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During the course of her lifetime, today’s average British woman will have sexual contact with an average of 14.56 men.

Women weren’t always so free to express their sexuality. It was women like Jane who paved the way for her late 20^th, early 21^st century Sisters.

Jane Digby was born with a silver spoon in her mouth in 1807. Her father, an Admiral, had made the family pile seizing Spanish treasure. Jane was a stunner and the fact that her Daddy was loaded made her an extremely desirable marriage prospect. Aged just 17 she was married off to Lord Ellenborough, a man twice her age.

They had a son but he died as an infant. He was the first of Jane’s five children by four different fathers; only two of her children who would survive to adulthood.

Jane and Lord Ellenborough divorced in 1830 after he had an affair. Like many young women today Jane enjoyed sleeping around, looking for someone to truly satisfy her. In a buttoned-up society ruled by duty and dos-and-don’ts her promiscuity was infamous. Her celebrity affairs with the rich and famous across Europe meant she was rarely out of the papers. Her affairs and four marriages included a Greek king, an Austrian statesman, a Bavarian king, a Bavarian baron, an Albanian general. Today, that good-looking girls in the public eye have affairs with footballers, princes and film stars is normal. Jane’s many lovers and husbands make Katie Price look like a part-timer.

But Jane shouldn’t be remembered for her high-class shags. She was an expert horsewoman and stock breeder; a cameleteer; an archaeologist; a falconer; a gifted linguist – she spoke and read nine languages. She could draw and paint, had considerable veterinary knowledge, was a fearless traveller, an eloquent writer and most of all, a woman with spirit.

It wasn’t until she was into her very late 40s she finally found what she was looking for in the form of a Syrian bedouin sheik 20 years her junior. Medjul El-Mesrab was the love of her life. He lived a traditional tribal, nomadic life, and Jane delighted in sharing it with him as his one and only wife.

They trekked through the desert in the winter, bivouacking at the ancient ruins of Palmyra, and spent summers at her house in Damascus.

It was women like Jane who unknowingly paved the way for modern women to both do their own thing and enjoy their sexuality. Jane still had her mojo aged 73, when she wrote in her diary: “It is now a month and 20 days since Medjul last slept with me! What can be the reasons?”

Of course it wasn’t until the contraceptive pill became widely available in the 1960s that women could truly express their sexuality. The pill gave women reproductive choice, a luxury denied to Jane.

Jane died of dysentery aged 74. She and Medjul had been married 28 happy years. Medjul was heartbroken. He took a block of pink limestone from Palmyra, carried it back to Damascus, carved an inscription on it and lay it on her grave.

When I visited the unkempt, neglected protestant cemetery in Damascus, Jane’s grave in was covered in dust and rubbish and leaves. The boy who had come to unlock the cemetery gates to let us in found a hose and washed it down. The limestone block sparkled pink again.

Jane’s life story is such a ripping yarn, I cannot understand how Hollywood hasn’t made a film about it. I see Nicole Kidman in the starring role.

Sisters! If you have ever voted in an election, thank Emmeline Pankhurst. And if you have ever decided not to vote in an election, you can thank Emmeline for having that choice.

And Brothers! You can thank Emmeline too: for freeing your mothers, sisters, aunts, wives and daughters from lifetimes of voiceless, subservient frustration, and enabling our talents, opinions, creativity and humanity to enrich our society.

Emmeline was born in Manchester in 1858, at the height of the industrial revolution. Both her parents were political activists, so as a child she learned, almost by osmosis, about social justice and the need to speak out. She read avidly; Uncle Tom’s Cabin and a History of the French Revolution made particularly deep impressions, and her mother’s subscription to the Women’s Suffrage Journal would profoundly shape her thoughts.

She understood that campaigning on a single issue ‘votes for women’ would enable women to change everything that mattered to them: sexual health and reproductive rights, employment law, inheritance law, fair pay.

“We want to help women…We want to gain for them all the rights and protection that laws can give them. And, above all, we want the good influence of women to tell to its greatest extent in the social and moral questions of the time. But we cannot do this unless we have the vote and are recognised as citizens and voices to be listened to.”

She began looking for an organisation she could join that reflected her passionate political views. An obvious choice was the National Society for Women’s Suffrage but she became frustrated with its party political affliations. The Parliament Street Society advocated votes only for single women; married women’s husbands could vote on their wives’ behalfs. Not good enough! Emmeline and her husband Richard founded the Women’s Franchise League. It was radical – it supported equal rights across the board – but too radical, and dissolved after only a year. She joined Keir Hardy’s newly created Independent Labour Party. After a visit to a workhouse to distribute food aid, in which she saw the appalling, insanitary and undignified conditions that many women and their children had to tolerate, she wrote:

“The condition of our sex is so deplorable that it is our duty to break the law in order to call attention to the reasons why we do.”

