 Welcome to the British Library, keeping you company during lockdown. Today you're in for a real treat. You're going to meet an extraordinary person called Sophia Deleet Singh, who went from being a princess in a frilly dress to turning into a really top quality troublemaker. And there are items related to her life and astonishing legacy in the British Library's unfinished business exhibition, which will be opening later this year. See you all there. To guide us through this story, we have none other than Anita Anand, her biographer. You'll know her from BBC Radio and of course from her other great historical works, The Patient Assassin and Co-Inor. But today's book is this one. Anita is going to guide us through that. And I want you all to know that in roughly 20 minutes, we'd like to invite you to join us in a conversation to have questions with Anita. But for now, Anita, over to you. Oh, thank you very much. Thank you very, very much, Bea. So this is really exciting and a little bit strange I know for everybody. First of all, I should explain I am not standing in front of a Scotsman. This is actually my makeshift studio. I'm now broadcasting like most of the BBC from little rooms in the house and you have to make your own soundproof booth. So to that end, I've used every blanket in the house that's not being used. I've used some terrifying soft toys from my small children. This is one that some people quite admire. It's a Beable Bear, which is two-headed and terrifying. So that's where I am right now. Let me bring up some of my slides because I'm so excited to share some things with you, some pictures, which I used in the book. Now they're coming up. Let's see. Yes, that worked. Before I do that, though, and I am on a little tiny screen. I probably should have timed this a little better. Can you all see what I am brandishing right here? Can you see it? Maybe I'll stop the share and just show you because I would like you to have a guess as to what this actually is. So normally I would pass this around, but I can't do that. So instead, I'm going to show you salient details and describe what I'm holding. And then you've got to guess what it is. So here, this is not going to help you at all, but it's a stamp that says that this thing was made in Essex much like myself. Made in Essex. Not going to help you, but it's interesting. Quite weighty. Got to wait to it at this end. Quite long, fairly long, sort of rounders, but it's not a round as that because that would be too easy in a question. So put your guesses through. Be may pick some of the more interesting ones out. Let me now come back to why we're here to talk about this extraordinary woman. Share screen. There we are. Here we go. Lovely. So Sophia's a leapsing is an absolute gift of a person to write about and a gift I couldn't believe dropped on me. It was a picture was this picture that provoked the book to begin with. It came through in a magazine that had arrived a local magazine through my door saying local suffragette exhibition, and it had this picture. And even though it was in sepia, there was something about it, something about her face that told me that she was Indian or Asian, at least. In fact, even more than that, I just sort of thought she might be Punjabi for some reason. So there is a thing with us Punjabies, we can just sense each other, you take us hundreds of miles away from each other and we just kind of locate each other with some kind of weird Punjabi sonar. Anyway, I tried to find out a bit more about her. It said suffragette demonstrating outside Hampton Court and that was weird in itself. I found out then that her name was Singh, which was really very strange because I'm married to a Singh. This is not looking good for me at this point because I thought, hang on a minute. I'm a political journalist. I've been a feminist for longer than I've been a political journalist. I am married to a Singh. So how do I not know about a woman called Sophia Dilip Singh, who was a suffragette? And then it turned out this little thread that I started pulling brought down an avalanche of extraordinary facts. Let me talk to you through some of them now. Sophia Dilip Singh was the daughter of a Maharaja. This was her father, Maharaja Dilip Singh, who is known to Indians. One of the most tragic stories we Indians, especially if you're from the north of India, are brought up with a little boy who was forced to sign over his kingdom when he was just a child to the British. He once also wore the Co-inor Diamond, which I've also written a book about, be very kindly mentioned, on his arm here, like a big egg on his little chubby arm. The granddaughter of this man here, known as the Lion of Punjab, Maharaja Ranjeet Singh, who is an absolute legend in India. He's known as one of the greatest potentates who ruled over India. And she was the goddaughter of Queen Victoria. So this at the moment is Celebrity Square Bingo for me. I was sort of finding out about a woman. I thought, I don't know anything about her. How do I not know anything about her? All these names started tumbling out of the sky. I thought, OK, I'll get a book out. I'll just read up about her. And there was nothing. There was absolutely nothing about her. So like a H that I couldn't stop scratching. I just kept scratching at it for about four years. And that's how the book came out. What else