Thank you for visiting my website.
Here's where you'll find biographical information about me and the books I've written.
My latest book is Gardening Women. Their Stories from 1600 to the Present (Virago, 2010) Please visit its dedicated website: www.gardeningwomen.com
On the left hand side, you'll find links to the other books and articles I've written. You will also find them in the categories list.
I have always been a writer and have published on the social history of sports clothes, horticulture and consumerism and women's magazines in academic journals and BBC History, History Today and Herstoria
.
I have contributed to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and to BBC Radio 4 programmes on shopping, and the social history of dress and garden history.
I am a member of the Garden Media Guild.
I was Specialist Consultant to the exhibition, A Garden within Doors, at the Geffrye Museum which ran from 30 March- 27 July 2010.
See the Articles column for links.
I have taught at several London-based universities, and give talks and papers in the UK and the USA. See the Events column for forthcoming dates.
Gardening is my great love and I opened my previous garden in Belsize Park, London, for the National Gardens Scheme for many years. It was featured in books and magazines in the UK, Sweden and Japan, and won several prizes. I was also Assistant Organiser for the NGS London area. Now I have a large south-facing roof garden in Primrose Hill, which has also been open for the NGS and featured in various magazines. I am also starting work on a new garden in West Suffolk.
I am also Assistant County Organiser/Booklet Co-ordinator for the National Gardens Scheme in Suffolk.
This is my academic background:
I was a late starter and didn't return to do my first degree until 1990 after I'd had my family. Now I am an Honorary Research Fellow at the Bedford Centre for the History of Women, Royal Holloway, University of London. My PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London (Keeping Up Appearances: Clothes, Class and Culture 1918-1939) was funded by an Arts and Humanities Research Board Award. I took an MA in Women's History also at Royal Holloway (Distinction and the Best Student Prize, 1997-8). In autumn 2006, I was a visiting Fellow at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Conn., USA. In 2007, I was awarded the Ernestine Ritcher Avery Fellowship at the Huntington Library, Art Collection and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California.
In 1999, I was joint winner of the Clare Evans National Academic Prize organised by the Women's History Network, for the best new essay in the field of Women's History/Gender & History, 'Girls Who Arouse Dangerous Passions: Woman and Bathing 1900-1939'. This was published in Women's History Review in 2000.
To get in touch with me, please click on the email link on the right.