By 1903, now a widow with five children to support and a mountain of debt, Emmeline’s patience was wearing thin. Moderation and oratory weren’t getting her anywhere. Political parties weren’t putting votes for women at the top of their agendas. She’d have to do something herself.

Emmeline, her daughter Christabel and several others founded the Women’s Social and Political Union whose motto ‘Deeds not Words’ was a hint of the direct action and radical stance it would need to take to get the job done. The time for being lady-like was history. Hurrah!

Things turned militant. For voiceless, disenfranchised people there is no other way. Take note, Muamar Gaddafi, Bashir Al Assad and other monstrous control-freaks of your kind.

Initially the suffragists marched, rallied and petitioned. Then they set fire to property, sent letter bombs, spat at the police, smashed government buildings, threw axes, and chained themselves to railings in a sustained campaign of disobedience. They were arrested, imprisoned, heckled, humiliated and went on hunger strike. Emily Davison’s protest at the Epsom Derby lead to her death under the hoofs of the King’s horse. Others endured solitary confinement and force-feeding to break their hunger strikes.

“We are here, not because we are lawbreakers; we are here in our efforts to become lawmakers.”

The Daily Mail, as pathetic and odious then as it is now, coined the derogatory, diminutive term suffragette, derived from suffragist.

Emmeline’s three-word campaigning slogans ‘Votes for women’ and ‘Deeds not words’ still chime down the years: ‘Make poverty history’, ‘Feed the world’, ‘Save the whale’, ‘Yes we can’, even ‘Arbeit macht frei’.

After the Great War, The Representation of the People Act 1918 gave the vote to all men over 21 and some women over 30. Bah! Hardly the dream of universal suffrage that so many had fought for. The Women’s Party emerged and Emmeline embarked on lecture tours, and tirelessly continued campaigning.

By the 1920s, well into her 60s now, the long struggle, frequent imprisonment and hunger-striking, a punishing schedule and emotionally-draining strife with her daughters was taking its toll. She died in a nursing home in London aged 69.

Three weeks after her death The Representation of the People Act 1928 was passed. At last women achieved electoral equality with men: aged over 21, regardless of property ownership. Now the struggle for equality could truly begin. Still it continues.

What would Emmeline make of today’s world? I think that she’d be horrified that 41 years after the Equal Pay Act 1970, the gender pay gap is as wide as ever. I think she’d be shocked that despite the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, women still get second class treatment. I think she would be appalled by the lack of aspiration of so many girls today (which incidentally is not their fault. If we don’t tell girls what’s possible, no wonder they aspire to be WAGs or mums at 16.) She would be bemused – and yet she would understand. Today’s Sisters would do well to revisit and emulate the proud tradition of women’s protest that Emmeline began.

And so each election time, when my polling card falls through the door, I thank my lucky stars that Emmeline, and the thousands of other women who struggled with her, made it possible for me to mark my X in that box.

Women: remember that your right to vote was hard won. When I see that thousands of people today, especially young people, can’t be arsed to vote, I could weep. Even if you think all the candidates are self-serving numpties you can still vote: simply spoil your ballot paper. Spoilt papers are counted and together they send a clear message. They say: ‘there’s no one worthy of my vote’. Just do it for Emmeline.

And today, as the Arab world erupts and millions of people struggle to have their human rights respected and opinions heard, I hope that they too will find courageous warriors to lead them, as we had our Sister Emmeline.

This post also appears on Dorian Cope’s blog On This Deity.

Five-hundred and eighty years ago today the English tied a 19-year-old French peasant girl to a pillar in the square in Rouen and burned her alive. Her executioners were so afraid of relic-hunters they reduced her body to ashes which were then thrown in the river Seine.

(Painting by Hermann Stilke, 1843)

At the time of Joan of Arc’s death The Hundred Years’ War had already been raging for 94 years. The War, a series of conflicts which actually lasted 116 years, was a power struggle between various French noble houses and the English, who claimed dominion over vast tracts of France. The prize was well worth fighting for: the French throne itself. It was in this web of Anglo-Gallic argy-bargy that Joan became entangled and would emerge as a saint.

Joan grew up in Domrémy, a tiny village which had been periodically trashed and burned during the Wars. At the age of just 12 she had visions of Saints Michael, Catherine and Margaret who told her to drive out the English. Joan was a good Catholic girl and good girls don’t argue with the Word of God. Joan was on a mission.

Demonstrating remarkable powers of persuasion and political acumen for one so young, aged 16 she got an audience with the uncrowned King Charles VII and told him of her holy quest to have him restored to the throne. Experienced military commanders, Counts and Dukes all pooh-poohed her, but she was not to be deterred. At their second meeting the King saw her unwavering righteousness and took a chance. He needed to, because things were looking desperate. By 1429 the English had Orléans under siege. Strategically the city was vital for French forces to recapture. Only a leader with his back against the wall would put his faith in a farm girl dressed in men’s clothes who took orders from angels.