did I find out about her? Well, turns out this woman, Princess Sophia Dilip Singh, like me, was born in Britain. British Asian, OK, more and more things in common. She was, this is where it sort of we part company. She was a fashion model. So this is in the newly burgeoning era of women's magazines. Sophia was born in 1876. By the time she comes of age, women's magazines are starting to become popular. And she is very often featured because of her fashion sense in the pages of these women's magazines. So I always like to tell people she's kind of a little bit paparazzi princess. She loved to be photographed. She loved this kind of nonsensical photo spread that we're seeing here. She was also a champion dog breeder and a very accomplished horsewoman. And here for your delectation, one of the many ridiculous photo spreads that she did with her dogs and her horse. She was very, very good at breeding dogs, actually. She competed against the royal family and what now has become crops. And she only bred hilariously very, very big dogs and very, very little dogs. And she won both categories with these very, very big dogs and very, very little dogs. Pomerois and Wolfhounds. And she had her coming out, her debut in society at Buckingham Palace. So she was a favourite of the Queen who was her godmother. In this picture that you can see here, you see her two sisters. So she is on the lower tier on the right-hand side next to her, the darker complexion, but very striking woman is her sister, Bamba, her eldest sister. And above the swan-necked beauty of Catherine Dilip Singh, her other sister. They were both older than Sophia. So I could not understand for the life of me after doing some research. How is it that this woman here turns into the Hampton Court, and all of these other headlines started tumbling out at me? Because being a journalist at heart, I try and trace people through newspaper coverage. It gives you a good idea, a barometer of public feeling towards a person. So there were all of these articles which loved her hugely. My favourite, let me try and remember it properly, was from a very conservative newspaper called The Church Times that called her a thoroughly English gal, notwithstanding her great Oriental Meg. So they really, really loved her. And then there are these other headlines that describe her as an ingrate, an immigrant, a foreigner, a traitor in our midst, a traitor's daughter. They started to hate her. So what happened? What happened to change a woman who lived in Britain and wore her Indian-ness really very likely in this sort of Lafayette picture here? You can see her almost dressing up as an Indian as fancy dress. That's what she regarded herself as. To suddenly becoming the bane of the British establishment. Before I tell you what changed her, I'm going to share one particular episode because I can tell you about a woman. But I want to tell you what makes her really great and what makes her fascinating. She has this great name and great lineage and we'll talk about her journey, what is the word, metamorphosis from one state to another from this pointless kind of Kardashian creature to somebody who I think was a woman of real substance. As B would describe her, a badass, a real badass woman. So let me tell you about this one particular incident which I think sums her up. It's the 18th of November, 1910. The suffragettes have come as close as they ever have to getting the vote, not the vote for everybody, just women who have property, women over the age of 30. There are stipulations it's not perfect, but it is something. But the Prime Minister at the time, a man called Asquith, has this blind spot when it comes to women. In so many ways, a progressive Prime Minister, in so many ways, sort of the man who thinks about welfare, the man who thinks about pensions, the man who thinks about a people's budget, you know, quite forward-thinking. But when it comes to women getting the vote, he has an absolute block. And so two days before the 18th of November, there is a big meeting in the Albert Hall, and Emmeline Pankhurst, the leader of the more militant wing of the suffragettes, the WSPU, says, I have heard rumours that Asquith is going to kill the bill. And the thought was that this bill, which had progressed further than any piece of legislation before it to give women the vote, to give them some voice in their own future, was going to be suffocated because he was going to guillotine the time, so it would not pass. He was going to kill the bill. And she says, if this happens, if he kills the bill, we are going to march on Parliament. We are going to make him answer to us. Who's with me? And this forest of hounds spring up. The voices of all these women at the Albert Hall miss raise the roof. And among them, this tiny, diminutive, brown-skinned woman called Sophia Deleepsing. Five foot one feet, size three feet, and hands, which are smaller than mine. Now, I'm very, very freakishly small hands, I'm told. Even smaller than mine. I know this because somebody once very kindly allowed me to try on one of her gloves could not get anywhere near to getting my hands into them. So she's tiny. But she's one of those women that makes Emily and light up because she's a superstar. So to have a superstar marching at the front, a superstar whose Queen Victoria's own goddaughter at the front of this march. Well, that wouldn't that be something. So Emily picks this cadre of superstar suffragettes, Sophia among them, among them other names that you may have heard of. