Sylvia Beach was a trailblazing publisher, 'They couldn't get Ulysses and they couldn't get a drink', who founded a bookshop in Paris in 1919 which is so much more than a bookshop to this day. 'My loves were Adrienne Monnier, James Joyce and Shakespeare and Company' about the novels she single-handedly published when the custodians of morality (or men) censored it as obscene in England and America. For her, books opened the doors to freedom, shaped her thinking and feelings and gave her courage to rebel. Many lesbians who contributed to the modernist revolution chose their own names - Gluck, Radclyffe Hall, Bryher (the second subject of this quadruple biography), Genêt, HD, Colette and Renée Vivien - all breaking from patriarchy and from being the property of men. Bryher felt trapped in the wrong body and even as a child she viewed her birth gender as a trick, a mistake, and saw herself as a boy. She became a patron of modernism and the rock and saviour of her partner the poet HD, Hilda Doolittle, and funded the Contact Publishing Company in Paris, supported James Joyce and his family with a monthly allowance, gave money to Sylvia Beach, and subsidised Margaret Anderson's Little Review in New York. She financed experimental films and founded Close-Up, the first film magazine in English. She built a Bauhaus-style home in Switzerland and supported the emerging psychoanalytical movement in Vienna, funding Freud and other Jewish intellectuals hounded by the Nazis. Natalie Barney was a society hostess and the main business of her life involved lots of sex. Modernism in art upended 19th century rules of narrative and form and codes of conduct for sexual exchange. Natalie was remarkable for her exuberant commitment to lesbian life: 'My queerness is not a vice, is not deliberate, and harms no one.' She met her last amour on a bench by the sea in Nice when she was 80. She was very rich and felt entitled; disinhibited, she did not stall at taking off all her clothes in or out of doors, and no pleasure was more intense for her than orgasm. And the fourth subject, Gertrude Stein, who with her partner Alice B. Toklas were at the cultural heart of Paris for four decades. An indomitable duo, they were photographed by Man Ray, painted by Picasso, featured in memoirs and were a sight to be seen. She was a ground-breaking writer. They were all women who loved women who formed a community around them in Paris and the great biographer Diana Souhami weaves together a vivid moving tapestry of life among the Modernists in pre-war Paris. A very literary biography with citations and books listed, and dozens of pictures. Pagemarker, 456pp.

The American-British historian who specialises in the medieval world of the Mediterranean and the Middle East holds MA degrees from Oxford and University College London and here tells the untold story of the trailblazing dynasty of royal women who dared to rule the Middle East. In 1187, Saladin's armies besieged the Holy City of Jerusalem. He had previously annihilated Jerusalem's army at the Battle of Hattin, and behind the city's high walls, a last-ditch defence was being led by an unlikely trio including Sibylla, Queen of Jerusalem. They could not resist Saladin, but if they were lucky they could negotiate terms that would save the lives of the city's inhabitants. Queen Sibylla was the last of a line of formidable female rulers in the Crusader States of Outremer. Yet for all the books written about the Crusades, one aspect is conspicuously absent - the stories of women. Queens and princesses tend to be presented as passive transmitters of land and royal blood but in reality women ruled, conducted diplomatic negotiations, made military decisions, forged allegiances, rebelled and undertook architectural projects. Sibylla's grandmother Queen Melisende was the first queen to seize upon real political agency in Jerusalem and rule in her own right. She outmanoeuvred both her husband and son to seize real power in her kingdom, and was a force to be reckoned with in the politics of the medieval Middle East. The lives of her Armenian mother, her three sisters and their daughters and granddaughters were no less intriguing. This is a rich and fresh history and an impressive feat of research into Crusader history. 250pp, maps and illus., chapters include Morphia and the Four Princesses, Alice, the Rebel Princess of Antioch, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Constance of Antioch and Agnes and Sibylla. 2022 publication.

Sub-titled 'The Last Heroines of Britain's Greatest Generation', and with a foreword by Baroness Betty Boothroyd, the book tells the stories of 10 of the last surviving female members of Britain's greatest generation. Whether flying Spitfires to the front line, code breaking at Bletchley Park, plotting the Battle of the Atlantic, or working with Churchill, each of these women made crucial contributions to the conflict overseas, and helped to buttress the home front. Centenarian Christian Lamb, who served as a plotter in the Battle of the Atlantic, agrees that amid the horror and tragedy of the conflict, there were positive outcomes for her sex. Women were spared a great deal of burden she explains, and there was a certain amount of freedom to be had. Catherine Drummond, now aged 99, had volunteered as a wireless operator. Some of the ten women came from backgrounds of grinding poverty, while others enjoyed gilded childhoods before joining the war effort. Joy Hunter, now aged 95, had served as a secretary in Winston Churchill in the subterranean Cabinet War Rooms beneath Whitehall. 102-year-old Jaye Edwards had an airfield in Yorkshire as the base from which she worked as a pilot delivering Spitfires to the front line. The range of military roles that women were permitted to perform expanded as the war dragged on. And the war was in some ways a great level between classes as women of all social backgrounds were drafted in to help. The book opens with a story of Margaret Turner born 18th of May 1923, who, at the age of 16 when the war broke out, volunteered as a nurse in the Voluntary Aid Detachment and witnessed a lot in just the first 12 months. With a reporter's eye for detail, Lucy Fisher artfully weaves together interviews and wartime diaries and letters in a vivid oral history. 318 pages in paperback with 16 pages of colour and archive photographs of the women as youngsters and at the age they were interviewed.

