Her Brilliant Career
Ten Extraordinary Women of the Fifties
-
- £2.99
Publisher Description
In her apron and rubber gloves, a smile lipsticked permanently across her face, the woman of the Fifties has become a cultural symbol of all that we are most grateful to have sloughed off. A homely compliant creature, she knows little or nothing of sex, and stands no chance at all of having a career. She must marry or die.
But what if there was another side to the story?
In this book Rachel Cooke tells the story of ten extraordinary women whose pioneering professional lives - and complicated private lives - paved the way for future generations. Muriel Box, film director. Betty Box, film producer. Margery Fish, plantswoman. Patience Gray, cook. Alison Smithson, architect. Sheila van Damm, rally car driver and theatre owner. Nancy Spain, journalist and radio personality. Joan Werner Laurie, editor. Jacquetta Hawkes, archaeologist. Rose Heilbron, QC.
Plucky and ambitious, they left the house, discovered the bliss of work, and ushered in the era of the working woman.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Acclaimed journalist Cook's first book is an extensively researched narrative of the lives of 10 remarkable women who managed successful careers in 1950s Britain. The author works in details of their careers in fields such as gardening, cooking, archaeology, architecture, filmmaking, and law, as well as all their setbacks and triumphs. She also tackles her subjects' private lives head on from romance and motherhood to love triangles, affairs, and heartbreak. While the book provides a full sense of their cultural milieux at the time, including the social circles they travelled in, current events, and contemporaries in their fields. The excessive amount of detail, however, often becomes distracting: is there really a need for commentary on the state of a lawyer's mascara? Unnecessary descriptions of the lives of people with whom these women had only a passing acquaintance are also frequent. Overall this book provides a thorough picture of these women's lives, but their characters are drowned by the flood of detail. B&w photos.