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Britain's first woman doctor, first woman mayor. A woman called Mrs. Saul Solomon, who is a state's woman who's come from South Africa, who is outspoken. She is a real liberal in the true sense of the word, trying to make spaces for women. Darinda Nelligan, who is one of the pioneers of girls' education in this country. Avelina Haverfield, hair for airton. I mean, I love hair for airton so much. I get very excited when I talk about these women and I get off track. And we'll just tell you about her for airton. She was there because kind of a cube of a woman with black frizzy hair and intense eyes, who was one of the first, the first woman to be allowed into the Institute of Electrical Engineers. But what made her special is that she was known as Marie Curie's Rottweiler. Because when Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize, newspapers refused to acknowledge her in this country. They said that Pierre Curie had won the Nobel Prize. And it was Haver for airton who wrote again and again to editors to say, correct it. In her words, a lie told about a woman has more lives than a cat. So everybody knew about these trouble-making women and everybody recognized Sophia's face, this great magazine feature. So there they are. They've got together. Now, Caxton Hall on the 18th of November, 1910 and they are getting ready to march. They can't all march together because there's a new ordinance from the Home Secretary, a man you might have heard of called Winston Churchill, who is sick to death of these bloody women clogging up the criminal justice system. There they are. They get arrested. They clog up the courts. They make their speeches. They clog up the prisons. He's sick of them. So he doesn't want this to happen this time round. So he set an ordinance that they can't march together. People can only march in groups of 12. And so Emily says, that's fine. That's what we'll do. We'll separate into groups of 12. We'll march into attachments. I will go with Princess Sophia and all of these people here for airton, Derinda and Elegant, all of these. And we will march in the first group and we will go and march to Parliament. And that's what they do. Little groups, detachments of 12 go from Caxton Hall, which is about an eight minute walk from Parliament. And they make their way to St. Stephen's Gate at Westminster. And when they get there, they come across Parliament Square, which has been in the news so much lately. And it is packed out. This is an era which doesn't have television. So spectacles like this, where the suffragettes clash with the authorities, pull crowds. There is a detachment of naval officers from an American ship on leave who come to see the fun. There are policemen stuffed full of policemen, plain clothes and in uniform, on horses and on foot. And these women had to run a gauntlet through these pressing crowds to get to the gate. But they make it. Sophia then finds herself, and as we'd say in these days, kettled at the gate at St. Stephen's, next to Emily and Pankas. But they've been allowed to go through. So they're just expecting the next detachment, the next detachment to come through. The next comes in. The next comes in. And Sophia and Emily are watching absolute horror as the police turn on these women in the most violent way. You know, there are some really shameful chapters in British Parliamentary history. I know we are aware of this. This is one of the worst, because it's state sanctioned violence against these women. The edict has been passed around, not formally, but informally, that do not arrest these women, tire them out and tiring them out. So the police means picking them up, throwing them against walls, against the tarmac, sexually assaulting them. One of the most awful, brutal parts of researching this book was going through boxes and boxes of testimony from women who described having their clothes ripped off, having their breasts grabbed so hard that bruises were left for weeks afterwards and they thought they may have breast cancer because of the violence that was inflicted on them. And this starts happening all around them. Emily is screaming from the gate, arrest them, arrest them, just arrest them. Sophia is screaming, just arrest them. Nobody's listening. There is mayhem in the square. And suddenly this little woman who has known privilege all her life, she lives at Hampton Court, by the way, in a Grayson Faber house given to her by her godmother, sees a little gap in the crowd and she dashes through, straight through, makes her way into the crowd. Why? Because she sees a police officer grabbing a woman whose name she doesn't even know, picking her up, slamming her into the ground, the woman gets up, picks her up, slams her into the ground, again and again, as Sophia can't bear it, she thinks that this sister suffragette is going to die. And so there she goes. Inside the crowd, puts herself in between the police officer and this woman and shoves him with her body and says, get off her. And he lets her drop. Now to most of us, you know this is a result. We'd be quite happy with this, but not Sophia. So this police officer, imagine it, suddenly has this celebrity