Feminism
New Mary Wollstonecraft statue slammed as people ask why she’s naked
November 10, 2020A statue of pioneering philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft has provoked a strong backlash just hours after being put on display. The sculpture, which portrays a naked woman held up by a swirling mingle of female forms, was erected in Newington Green, Islington, after a decade-long campaign to memorialise ‘the mother of feminism’. But the silvered-bronze piece, […]
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Mary Wollstonecraft finally honoured with statue after 200 years
November 10, 2020It shows a silvery naked everywoman figure emerging free and defiantly from a swirling mingle of female forms and, thanks to a 10-year slog of fundraising, is the world’s only memorial sculpture to a woman known as the “mother of feminism”. “It will definitely start a conversation,” said the writer Bee Rowlatt, who has led […]
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Historic England takes London ‘birthplace of feminism’ off at-risk list
October 14, 2020A once damp and leaky meeting house known as the “birthplace of feminism” is one of 181 historic sites facing a brighter future after being taken off England’s 2020 Heritage at Risk Register. The building in Newington Green, London, has been a remarkable hotbed of dissent for more than 300 years and counted Mary Wollstonecraft, […]
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How I learned to love being an Essex girl | Sarah Perry
October 2, 2020In the kingdom of the East Saxons, towards the end of the seventh century, the noblewoman Ethelburga founded an abbey in a place they called Berecingum, which means “the people who live among the birch trees”. Here she “preserved the glory of perpetual virginity”, says Bede, “in a life of great self-denial”; and when one […]
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