trade union leader, you know, known to be a supporter of, you know, rights for women, the emerging independent Labour Party, she was called old Stoker. And the young Sylvia Pancas was taken to the mostly hotel in Manchester and she was just 12 going on 13 at the time. I think she was just about to turn 13 and her father Richard Bangers, of course, took Pankersky, the red doctor, took his middle daughter Sylvia to this meeting where Eleanor Marks was speaking and it was a it was a meeting in honour of Carl Leedneft, the leader of the German SPD. And there is Sylvia remembers this episode she recounts it in her first in her memoir, which is the memoir, because she writes sequential memoirs of different periods of her life. The first one is about the suffragette movement, then she writes the home front, which is about the war, then she writes in the red twilight, which is the rise of fascism and the ascent of Nazism. And these cover those those various different periods and her. So you have this this recollection from Sylvia from her from her almost not a phrase that would have used in the days but we would say almost teenage eyes looking up and listening to this very impressive older feminist leader. But and but what I find also very striking if if I may about that moment is also that you get you really get the sense that the political baton is being the torch is being handed on the feminist torch. It's the legacy. It's the through line. It's the necessity of remembering where these things come from the trade union leader, the socialist but who will not absolutely says that women must be front and centre of that. As Eleanor Marx insisted, but at the same time, Sylvia remarks and it's tricky to know because it's how she's she's sort of, you know, she's older when she's writing this. She's she's she's so far. So how much is retrospective, but she remembers that that Eleanor's partner Edward Adling was also at the meeting and she doesn't have a very favourable recollection of him. And what I find really interesting about that is that she that Sylvia who was was very successful in her relationships in in in some ways that she didn't let them hand for her. She didn't any man hold her back. And when she couldn't get what she wanted from Keir Hardy, although she absolutely loved him and it was a love relationship, she was the one who knew that she had to move on and because she couldn't get what she she would never get what she needed. Likewise, her 30 year relationship three decade relationship with Sylvia Corrie or how she structured that. She was immensely successful in that context in ways that that Eleanor Marx was not and was hampered. Well, I don't want to give anything away about Eleanor Marx because I do recommend that people that people heard the bad news. Yeah, yeah, boo his Edward Adling. A few questioners have asked a bit more about the Ethiopian period and and Sylvia and Salassie and one in particular says, do you know if she had any views on rastafarianism? Well, that's a terrific question. A terrific question. Yeah, well Sylvia had views on everything and the there's a there's a wonderful account, which I put in the book when she first meets her first interview with Salassie when he's come he's in exile in London and she's already been writing and supporting and campaigning in the newspapers and the press lobbying government in England. And so immediately, you know, an arrangement is made for them to meet. She was actually at the train station when he arrived. But that was just, you know, in fact, with a rolled up copy of her newspaper, but that was just the welcoming committee, but she meets him for an interview and she very briskly says to him, I support your cause. I support your just cause against racism and imperialism and fascism and Mussolini. I don't support you because you are an unelected monarch on an ancient throne. And he says, and how he says, yes, I understand that very well. And I think that that that moment sort of will it explains to you the context in which she she enters into that to answer the question of how she ends up ultimately in Ethiopia. Most of her fight in that context. It still takes place from London. And in fact, it's very, it's very fascinating and interesting to see how her home in Woodford. It actually becomes known as the, I think it was Kwame Nkrumah, the young Kwame Nkrumah, who called it the village, because there were many young African leaders who were young exiles, students, dissidents, and they congregated their passing through as indeed many did refugees during the Second World War. So that it's important to remember that that diaspora, if you want to call it that, that political diaspora actually started in London. And then when people went back and started continuing liberation campaigns and country, then that that dissipated. Sylvia had a longstanding invitation from from Selassie to go and live in Ethiopia. And it was towards it was later in her life after Sylvia had died. And and and and Selassie sent word and said, you know, why don't why don't you come now, you know, there's, we can we can arrange a home for you. Bring your son Richard and carry on your work here. And that's what she did. And she she I think there was some idea that she might slow down. In fact, she didn't. She cope with the altitude. She took a new box of paints and paintbrushes with her. I was informed by Rita Pankhurst, her marvellous and amazing incredible daughter-in-law before she died. And unfortunately that paint box remained untouched, but Sylvia was incredibly busy and organizing. And of course. And you went, didn't you? You went to a hospital. So I'm sorry. You went of course for this for this book. You went to Ethiopia and you saw how venerated this woman who ought to be a British national treasure is in Ethiopia. You write in your you write in your book about the Sylvia Pankhurst cafe on Sylvia Pankhurst Street. And I don't want to give too much away. But there is a little reading this wonderful book, Rachel. It's a revelation. This great British woman who some of us thought we knew a bit, but we certainly didn't know enough. And she's not properly valued in Britain in the way that she is elsewhere in the world. And in the way that so many of her male contemporaries are valued. Well, there's an important link between the work in Ethiopia where she, when she dies, she