A-lister in his face. He drops the woman. He tries very hard to disappear. You don't want to be tangling with this nonsense. And he goes into the crowd. Sophia follows him because she is going to complain about him, because she finds his behaviour so abhorrent, she's going to complain about him and she keeps screaming at him, show me your number, show me your number, show me your number. The number then, as now, on a policeman's uniform on his epilote, will tell you which station he's based at so you can identify him. And it's only when she gets the number, V-700, V-700 that she lets him go. This fracar in Parliament Square, where no arrests are made, goes on for five and a half hours. And it's only then out of despair that finally the arrests are made, Sophia being one of them, and all these women are bailed to appear the next morning. Not one of them is charged. Why were they not charged? Despite the fact that later on they're going to be accused of all sorts of brutality. Well, because they did not want the testimony for this day to get out. This is also one of the first times that newspapers suddenly start pivoting about their opinion about the suffragettes. You see, until this point, these women were crazy in the eyes of most of the press. They were unfeminine. They were wrong. Somehow not quite right. And yet pictures like this of police officers looming over women who are thrown to the ground and semi-conscious. The testimony of men who are in that square suddenly makes their argument feel real. The daughters of Britannia are turning against the country. What is this? So that's a little taste of Sophia. Just a very quick, because I know time and I want to answer as many of your questions as I can. She was an absolute pain in the butt to the establishment. There was a thing called the press cart procession, which the suffragettes used to do. They used to drive carts, selling their newspapers, their radical newspapers to places where they knew they were going to get trouble and they knew they would be heckled, but they knew that would also draw attention and might get into the newspapers. It must have manipulations of their day. So they drove these press carts to places like Drury Lane to park outside taverns and theatres when men would come out. They would be jeered and, you know, it would all build up. Sophia Delipsing not only went on these press carts, she drove the carts. Look at the front of that picture that I've just pulled up. The woman in the redonkulous hat, which is the height of Parisian couture, is a princess, an Indian princess driving the cart to Drury Lane. When the suffragettes in 1911, so a year after this horrible thing, which was known this day, 18th of November 1910, I should have said was known as Black Friday, the real Black Friday. Everyone talks about shopping in Black Friday. It makes my blood slightly boil. The real Black Friday was 18th of November 1910. A year later, the suffragettes step up their campaign. They start burning things down, blowing things up. These are some of the pictures from Q Gardens, where they did the most on feminine thing. The way the newspapers wrote about it was actually quite something. They had the temerity to rip up flowers and burn down flowerhouses. How could they over is not shrivel up on the spot? The newspapers were so upset that these women were so unfeminine they would turn on flowers. And here, the public opinion, which had been sort of swung towards their favour in 1910, started swinging away. Women like even the sainted Elizabeth Garrett Anderson started turning back from this militant wing, this Emily and Pankhurst wing of the suffragettes and saying that we don't like this. We don't like post boxes being burned or chemicals being poured in. And we do not like trains being set fire to insidings. And we do not like this. And we don't like David Lloyd George's house being set on fire. So they started backing away from the WSPU. Sophia doubled down. So whenever somebody was brought to court to be prosecuted for these things, like making homemade incendiary devices, she would make sure she was there publicly sitting in the gallery. There was a time when the suffragettes did this whole militant strike along Oxford Street and Bond Street. They had toffee hammers in there for months. They at an appointed time or stood in front of different shops and went blink with these toffee hammers and the windows were all smashed to pieces. Sophia did not back away that even though many suffragettes could not stand this, they thought it was insanity and turning the public against them. This I wanted to show you is the 1911 census. I think a great pride to the British. The British were second to none when it came to bureaucracy and measuring and numbers. And the census was their pride and joy. Suffragettes refused to take part in the census. Many of them just went missing. They just refused to be in their homes to be there when the census counter knocked on their door. They walked around Aldwych, many of them, around an ice rink that was there. One very famously hidden a cupboard in the House of Commons. You'll know her name if you know anything about the suffragettes. Emily Wilding Davidson, who later would become immortalised and how crazy it is immortalised for dying when she threw herself in front of the king's horse at the derby. But this is Sophia de