Joan took 5,000 men and rode to Orléans. She had the king, the saints and the Good Lord on her side! She dressed as a bloke and cut her hair; it was more practical and it would protect her from unwelcome male advances. Joan is reported to have been a skilled military tactician and strategist, a charismatic leader. She mounted carefully planned raid after raid, and with blind faith worn like a suit of armour, she inspired the soldiers. Incredibly, they broke the siege in just a few days.

More success followed. But during military action in Burgundy she was unhorsed and captured. This set in motion a woeful chain of events which would lead to her being sold by her Burgundian captors to the English who tried her as a heretic in a dodgy kangaroo court.

Just 24 years after her death she was retried and declared an innocent martyr. Too late for poor Joan who, having fulfilled her Holy Mission, had just wanted to go home to her mum and dad in Domrémy.

The Maid of Orléans’ was undoubtedly a righteous and brave warrior, defeating les rosbifs and fighting for the freedom of France. No wonder she is a national heroine on the other side of The Channel. Books and plays have been written about her. Films made. The Catholic Church sainted her. Visionary, martyr, call her what you like; but it’s worth remembering that Joan was essentially just a girl with a big idea determined to get out there and change things.

This post also appears on Dorian Cope’s blog On This Deity

Since then Scandinavian crime novels have piled up at my bedside table, which is unusual as I don’t normally read novels. Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo had me gripped, and I’ve just finished One Step Behind, book seven of Mankell’s Wallander series. Yesterday I began Jo Nesbø’s The Devil’s Star. (Yes I know I should begin with The Bat Man, but I have been lent The Devil’s Star.)

(above: Henning Mankell at St Mary Magdalene church, Woodstock, applauds the audience applauding him)

So when my mum rang me and said “Henning Mankell is coming to Woodstock” I couldn’t believe my ears.  Woodstock? (It’s just 4 miles away). Wow! Immediately I got tickets from The Woodstock Bookshop who arranged the event.

And so this lunchtime, Woodstock’s St Mary Magdalene church was packed out with Mankell devotees, including me and Moth. The event was organised and for a BBC World Service Book Club programme.  Speaking in English with an enchanting Swedish accent, Mankell read extracts from Faceless Killers and took questions from the audience.

Henning Mankell was every inch as thoughtful, warm, gently witty and right-on as I suspected he would be. His success as a writer is due to the realism of his characters and his interest in social justice. He doesn’t shy away from big, difficult subjects: racism, immigration, violence against women. Indeed he created Kurt Wallander specifically so he could write about The Really Things society faces today. Kurt is ‘the mirror’ who struggles with them both in his mind and in his work. And we struggle with him.

The author’s political integrity oozes out of his books as does his interest in the wider world. Despite his massive success, Mankell remains modest, quiet and he famously shuns public appearances. He is far more interested in fighting AIDS in Africa, working with theatre groups in Mozambique, and giving away his fortune to charity. What a dude.

Shakespeare is rightly famous for coining many new words. If this is the measure of a great author, then today in Woodstock in the space of an hour, Mr Mankell gave us ‘fictious’, ‘erotical’ and ‘passionated’. And everyone knew precisely what he meant. That’s perfect English isn’t it? Tack så mycket, Mr Mankell. You’re my new hero.

We were fortunate to see them again last night at the NEC in Birmingham, this time from the third row from the front.  This allowed my husband to indulge his passion for photographing the bands he loves. All the photos in this post are taken by him.

The  three gentlemen that make up Rush, Alex Lifeson – guitars, Neil Peart – drums and Geddy Lee – bass and stuff, make a huge, all-encompassing sound.

That they have sustained a truly successful career spanning more than 40 years and brought their fans with them during all that time is testament to their abilities as accomplished musicians and songwriters and their urge to keep trying new things. Here’s Alex going for it:

The theme of the show (they always have a theme) was Time Machine and, apropos of nothing, sausage making.

After a short and very amusing film on the giant screen behind the band, they opened the show with Spirit of Radio, a well-known example of Rush’s genre: slick, heavy, precise, tuneful inventive progressive rock, played to perfection.

Rush fans are predominantly male; the audience was perhaps 95% blokes. Why girls seem unable to appreciate the powerful, driving riffs, thoughtful lyrics, intelligent arrangements and gorgeous melodies is a mystery. Sisters! Open your ears, you’re missing something beautiful!

For Rush fans, among the songs they played were; Far cry, Free will, Faithless, La Villa Strangiato, the first two parts of 2112, Stick it out, Presto, Working them angels, Leave that thing alone, Marathon, Subdivisions, and new songs BU2B and Caravan. For the start of the second half they played their wonderful 1981 album Moving Pictures in its entirety in track order.