England in the 15th century was dominated by the Wars of the Roses in which descendants of King Edward III struggled for power. Edward's son John of Gaunt had numerous children by two wives, and they all divided into the factions of Yorkists and Lancastrians in the next two generations. Out of this melee emerged a series of strong women who wielded great power, including the "she-wolf" Margaret of Anjou. The author of this book focuses on four women who were all accused of witchcraft as a way of reducing their power, or that of their husbands. Joan of Navarre was the second wife on the Lancastrian Henry IV, a widow who wrote encouragingly to the new king shortly after he had seized the crown from the Yorkist Richard II and lost no time in marrying him. When Henry died and his son Henry V defeated the French at Agincourt, Joan was in a difficult position as her daughter's husband had fought with the French and was killed. Henry V now plundered his stepmother Joan's vast wealth and finally brought a charge of witchcraft against her and Friar Randolph, leading to her arrest and detainment. When Henry died his son Henry VI was only an infant, and Humphrey Duke of Gloucester became Protector. Humphrey's wife, Elanor Cobham, had been his mistress until his first marriage was annulled, and her precarious position at court was strengthened by Joan of Navarre's favour, but when Humphrey lost influence over Henry VI to his great rival Cardinal Beaufort, Eleanor was tried for witchcraft and imprisoned, with Humphrey also being disgraced and possibly murdered. Jacquetta of Luxembourg, the sister-in-law of Lancastrian Henry V, became a Yorkist following her marriage to Richard Woodville and gave birth to Elizabeth Woodville, later the Queen of Yorkist Edward IV. Both woman were accused of witchcraft and exonerated. 320pp, softback, genealogical tables.

The image of Annie "Get Your Gun" Oakley symbolises the capable, athletic, self-sufficient woman of the west, and the legend is based on the true story of an uneducated servant girl who beat a professional sharpshooter in a contest. With an eye to profit the professional married her and hired her out to Buffalo Bill's Circus, where she was paid an equal wage to the male stars. Oakley maintained a demure image in private and never publicly endorsed the "votes for women" movement that was sweeping the west of America well ahead of the demand for women's suffrage that arose on the east coast. The popular 19th century doctrine of "women's proper sphere", separate from that of men, was challenged in the west by a number of factors, including the independence of Native American women, the prominence of women in the abolitionist movement, and the need for women to go west and run farm-based domestic businesses for male settlers. The suffrage movement, as the author acknowledges, was not a straightforward march of progress but was a messy and fragmented phenomenon with a range of ideological views on women's roles. During the Civil War of the 1860s two important laws were passed, one allowing women to claim free land in the west alongside male homesteaders and secondly the creation of a hundred tuition-free colleges where women could get an education. In 1869, the Wyoming Territory women became the first in Euro-American history to be enfranchised, closely followed by Mormon Utah ? half a century ahead of the Nineteenth Amendment of 1920 which in theory gave all American women the vote. This book recounts the stories of countless independent women, for instance Ellen Smith who lost her husband and one of her children on the Oregon Trail, but nevertheless continued to claim her land and establish her homestead. 277pp, photos.

Love's labours in the fair game of making matches, marriage contracts, courting and getting caught, the wedding day, the paradise of married women, slender maintenance, careless domineering, curious wits and courtly nymphs, Sweet Bessie and Robert the Other Robert, and Essex is not the way. This entertaining and informative book explores the surprisingly varied and energetic sex and love lives of the women and men of Queen Elizabeth's England. A range of writers, from the famous, such as Shakespeare, John Donne and Ben Jonson, and lesser-known figures popular in their time, provide, in their witty stories, poems and plays, vivid pictures of Elizabethan sexual attitudes and experiences, while sober reports from the church courts tell of seductions, adulteries and rapes. Here we also encounter private journals and scenes from ordinary marriages, with complaints of women's fashions, bossy wives and domineering husbands. Besides this, there are accounts of the busy whores of London brothels, homosexual activity and the Court's amorous carousel of predatory aristocrats, promiscuous ladies and hopeful maids of honour. We conclude with the frustrations of The Virgin Queen herself. Peek beneath the bedsheets of 16th century England in this affectionate, informative and fascinating look at "ramping" and sex and sexuality on a range of topics, from religious and moral beliefs to homosexuality and prostitution. Sir Francis Bacon wrote "Nuptial love maketh mankind: friendly love perfecteth it; but wanton love embaseth it." Quotes directly from poems, journals, plays, letters, sermons (mostly in modern spelling). B/w illus. 176 pages.