Leipzig's which she could have been arrested and sent to prison for. This woman tried again and again and again to be arrested and sent to prison. No vote, no census. As women do not count, we shall not be counted. We have a conscientious objection to filling in this form. She got on everybody's note that this is a wonderful thing. When this exhibition happens at the British Library, it's so much of my research at the British Library, you will come across this extraordinary letter which is, Queen Victoria has gone. Her son, Edward, has gone. It is now George V on the throne and he cannot stand Sophia. She's there living in a grace and favour home. Thanks to his family, how dare she be doing these things? And he writes to very high place people in the India office and says, can we not throw her out into the street? Can we not get rid of her? And there is a wonderful exchange which the British Library has, which you will see. And this is just one example of this page. He asked if anything could be done to stop her. Can we stop her? I mean, can we throw her out? And the Secretary of State for India who's juggling all sorts of problems and the last thing he needs is for the story to get out that this tiny little chit of a woman is defying the British authorities to such an extent that she's been thrown into the streets. He's got to keep hold of India. And the north of India, where Sophia is of the royal family, is restive again. And he says, if you want to do it, you do it. It's on you, but we're not touching this. It's a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant paper trail which the British Library gave to me. So this is a little bit about a woman who's a debutante who was a superstar who turns into the enemy of the people. And if you have any questions, please buy them at me because I could bang on and on and on and on. We would love you to do that, Anita. It's a rollercoaster. Thank you so much for sharing that. We've had lots of questions come flooding in. We've actually invited people, if they'd like to, to join us on screen. Please do pop up if you feel that you'd like to. So for anyone that sent in a question, let us know if you'd like to pop up. We are actually hoping to speak to Ashesh first who's got a question. But whilst we're finding Ashesh on screen, Anita put us out of our misery. What was that wooden thing? Okay. So this is a calisthenic club which women were encouraged to use to keep young and beautiful. You know, the bat wings thing. So you might swing it around and there are a number of prescribed exercises for women to keep your arms toned. Very, very big in Victorian, Edwardian and even Georgian England. It was also the weapon of choice for the suffragettes. And why was it the weapon of choice for the suffragettes? We tell you it fits absolutely perfectly in the sleeve of even quite a short woman like me. And what you do is if you're a suffragette and you believe that the police, because now you've seen the police can turn on you with great violence, you carry these things in your coat. They are entirely concealed in your coat. And if you are charged at, you slip and you swing. It's one direct move. Viewers in the safety of your own living rooms, I've seen Anita swinging this thing around. I'm really interested in it. And I invite Ashish to join us on screen. Are you there Ashish? Can you hear us? I'm indeed. Hi. We met at Bancrofts a few weeks ago. I was sitting next to you at the time and I got the book and I've read the book. You've said... And I've been absolutely fascinated by the book I'm also mad at the book and looking how can the British government treat people in such a brutality way, it's been absolutely appalling. And how could they treat the Raj in such a way? And I'm now a firm believer that the Goy Nor Iro has got to go back to India. But having read the book, I've actually seen that some of your descriptive pieces, some of the descriptions of India, of the various palaces, various situations, the dresses and things have been very, very accurate. Have you achieved that accuracy? Is there any artistic license in there or is it out of diaries and bibliographies and things like that? You know what? Let me, if I may answer your question, actually, it's very nice to see you by the way. Hello. Let me, I'm going to share some more images from you because this was, I was very, very keen to, because I couldn't believe how extraordinary this story was, to stick so very closely to the truth. Because I know that if I had written this down as a fiction proposal, I've got a story about an Indian princess whose Queen Victoria's goddaughter who fights with the police in Winston Churchill and King George's with hate her guts. They'd send me away. They'd say, don't be so ridiculous. Don't be so silly. So I really needed to stick very closely to the facts. And let me show you a little bit of what I found. And again, this is something that if you are lucky enough to make your way to the exhibition that is, that is going to be heard at the British Library, you will see this. So the thing that changed Sophia was exactly the thing that outraged you. So why is it that somebody's put pointless and pretty self-absorbed and will turn up to the opening of an envelope, which was what Sophia was like. She liked parties more than anything. How does she suddenly become so politically conscious