Neil displayed his drumming skills in a 10 minute drum solo – more of a song played only on drums really – and proved yet again why he is so often cited as possibly the best rock drummer in the world.

I am unfeasibly fond of Neil.

Rush like to keep their fans amused not only with their music, but also with an impressive light show, back projection of films, periodic flames (which felt damned hot from where we were at the front), fireworks (see photo above) and carefully timed explosions.

You get to know the characters in a band if you follow them for a few years. Though (sadly) I don’t know them personally, Alex, Neil and Geddy are lovely people; modest, intelligent, humane, witty, warm, hard-working. And they make fab music.

Thank you chaps for rocking my little world.

Photos: (c) Moth Clark, 2011

Meanwhile back home in Eynsham, my exhibition continues tonight from 5.30 to 8pm, and all weekend from 12noon until 5.30pm both days. Please do drop by.

Looming over her was expert swordsman Jean Rombaud who had been especially brought over from France for the occasion. A single stroke from Rombaud’s weapon sliced her head from her body.

The date of Anne’s birth is lost to us, but on the day she was beheaded, she was still only in her late 20s or early 30s and had been Queen of England for just three years.

When Henry VIII fell in love with Anne she was little more than a teenager, and he had been married to Queen Catherine of Aragon for 24 years. But Catherine had failed to spawn a male heir. Henry was frustrated; he needed a different woman to mother his sons. In 1525, he began to pursue Anne, who was one of the Queen’s maids. But unlike numerous other girls, including her sister Mary, Anne refused to shag him. Spurred on by her obsequious, social-climbing father (it would all end in tears for him, too) she didn’t nob the sovereign until she was Queen of England. Henry was a sportsman and she knew the thrill of the chase would keep his passions inflamed.

She was spot on.

England was still Catholic and Henry had to ask Pope Clement VII to annul his marriage to Catherine. The Pope refused. So cutting a very long and turbulent story short, Henry severed ties with the Roman church and declared himself Supreme Head of the Church of England. Now he reigned over not only England’s political life but its religious life, too. He divorced Catherine in 1533.

After eight years of political and religious turmoil, Henry and Anne married. Henry’s joy was short-lived. Anne’s first baby, born later that year, was a flamed-haired girl, Princess Elizabeth. Henry was devastated.

It wasn’t meant to be like that.

Despite her intelligence, wit and political nous, Anne was never going to have an easy ride. The public regarded Catherine as the rightful Queen, and Anne as the whore who had bewitched the King. Miscarriages followed. Perhaps this was proof that she was a witch? That the Almighty had cursed their union?

Henry’s court was a nest of vipers; the King’s advisors operated in an atmosphere of mistrust, whispered betrayals, religious superstition and plotting. With no son to protect her and an increasingly desperate King losing interest in her, her downfall was inevitable. Absurd charges against her of high treason, incest and adultery were fabricated. In a travesty of justice she was found guilty. The only mercy Henry showed was to have her executed in the swift and humane sword-swinging French style rather than a drawn out and grubby burning at the stake.

Anne was a victim in so many ways. There was no other way for a savvy, spirited woman to better herself than by marriage. She was used as a pawn in her father’s ugly power-seeking games, used by Henry to mother his sons, used as a scapegoat by the villainous self-serving bastards at court.

She may have had her head chopped off, but Anne posthumously got the last laugh. She turned out to be a hugely influential figure in English history. In a man’s world she succeeded in rising from commoner to Queen. She was mother of, arguably, the finest monarch England has ever had. She was the reason for England’s break with the superstitions of Catholicism. Amen to that.

This post also appears on Dorian Cope’s blog On This Deity

Opening times:

• Saturday 14 May 12noon to 5.30pm
• Sunday 15 May 12noon to 5.30pm
• Thursday 19 May  5.30 to 8pm
• Saturday 21 May 12noon to 5.30pm
• Sunday 22 May 12noon to 5.30pm

Do come along for a cuppa!

We’ll be open:

• Saturday 14 May 12noon to 5.30pm
• Sunday 15 May 12noon to 5.30pm
• Thursday 19 May  5.30 to 8pm
• Saturday 21 May 12noon to 5.30pm
• Sunday 22 May 12noon to 5.30pm

I’ll be showing lots of paintings of the animals, birds, landscape and this year my hand-drawn maps.

It’s free to come and look and there’s absolutely no pressure to buy. Come and enjoy a cup of tea with us, ask me about my pictures, and see my pictures up close; the bright colours and careful drawing look so much better in real life than here on the web.

“We haven’t been to any exhibition before where we liked almost everything!” said Mike, Sarah and Laura Davis, in my visitors book.

At the same time as my exhibition, there are another three exhibitions going on in the village, all just a short, pleasant stroll from each other in our beautiful village.