Bee Rowlatt In Search Of Mary: The Mother of All Journeys Friday 15th January, 7.45–8.45pm The Glapthorn Room, Fletton House, Fletton Way, Oundle, PE8 4JA
Mary Wollstonecraft is famous as the pioneering feminist who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Women. But she was also an intrepid traveller, journeying to Scandinavia accompanied only by her maid and baby daughter. It was shocking for a gentlewoman to travel without male protection in the 18th century and the book she published, Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, became a bestseller and an inspiration for Romantic writers and poets.
Enter Bee Rowlatt, a married mother of four, who is suffering from a “mum-life” crisis and in search of a mission. Having been smitten by Mary Wollstonecraft’s travel book in her student days, Bee Rowlatt decides to follow, with toddler in tow, in the footsteps of the world’s first celebrity feminist. Bee explores the vitality of Mary’s legacy and retraces the neverdying themes of babies versus careers, comparing her encounters with guilt, progress and inequality in the eighteenth century to those experienced by women today.
From the wild coasts of Norway to a naked re-birthing in California, via the blood-soaked streets of revolutionary Paris, Bee learns what drove her hero on and what’s been won and lost over the centuries in the battle for equality. Bee also discovers the importance of celebrating the radiant power of love in all our lives.
In Search of Mary has been featured on Woman’s Hour, ITV London news, BBC Meet the Author and in the Guardian and Telegraph newspapers.
Bee Rowlatt is a writer, journalist and broadcaster. She is a regular contributor to The Daily Telegraph and has reported for the World Service, Newsnight and BBC2. The coauthor of the best-selling Talking about Jane Austen in Baghdad (Penguin 2010) as well as one of the writers featured in Virago’s 2013 anthology Fifty Shades of Feminism, Bee won the K. Blundell Trust award for In Search of Mary. She has four children and lives in London.
£1 off early bird tickets bought before 8th January from the Oundle Box Office.
Michael Marmot The Health Gap: The Challenge of an Unequal World Friday 5th February 2016, 7.15-8.15pm St Peter’s Church, Oundle, PE8 4AL In his ground-breaking book The Health Gap, one of the world’s leading doctors and intellectuals, Professor Sir Michael Marmot, reveals the truth that social injustice is killing 200,000 people in the UK every year. In Britain, if people of average income or education were as healthy as the most privileged they would have an extra eight years of healthy life. