My family’s links to Dawlish and Exeter in Devon provided the inspiration for the setting of A Killing at Smugglers Cove...

On 28 October 1908, Muriel Matters and Helen Fox chained themselves to the grille of the Ladies' Gallery of the House of Commons. This protest inspired events in my novel Death at Crookham Hall. But why did the suffragettes hate the Gallery?

100 years ago, on 22 September 1921, Margaret Wintringham became the third woman to be elected as a Member of Parliament. She was the first female British-born MP and the first-ever female Liberal MP.

Women's football teams enjoyed great success in the first decades of the twentieth century. But in 1921, the Football Association introduced a ban that stayed in place for 50 years...

Newspaper reports of the force-feeding of suffragettes on hunger strikes caused outrage at the time. Public opinion began to turn in favour of the suffragettes and against the government.

Cryptic ads for abortion pills, claiming to quickly 'correct all irregularities' and 'remove all obstructions' were commonplace in newspapers during the early part of the twentieth century...

In my novel, Death at Crookham Hall, the fictional Mrs Sybil Siddons becomes the third woman to take a seat in the House of Commons when she wins a by-election in 1920. But who were the first women to enter Parliament...

Research is one of my favourite aspects of being a historical crime fiction writer. However, it's easy to become sidetracked...