Bodies Politic

Three women look back in old age at a past they shared, not always harmoniously - Emmeline Pankhurst, the formidable suffragette; her daughter Sylvia; and Helen, who was loved by Harry, the neglected son of Emmeline and beloved brother to Sylvia. Through the narrative of each woman flits the figure of Christabel, Mrs Pankhurst's favourite daughter - selfish, vain but irresistible. The three accounts, sometimes contradictory, sometimes confirmatory, reconstruct piece by piece the events surrounding Harry's death and the human entanglements behind, indeed at times driving, the public acts of the time.