that she tries again and again to put herself in danger for her fellow women? And it was India. It was actually India that changed her. Now, why am I not able to do that? Let me just, there we are. It was a trip to India during the Darbar celebrations when her godmother died, Queen Victoria died, and Edward VII was going to be anointed. It was decided in India to have a huge celebration, partly to mark the passing of one monarch and the arrival of another, partly to remind the Indians who was in charge. So at this great party, this Darbar celebration, every potente from every part, every principality, every kingdom of India was meant to come forward and bow before the King Emperor. And Sophia was itching to go. She just really, it's such a good party and everyone was going to be there or her friends were going to be there, and she didn't get an invitation. So she tried again and again and she and her sisters tried again and again to write to the Secretary of State and they didn't want them there. Because the dispossessed Dileep Singhs and the story of her father, which I do tell in great detail in the Co-inor book and also a little in this book, is so miserable. They thought just their very presence would spark some kind of uprising. But Sophia, being made of quite dirty stuff, she and her sister sneak on three separate boats and they go there anyway. And they see for themselves this enormous celebration, this might and majesty of the Indian principalities and kingdoms and for the first time they see all that they have lost. They also see the amount of money that was spent on the Darbar celebration and famine that has decimated the rest of the country. This postcard was sent to people, said by people as a novelty. That, oh, look, look what's happening. This is a postcard from the time. So suddenly it strikes her that there is something very, very wrong about the Raj. And for the first time, she's not the only brown face in the room. She's one of many. Now in Britain, she was treated as a celebrity, but in India, she's just another coolly. So she faces racism for the very first time in India and all of these things bite her so deeply. She sees all of the lands, this is all Lahore, by the way, which is where her grandfather and her father range. She sees all of this. There are no statues to her father. There's so little to her grandfather and yet the roads are named Charing Cross, the Marl, and there is a statue of Queen Victoria at the centre of the city. And you asked me, where did I get this? Did I stick to the fact? This is a diary that the British Library holds, which her writing is abysmal and it was the biggest migraine I've ever gone through trying to decipher this. But this shows the development of a politically inert person into somebody who has fire set in her. And she hears the cries of these revolutionaries in India saying, give us a voice. I'll ask them, I'll ask them, I'll ask them, I'll give us a voice. They want a voice, I say, in how they are run. And when she comes back to England, she hears it in the suffragettes as well. I hope that, I do long answers these. Stop me doing that. No, it's just the problem is it's so fascinating. I'm dying to jump in and yet I can't. Thank you very much for your question. I should say it was lovely that you could join us. Our next question waiting for you is from Ellen. Ellen, are you there? We should be able to see Ellen popping up any moment now. Yes. Ellen, what's your question to Anita? Hello, first of all, I'm just really happy to be here as a commissioned poet by Poet in the City as part of the Collections Inverse Project, bringing the Unfinished Business exhibition to Newcastle. And as part of that, I spent some time looking at the collection and researching Sylvia Pankhurst. And so my question for you is this, when the Pankhurst split and Crisabelle and Emeline Pankhurst really changed their priority away from trying to get the vote for everyone, to trying to get the vote for just some women and Sylvia formed the ELF, which really aimed to bring working women to the heart of the suffragette movement. Where did Sophia stand on that? So from what we know, and because she had her letters, I mean, the most frustrating thing. And every time I talk about this, I say, please, look in your attics, look in your garages, because a lot of the information that I found were letters that she had written to her, that her sisters had written to her because she had conserved them all, and they're also at the British Library. And there are people who had boxes of these letters, but her letters to them were scattered to the wind. So we have to guess, we have to fill in the gaps. We do know that she was sufficiently loyal to the Pankhurst, that when Emeline Pankhurst died, she was chair of the Committee for the Commemoration Celebrations. When the statue that you now see in Abingdon Gardens was consecrated, she was right there, front and centre. But we also know, at about that time, she is possibly feeling the disillusion that you are referring to, that there is a split in this sisterhood that had meant everything to her. The people she once saw eye to eye with are now talking about things she can't get on board with. Emeline Pankhurst, for example, and something you didn't mention, was very, very pro, keeping the colonies at all costs. You know, she was a pro-empire, and