If you didn’t catch it, I recommend a web search for the excellent episode of BBC Radio 4’s ‘History’s Toughest Heroes’ on my great-great-aunt the suffragette Constance Lytton. That broadcast not a surprise, because I’m in it – but what was a lovely surprise was the BBC 2’s ‘Celebrity Mastermind’ over Christmas that featured Constance as the specialist subject of broadcaster Ashley James. These were the questions Clive Myrie posed:
- “What alias did Lytton use to ensure that she’d received the same treatment as less privileged working-class suffragettes after her arrest in Liverpool in January 1910?”
- “What was the title of the book written by Lytton and first published in March 1914 that describes her experiences after being jailed for her part in suffragette protests?”
- “In protest at her arrest and detention in Holloway Prison after a demonstration in February 1909, Lytton carved which letter of the alphabet into her chest?”
- “Which of her fellow suffragettes, traumatized by her experiences of being force-fed in 1913, did little Lytton later support by paying her private asylum fees?”
- “’The Pageant of Great Women’, staged in Bristol in support of the suffragette movement in November 1910, Lytton portrayed which renowned nurse and social reformer?”
- “At what house in Hertfordshire, designed by Edwin Lutyens and built in 1901, did Lytton live for much of her later life?”
- “Lytton helped working class girls to participate in what traditional activity with the help of members of the Esperance Club?”
- “In 1896, Lytton helped her aunt, Mrs. Earle, write a bestselling book with the title ‘Pot-Pourri from a –‘ what?
I am relieved to say that I did as well as Ashley, only not knowing the answer to question 4. How have you done? As Knebworth residents, I hope you got question 6. The answers are: 1) Jane Wharton. 2) ‘Prisons and Prisoners’. 3) V. 4) Rachel Peace. 5) Florence Nightingale. 6) Homewood. 7) Morris dancing. 8) Surrey Garden.
Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH
@HenryCobbold