Virginia Nicholson

Ellas solas es una celebración literaria de las mujeres “diferentes”, las que viven en circunstancias adversas y las que se enfrentan a los convencionalismos. A ellas las cambió la guerra, pero ellas

Sits you at the dressing table of history: a place of dreams, doubts, self-harm and hopes -Sunday TimesAt the heart of this history is the female body. The century-span between the crinoline and the bikini witnessed more mutations in the ideal western womans body shape than at any other period. In this richly detailed account, Virginia Nicholson, described as one of the great social historians of our time... (Amanda Foreman) and a truly brilliant researcher has produced a most remarkable social history revealing the power, the pain and the pleasure involved in adorning the female body. She asks how custom, colour, class and sex fit into the picture, and shrewdly charts how the advances made by feminism collided with the changing shape of desirability. Full of surprising facts - the feminist plastic surgeon, the radioactive corset - alongside stories of the New Women who discovered freedom by bobbing their hair, those who were the early adopters of trousers, and early Black beauty entrepreneurs, this book chronicles the codes, the contradictions, the lies and the highs of beauty. Virginia Nicholson shows how the pursuit of beauty can be oppressive but also a way of negotiating the world and that adornment can be a deep pleasure. Its complicated!`This is a fascinating book: funny, unexpected, forgiving, political, personal, glamorous and yes, quietly, angry. Read it for the amazing stories; stay for the self-knowledge. Or the Revolution -Louisa Young, Prospect

Racy, vivacious, warm-hearted. Offers an illuminating and well-researched portrait of life among the artists, a century ago TLSSubversive, eccentric and flamboyant, the artistic community in the first half of the twentieth century were ingaged in a grand experiment.The Bohemians ate garlic and didnt always wash; they painted and danced and didnt care what people thought. They sent their children to co-ed schools; explored homosexuality and Free Love. They were often drunk, broke and hungry but they were rebels.In this fascinating book Virginia Nicholson examines the way the Bohemians refashioned the way we live our lives.

In 1942 Cora Johnston is grieving over the death of her young husband, torpedoed in the Atlantic; Aileen Morris is intercepting Luftwaffe communications during the siege of Malta - and Clara Milburn, whose son was captured after Dunkirk, is waiting, and waiting ...We tend to see the Second World War as a mans war, featuring Spitfire crews and brave deeds on the Normandy beaches. But in conditions of "Total War" millions of women - in the Services and on the Home Front - demonstrated that they were cleverer, more broad-minded and altogether more complex than anyone had ever guessed.In Millions Like Us Virginia Nicholson tells the story of the womens war, through a host of individual womens experiences. She tells how they loved, suffered, laughed, grieved and dared; how they re-made their world in peacetime. And how they would never be the same again ...

One of the great social historians of our time. No one else makes history this fun Amanda ForemanHow Was It For You? subtly but powerfully subverts complacent male assumptions about a legendary decadeDavid Kynaston--------------------------------"A feeling that we could do whatever we liked swept through us in the 60s . . ."The sixties: a decade of space travel, utopian dreams and - above all - sexual revolution. It liberated a generation. But mostly men.Meet dollybird Mavis, debutante Kristina, bunny girl Patsy, industrial campaigner Mary and countercultural Caroline. From Carnaby Street to Merseyside, white gloves to Black is Beautiful, their stories illustrate a turbulent power struggle, throwing an unsparing spotlight on morals, drugs, race, bomb culture and sex.This is a moving, shocking book about tearing up the world and starting again. Its about peace, love and psychedelia, but also misogyny, violation and discrimination, in a decade discovering a new cause: equality.And women would never be the same again.--------------------------------Sparkling . . . there is a wonderfully diverse range of voices . . . we have a long way to go, but reading this book made me grateful for how far we have come Daisy Goodwin, The Sunday TimesAn absorbing study of an extraordinary age. Beautifully written and intensively researchedSelina Hastings

In Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes, Virginia Nicholson tells the story of women in the 1950s: a time before the Pill, when divorce spelled scandal and two-piece swimsuits caused mass alarm.Turn the page back to the mid-twentieth century, and discover a world peopled by women with radiant smiles, clean pinafores and gleaming coiffures; a promised land of batch-baking, maraschino cherries and brightly hued plastic. A world where the darker side of the decade encompasses rampant prostitution, a notorious murder, and the threat of nuclear disaster.Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes reconstructs the real 1950s, through the eyes of the women who lived it. Step back in time to where our grandmothers scrubbed their doorsteps, cared for their families, lived, laughed, loved and struggled.This is their story.******Insightful social history. Mixing research with a wealth of anecdote, Nicholson brings history to vivid and touching lifeMail On SundayAn uplifting and heartwarming readStellaPoignantly illustrates how the women of the 1950s yearned for the innovative technology of the era to liberate them from repetitive drudgery Victoria Coren Mitchell

In 1919 a generation of young women discovered that there were, quite simply, not enough men to go round, and the statistics confirmed it. After the 1921 Census, the press ran alarming stories of the Problem of the Surplus Women - Two Million who can never become Wives.... This book is about those women, and about how they were forced, by a tragedy of historic proportions, to stop depending on men for their income, their identity and their future happiness.