this would have really rubbed Sophia up the wrong way. And you sort of see a decline in Sophia after this point. She looks as though she's almost wasting away a little bit of photographs, you know, because there's still always photographs of her. And her sister's letters to her are saying, please eat, please eat something, please do something, please don't slip like this. And it is actually ironically only the Second World War, because the First World War also, I mean, we won't have time to touch on all of this, gives her a reason to live. The suffragettes stopped their struggle, but then she turns to nursing the Indian troops that are coming back to Brighton and raising money for them. And then the Second World War is the other thing that lifts her after this depression of what have the suffragettes become, because she takes in evacuee children, and she suddenly has a cause again. This is a woman who lives for a cause, and that's, I think, a roundabout way of answering. She was not... I'll go to... Don't pee in if I may. Sorry, thank you so much for your question. We've got loads of really wonderful questions coming in now. Really keen to widen the debate around and the narratives around what people's perceptions of suffragettes are. And on that, I'd like to invite Jamila to join us. Jamila, are you in here somewhere? I'm hoping to see you pop up. Otherwise, we can... Oh, yes. Hello, Jamila, please join us. Hello, nice to meet you all. Hiya. I'd just like to start by saying I had never heard of Sophia until I was at an event for charity, Water Aid, and the actress Anne-Marie Duff was there. And I got talking to her, and it was soon after the film Suffragette came out, which was 2015, not that long ago. And she recommended the book to me. And... My book? Oh, that's nice. Yeah, she recommended your book and noted the fact that she didn't really have... Did she at all have a role in it? She certainly didn't have a leading role, I don't know. I can't remember her... No, she wasn't in it. I'll tell you a good story about that in a minute. Go on. What struck me about the movie was the connection between the middle-class women who led the suffragettes and the working-class women who really became a huge part of the power in the movement and one of those women, Anne-Marie Duff plays. And I just wondered, if Sylvia, she was an ethnic minority, but she was also extremely privileged, did she ever connect up with British Asian or ethnic minority women who were working-class? Well, no, I don't think she did, not with the working-class, because at that time, the working-class Asian women, and let's say Indian women, because they were, it was India at that time, it wasn't a diasporic country, they were invisible. So they were the Ios who had come over with British families and been discarded, or there was sort of that servant level of women who had come over, they'd served all their lives with families and then the children grow up and they're just discarded. So they become completely invisible. What she did do in her life is that she... I mean, can we say that she connected? No, she didn't probably have friends, we don't have any awareness of that, but we do know she raised money for shelters, for particularly the lush girls who were, again, the lowest of the low, there were men who had sailed over, bringing the riches from the East over in merchant ships and then had been cast loose and couldn't afford shoes, let alone a roof over their heads. So she cared very much for them and she carried on donating money and fundraising for shelters and literally saved hundreds of lives as a result, no doubt about it. But she was privileged. She was in this country, as I say, she was kind of white in this country. She wore that Lafayette picture. She wore her Indian-ness very, very likely. But in India, she discovered her Indian-ness and when she came back after that, she was much more conscious of being Indian. So she had a lot more connections with Indian women. They were of her class, though. I mean, there's no doubt about it. There's a travel writer who includes, but she's an aristocrat, an Indian travel writer who's traveling through Europe and meets her. But most notably, when she goes to India, she talks about the suffragette movement there and is directly responsible for some of the great strides in getting women included in the new constitution of a new free India. So she meets a woman called Mithun Lam and Hirabai Tata, who are part of this small group that Gandhi will appoint with Sarojini Naidu, another very prominent woman in India, to sculpt the new India. And she tells them, she wears this badge and Hirabai Tata writes about it. So that's why we know about this. So what is this? What is this you're wearing? And she says, well, this is how women fight in England. And when the first commission sits in London with Hirabai Tata, Sarojini Naidu facing all the British great and good, including Annie Besant, by the way, there is the fire as well, front and center in the press reports sitting with them. So, you know, she did what a woman of her class could at that time, was she friends with Ayaz? No, I have no evidence to suggest that she was. I'm gonna jump in there again. Thank you very much, Jamila. It was lovely that you could join us. It's just fascinating to me how one life can just throw light in so many different