King John of England was married to two women: Isabella of Gloucester and Isabelle of Angoulême. The two women were central to shaping John and his reign, each in her own way moulding the unpopular king and each other over the course of their lives. Little is known about Isabella of Gloucester and she has largely become a historical footnote. She was the daughter of nobleman William FitzRobert second Earl of Gloucester and her marriage to King John in 1189 granted him rights over her substantial property as he was positioning himself as heir to Richard I (the Lionheart). Isabelle of Angoulême has a reputation as a witch and a poisoner. She was the great grand-daughter of King Louis VI of France, whose vast land holdings in France made her an attractive asset. Chapters cover childhood and education, the role of women and queens, John Plantagenet, changing roles and representation in literature. However, both were products of their time, victims and pawns of the powerful men whose voices overwrote the experiences of women. Taking a feminist light, McQuinn brightly shines it on both England's least well-known consort, Isabella of Gloucester, the king's first wife, and one of its least popular, Isabelle of Angoulême, his child bride. 8 pages of illus. 208 pages.

There are many women shaping the stories of the North of England right now like the screenwriter Sally Wainwright whose dramas Last Tango In Halifax and Happy Valley are redefining the type of roles available to northern female actors. Then of course there has been a female Dr Who and the brilliant Maxine Peake from Bolton. Cartimandua was a Northern queen, more powerful and cannier than Boadicea - what made one stay in the memory and the other disappear? Proud Northern lasses are celebrated in this comic writer's celebration of the queens of the north - warrior women, leaders, fighters, diplomats and rulers. Kate Fox takes us on a sharp and funny journey from rebels to writers, athletes to astronauts like Helen Sharman from Sheffield, the Woodbine-smoking football player Lily Parr and those who laid the ground for modern stars from Victoria Wood to Little Mix, Nicola Adams to Lubaina Himid. There is plenty of muck and bras here, Elisabeth Gaskell's North and South to Billy Elliot, the Full Monty via Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and Kes, Coronation St., the working class politician Ellen Wilkinson who was instrumental in the Jarrow March, aristocrat Gertrude Bell who was the architect of modern Iraq, Sheila Fell, the Van Gogh of Cumbria and the outspoken Sunderland singer Nadine Shah. All of them hammering out their words, ideas and creations from the Northern cities, far from the centre of power. From the queen of the desert to Barbara Hepworth and plenty on the comedian's greatest heroine, the late great Victoria Wood. 291pp, paperback.

Nurses give Tube shelter garlic oil for prevention of flu as they take cover at St Johns Wood tube station during the Blitz or work at Villa Day Nursery, opened for the express purpose of releasing women for war work. A record output of 200,000 bricks in 48 hours was reached by a staff of eight women and two ex-soldiers, working to do their bit. Women assemble cylinder studs on crank cases of Rolls-Royce Merlin engines for the RAF bombers and other women workers destroy shells at the end of the war where the cordite was removed from 6-pounder shell cases. Here are Wrens on the River Tees 1945 or chatting to an American sailor in a pub in Northern Ireland, Sea Rangers at Cobham having a tea break sat on a blanket on the ground, a Petty Officer woman taking rifle training instruction, women rat catchers, land girls on horseback in the countryside or harvesting oats, WAAFs on an RAF base wheeling out their bicycles, women of the ATS who repaired army vehicles, operating searchlights or undertaking precision work in the Instrument Department. Plus boot polishing, fishing, keeping over 200 warships in order, manning AA guns, cutting logs in the Forestry Commission, gathering potatoes in a field - typically a man's job. 144pp of fantastic nostalgic photographs, last one a cheeky female chimney sweep.

Sub-titled 'Bright, Brave Poems About Escape and Freedom by Women' here is an uplifting collection from the ancient world to the present day. There are poems on wanderlust, travel, daydreams, flights of fancy, escaping into books, tranquillity, courage, hope and resilience from frustrated housewives to passionate activists, servants and suffragettes to some of today's most gifted writers. It is a bold choir of voices demanding independence and celebrating their hard-won power. Immerse yourself in poems by Carol Ann Duffy, Christina Rossetti, Stevie Smith, Sarah Crossan, Emily Dickinson, Nikita Gill, Fiona Benson to name but a few. 'A book is a thing of power. On the shelves of any library are stacked time machines, stately galleons, space shuttles and trap doors ready to plunge the reader into unfamiliar landscapes, seen through new eyes. These poems celebrate the sheer giddy delights of reading.' 130 poems with many female poets here to discover. Fairly large print, 284pp with satin page marker.