Latest news with #NewnhamCollege
Spectator
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Spectator
Provocative, verbose and humourless: Mrs Warren's Profession reviewed
George Bernard Shaw's provocative play Mrs Warren's Profession examines the moral hypocrisy of the moneyed classes. It opens with a brilliant young graduate, Vivie Warren, boasting about her dazzling achievements as a mathematician at Newnham College, Cambridge. She explains her future plans to a pair of mild-mannered chaps who clearly adore her. Like most of Shaw's characters, Vivie is hard-nosed, emotionally cold, incapable of speaking concisely and boundlessly self-confident. Quite irritating, in other words. She plans to start a firm with another hyper-brainy female and to make a killing in the London insurance market. This occurs in 1902. Was it normal for two unmarried Edwardian women to enter the world of high finance straight out of university? Hard to say. But for Shaw it seems feasible, so we accept it. However, Vivie's life is about to be thrown into disarray. Enter Mrs Warren, her redoubtable mother, played by Imelda Staunton. Kitty Warren speaks and thinks exactly like her daughter but she affects a more luxurious personal style. Her ash-blonde hair is piled high on her head and she's magnificently robed in a costly ball gown accented with necklaces and other pieces of finery. She looks like the tsarina being led to her execution by the Bolsheviks. But her accent carries inflections of a rough past. We learn that Kitty rose from the gutter to become a wealthy businesswoman and the details of her past are slowly revealed during Act One. She began as a barmaid at Waterloo Station where she earned four shillings (£20 today) a week. Then she was spotted by a female relative who worked as a courtesan and recruited Kitty to the business.
Yahoo
08-03-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Remarkable women of WW2 to be celebrated
Women who played vital roles during World War Two are to be celebrated in an exhibition at the International Bomber Command Centre. Ten women have been chosen by the centre, in Lincoln, "to represent the contribution, courage and leadership shown by women at all levels" during the conflict. They have been immortalized as 8ft-tall (2.4m) steel silhouettes, which will go on show on 14-15 March, in recognition of what the centre describes as their "previously unacknowledged qualities and capabilities". The statues have been created by Standing with Giants – the team behind the D-Day display at the British Normandy Memorial, which was unveiled last year. By 1943, 90% of single women of working age, and 80% of married women, were working outside the home in the armed forces, industry or other wartime organisations, the centre said. One of the sculptures is of Joan Curran, a physicist. She graduated from Cambridge's Newnham College in 1937, but was not awarded a degree because the university refused to grant them to women at the time. Ms Curran, who secured funding to study for a higher degree, played a critical role in many technical developments. Most notably, she was involved in the invention of "Window" – a radar countermeasure designed to jam German radar equipment. Dorothy Robson was also a physicist and engineer who was responsible for developing the tools for precision bombing. She joined up with the Royal Aircraft Establishment and was known as "the girl with laughing eyes". Dorothy died aged 23 on a mission to check the bombsight on a new aircraft. Another of the statues commemorates Lettice Curtis, who was the first woman to fly and deliver operations in a Lancaster bomber. As a pilot with the British Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) between 1940 and 1945, Ms Curtis was said to have flown "13 days on, two days off" for 62 consecutive months, in a range of aircraft. The unveiling of the Women in War exhibition will mark the opening of a two-day Women in War book festival, also taking place at the centre. Listen to highlights from Lincolnshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North or tell us about a story you think we should be covering here. Teacher's 'extraordinary' life in Nazi Germany Woman receives WW2 medal after almost 80 years Wartime bravery of ambulance women revealed in photos Project reveals 'forgotten' WW2 US Red Cross women International Bomber Command Centre
BBC News
08-03-2025
- General
- BBC News
Remarkable women of WW2 to be celebrated by Bomber Command Centre
Women who played vital roles during World War Two are to be celebrated in an exhibition at the International Bomber Command women have been chosen by the centre, in Lincoln, "to represent the contribution, courage and leadership shown by women at all levels" during the have been immortalized as 8ft-tall (2.4m) steel silhouettes, which will go on show on 14-15 March, in recognition of what the centre describes as their "previously unacknowledged qualities and capabilities".The statues have been created by Standing with Giants – the team behind the D-Day display at the British Normandy Memorial, which was unveiled last year. By 1943, 90% of single women of working age, and 80% of married women, were working outside the home in the armed forces, industry or other wartime organisations, the centre of the sculptures is of Joan Curran, a physicist. She graduated from Cambridge's Newnham College in 1937, but was not awarded a degree because the university refused to grant them to women at the Curran, who secured funding to study for a higher degree, played a critical role in many technical developments. Most notably, she was involved in the invention of "Window" – a radar countermeasure designed to jam German radar equipment. Dorothy Robson was also a physicist and engineer who was responsible for developing the tools for precision joined up with the Royal Aircraft Establishment and was known as "the girl with laughing eyes".Dorothy died aged 23 on a mission to check the bombsight on a new aircraft. Another of the statues commemorates Lettice Curtis, who was the first woman to fly and deliver operations in a Lancaster a pilot with the British Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) between 1940 and 1945, Ms Curtis was said to have flown "13 days on, two days off" for 62 consecutive months, in a range of unveiling of the Women in War exhibition will mark the opening of a two-day Women in War book festival, also taking place at the to highlights from Lincolnshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North or tell us about a story you think we should be covering here.