directions at this critical juncture in the relationship between Britain and India. There's a question here. We've had loads of questions sent by text messages well via our chat facility. And I've got really one here from Jet Jeep Bains who asks about, are there any descendants of Ranjeet Singh? Are there any survivors? No, there are not. This is the terrible tragedy. So again, this is one of those things of folklore that is associated with the Coenore Diamond, which the family used to own, that the Coenore wipes out dynasties. And the tragedy is that Dilip Singh had two sons and three daughters, and none of them went on to have children of their own. And there are all sorts of great, like Sophia was too white to marry a brown man and too brown to marry a white man. She never settles down, never has children, even though she's incredibly maternal. And later on in her life, we'll prove this again and again. Her sister, Bamba, marries very late in life, but only to get money out of her trust. She says, no, it's not a real marriage. It's pretty much a sham marriage between these two people. And she also insists that the courtiers, when they were children, put powders in their food to make them all sterile. But she was quite an, who knows? She insisted it, that I have nothing to back that up at all. There is another story that's told by people related to Victor, Dilip Singh, the oldest son, that Queen Victoria, he married a white aristocrat, and she supposedly, Queen Victoria, invites Lady Anne Coventry to come and see her after the marriage as she must never have children. Because the line must die, because if there is a Dilip Singh, then there is a challenge to authority and Punjab. So none of them had kids. No. I'd like to pick up with another question. Thank you for that. I'd like to pick up with a question from Kieran, Sahot, who asks, says, I love the book very wise. And Kieran began to research and looked how that story links into the stories of many other South Asian women and the efforts that were made. Do you think there's enough being done celebrating her life and work? No. I'm thinking of the stamp. The stamp was amazing. Okay, so that really, I don't think I'll ever do anything that cool in my life. I don't know what that was. So she was completely unknown and the Hilary Juff thing, so I'm just circling back to that. It's all to do with the same thing. When the film Safar Jet came out, Safar wasn't in it at all, which is a shame, because one of the incidents which is pivotal, when Meryl Pankhurst or Emilyne Streep, however you want to put it, it appears at the balcony and the police charge in Campton Hill Square, Safar was there. Safar was one of the ring of steel around Emilyne Pankhurst as the police are trying to drag her out and they carry the decoy to the police station. So she was there. She was actually there when all the other suffragettes are practicing their suffragettes. By the way, jiu-jitsu brought to this country to buy the suffragettes. Another story for another time. But there was just nothing about it. So anyway, a lot of noise was then made when the film came out, particularly in America, that you whitewashed brown women out of the story. And to me, it was really strange because I thought, and a lot of it centered around my book. And I thought, actually, none of us knew about her until now. And I thought it was wonderful that people were angry, but I didn't want to knock a film about suffragettes because God, how long have we waited for that? And I, you know, more of that. But then I was telephoned and I was sawn to secrecy by a royal male that they were going to bring out a stamp with Sophia on it. And that there was going to be a whole suffragette series that she would be one of the only people on her own. So there would be groups of suffragettes that she would be on her own. And so that picture that you see on the front of my book, the reissue, the one of Hampton Court, the Hampton Court harriding. Not this one. It's the black one. No, it's the one I, the one, the one that's, I'll show you in a second. It's the book was reissued after the stamp with that same picture on the front. She was on a postage stamp. So I have this thrill for the rest of my life that there's this clean in the neck Indian princess with Queen Elizabeth looking down on her in a stamp. And we sent parcels. I just think it's so great. But it's wonderful. So yes, I mean, there are lots of other things I'd really like. I'd love a blue plaque where she laid out. But I fight wherever I can to talk about her and for people to know about her because she was so brilliant. I just don't think we can have enough of these as you call them superstar suffragettes and troublemaking women. So here's to many more. Thank you so much, Anita. We're having to draw this to a close now. Thank you very much for joining us, everybody that's been here. I'd like to urge you to buy this fantastic book because let's face it, if we're all spending the same amount of money on books as we are on booze, then that would be a good thing. Also, I'm gonna ask if you have enjoyed this event and you feel moved to make a small donation to the British Library, there's a message appearing just down here at the bottom from my team members, which will show you how to do that. But in the meantime, thanks again to Anita. Stay safe everybody and goodbye.