Entertainment
Before Mickey: Virginia Davis, the Girl Who Helped Launch Disney
Before Mickey, four-year-old Virginia Davis played a girl inside a cartoon world. Her films, a distributor and the Disney brothers helped launch a studio in October 1923.
Women in history
Political power, social reform, cinema and war shaped women’s lives in very different ways. These portraits bring together public voices and constrained lives, exploring individual choices alongside the institutions and expectations that surrounded them.
Articles in this collection
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History
Marie Antoinette at the Revolutionary Tribunal: The trial before the guillotine
In October 1793, the former queen stood trial in Paris during a revolution at war and in crisis. The proceedings lasted two days and ended in a death sentence. The surviving record…
Historical Figures
Eleanor Roosevelt: how she built a public voice of her own
Eleanor Roosevelt turned a privileged position into a platform for work, debate and human rights. Her resignation over Marian Anderson's exclusion reveals how she weighed public…
Historical Figures
Flora Tristan: the woman who called for workers' unity before Marx
Her journey to Peru became literature, and her experience of exclusion helped shape a programme of emancipation. Flora Tristan advocated a shared organisation for working men and…
History
Madness in Isabella the Catholic's Family: From Arévalo to Tordesillas
Isabel of Portugal, mother of Isabella the Catholic, spent much of her widowhood at Arévalo under the shadow of alleged mental illness. Decades later, her granddaughter Joanna I of…
History
The Last Princess of Korea: The Tragic Life of Deokhye, the Empire's Forgotten Daughter
She was born in a palace but lived as a hostage. Stripped of her homeland, forced into exile, and erased from history — discover the heartbreaking true story of Deokhye, the last…
Historical Figures
Maria Bochkareva and the Womens Battalion of Death: The Soldier Who Tried to Shame a Broken Army Back to Life
In 1917, a battle-hardened peasant woman, who had become a commander, formed the first battalion of women in the Russian army, intended to restore discipline to an army whose…