Boudicca, queen of

the Iceni tribe. Right: Queen Elizabeth II in

her Coronation robes by Cecil Beaton

the most powerful woman in the world. At home, her scandal-free private life made royalty respectable, after the racy behaviour of her uncles. If the rigid formality of her Court now seems absurdly stiff, it’s worth remembering that her Court composer was Sir Arthur Sullivan, co-creator of the comic Gilbert and Sullivan light operas.



First woman to hold the Order of Merit and appear on a

UK banknote, Miss Nightingale was a national treasure before she was 40. Her pioneering work tending British troops in the Crimean War earned her the thanks of a grateful nation. The money raised in appreciation funded her nurses’ training school at London’s St Thomas’s

WOMEN THROUGH HISTORY

Queen Elizabeth I in Coronation robes

1533 At Hatfield House, Elizabeth hears that her father Henry VIII has

died and she will accede to the throne

60 AD 1500

Queen Boudicca by John Opie

1600

1668 Nell Gwyn begins romance with King Charles II

1792 Mary

Wollstonecraft

publishes A Vindication of the Rights of Women

1700

Illustration

from Sense & Sensibility

1800

Newgate Prison

1817 Elizabeth Fry founds the Association for the Reformation of the Female Prisoners in Newgate

1830

60-61AD Boudicca

leads revolt against the occupying Roman forces

28 BRITAIN

Charles II

1811 Jane Austen publishes first

full-length novel,

Sense and Sensibility

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