A WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2023
This is a neglected history. Not a sweeping, definitive, exhaustive history of the world but something quieter, more intimate and particular. A single journey, picked out in 101 objects, through the fascinating, too-often-overlooked, manifold histories of women.
Open up this cabinet of curiosities and you''ll find objects that have been highly esteemed - even, like the Bayeux tapestry, fought over by nations - and others that are humble and domestic. Some (like a sixteenth century glass dildo) are objects of female pleasure, some (a thumbscrew) of female subjugation. There are artefacts of women celebrated by history and of women unfairly forgotten by it; examples of female rebellion and of self-revelation; objects that are inspiring, curious or (like radium-laced chocolate) just fundamentally ill-conceived.
Through the variety and nuance in all these 101 objects, Annabelle Hirsch has created a new history - teeming,
