'Totally addictive.'
- Alice Loxton, The Daily Telegraph

'An intriguing, highly snackable guide to women's experiences.'
- Independent

'A modern classic.'
- Alison Weir, author and historian

'The sort of book you return to again and again.'
- Tracy Borman, author and historian

A captivating collection of daily extracts from women's diaries, looking back over four centuries to discover how women's experience - of men and children, sex and shopping, work and the natural world - has changed down the years. And, of course, how it hasn't.

Organised around the calendar year, in this engaging anthology you'll find Lady Anne Clifford in the seventeenth century and Loran Hurnscot in the twentieth both stoically recording the demands of an unreasonable husband; Joan Wyndham and Anne Frank, at much the same time, but in wildly different settings, describing their first experiences with sex; and Anne Lister (TV's Gentleman Jack) in eighteenth-century Yorkshire exploring her love affairs with women alongside Alice Walker in twentieth-century California.

With several selections for each day, from the 1st January to the 31st December, this book is a fascinating record of how women were thinking, feeling and reacting to historical events. From Virginia Woolf relishing her new haircut and Oprah Winfrey meditating on her career to Emilie Davis chronicling the death of Abraham Lincoln and teenage Ma Yan yearning for education in poverty-stricken China, Secret Voices contains a rich mix of well-known diarists and less familiar ones, and often the voices echoing down the centuries sound eerily familiar today.

About the Author

Sarah Gristwood is a biographer, journalist and commentator on royal affairs. Her previous books include the bestselling Arbella: England's Lost Queen, The Tudors in Love: The Courtly Code Behind the Last Medieval Dynasty, and biographies of Beatrix Potter, Winston Churchill, Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf, and HM Queen Elizabeth II. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and an Honorary Patron of Historic Royal Palaces, and regularly contributes to TV documentary series and coverage of royal events. She lives in Kent.

Reviews
'An extraordinary achievement. It's a book for all seasons - and all people. United across centuries, these women's voices open doors to lost worlds and make them seem familiar. A modern classic.'
Alison Weir, author of Queens of the Age of Chivalry
'Poignant, surprising and, at times, heart-breaking, this wonderful anthology brings the past within touching distance. The sort of book you return to again and again.'
Tracy Borman, author of Elizabeth's Women

'An intriguing, highly snackable guide to women's experiences over the past four centuries.'
Independent
This compelling book ... provides a unique lens into historical events from around the world through the eyes of the women who experienced them first-hand. The mix of diarists included means there is truly something for everyone. * This England *
...Filled with such unexpected twists and turns...totally addictive to peruse. Without exception, every entry sizzles, each one revealing some peculiar detail or fascinating insight, and together, forming a rich and vivid picture of the female experience... It is these private, long-hidden musings which Gristwood has so cleverly unearthed, and which Secret Voices - this treasure of a book - so elegantly, strikingly captures. -- Alice Loxton * The Daily Telegraph *



Book Information
ISBN 9781849948159
Author Sarah Gristwood
Format Hardback
Page Count 528
Imprint Batsford Ltd
Publisher Batsford Ltd