has a state, she's given a state funeral. So as you say, during her lifetime, there's Sylvia Pankhurst Street, which is still there in Central Addis. And there's still the Sylvia Pankhurst cafe with her name beautifully written in sign lettering in Hurrick, of course. But one of the most important projects that she worked on there collectively with other Ethiopian women was on founding the first teaching hospital for women and maternity hospital. And this links back to a really important aspect of Sylvia's career that we haven't touched on. But I just like to sort of because it is very relevant to now. I mean, the forces of darkness, the rise of the right, the need to be aware of vigilance about giving away rights and freedoms and trading of democracy. But the other aspect of Sylvia, which is really, really important, is her interest in maternal health and hospitals. And in fact, she writes a blueprint. She draws up a blueprint and writes a book called Save the Mothers. And it's a plea for the construction of something that didn't exist at the time, which was a state-funded national maternity health service. And later on, when you move forward, those ideas, that work that she did and her blueprint for the National Maternity Health and Allied Medical Services, obviously focused on women and children and on saving and improving the lives of mothers and their children and childbirth, was something that was built into those designs for the National Health Service when it was constructed after the war. So there is a throughline in her interest in maternity politics and public health, which I think is really important and for obvious reasons relevant to us to the present day. And you won't be surprised to know that a number of people have shed an interest in the process of writing the book about this life. And I myself have been thinking that, you know, I mentioned your previous three biographies, James Barry, Sarah Bartman and Eleanor Marks. They're very much people of the Victorian age and Sylvia feels so 20th century. She dies in 1960 with Elvis Presley topping the hit grade. And that is quite something. And of course, that means you've got lots of photographic material, let alone all the published material to work with. But was that a very different challenge to the previous works? Yes, it was. And that's something so, because she is, as you say, she felt like that to me. She feels very modern and in many ways modernist. She's born into, very much into the Victorian, the late Victorian era, very radical time, but Victorian nevertheless. And in fact, when Victoria died at the beginning of the 20th century, I did have to lie down in a darkened room and have a cup of tea because I'd never been working. Never worked with that Victoria before? I never worked with that Victoria on the throne. And that transition is, but one of the things that's so fascinating about Sylvia is how she tracks those changes and is part of that modernity herself. And indeed, if you think about all the technological changes that happen, I mean, the questions about Ethiopia. The first time that she goes on a plane, it is to Ethiopia. And she's in her 60s, early 60s, and she's just completely captivated by the experience. And she flies from London and she goes to Eritrea, she goes to Elzmara, and then she flies into Addis Ababa. And she describes what it's like to see the land below. But the other changes in technology, and actually the suffragettes themselves. I mean, there was a particular moment where something goes wrong in a campaign going back to the suffragette era. And there's a remark that Emily picked up, you know, went and found a telephone to call someone to get actually, you know, a friend who was a woman to lobby her husband who was in Parliament. You see the technology coming and of course radio comes in Sylvia's era. And in fact, we have a wonderful BBC recording of her voice. And in fact, somewhat touchingly, it's a piece that she did about in 1956, I think it was, about her mother. And it's quite interesting how she she does this piece on her mother and she's an hour and older woman. And she can see how she's become reconciled because she all that other stuff is left behind and she now wants to deliver very much this sort of figure, you know, respectfully. And then television. And in fact, going back to Ethiopia again, at a time where people like Evelyn War are saying that there's no civilisation and these people are basically, you know, barbarian, awful racist stuff. Sylvia does this TV programme, the BBC programme, where she talks about Ethiopian art and culture. She wrote a great big book on the history of Ethiopia art and she lays out these objects. So she's very, she's very game to sort of adapt to new technologies. But yes, it did certainly mean that in terms of photography, there's a great deal more to be working with. And indeed, in terms of the luminous production of newspapers and her use of the press, what she would have done with the internet and social media. Goodness me. Oh, she wore our pin nibs as it was. So yeah, perhaps we will spread that. But what an extraordinary legacy. And even in this short hour that we've spent together so much for any feminist or socialist or anti-racist or progressive campaigner of any kind to learn from and be inspired by. I just hope that people make sure they get hold of Sylvia Pankhurst, natural born rebel by any means necessary as soon as possible and certainly also give copies as Christmas presents. And don't forget also that Bloomsbury now have the other books to James Barry, Sarah Bartman and of course, Eleanor Marx, A Life All Available for a Good Reads for this very difficult season. And who knows what to follow. It remains for me to thank you Rachel for the book. But also, you know, it's not so easy to write a great big book and then to talk about it as well. You know, those two skills don't always live so easily in the same house as they do with you. So thank you so much and thanks, of course, to the British Library for bringing us all together and to their partners in libraries all over the place. And to everyone who joined us, including via the Living Knowledge Network. Unfinished business remains unfinished, but hopefully hugely inspired by Sylvia Pankhurst. And just thank you everybody for being here and sharing this evening and please keep reading and stay safe.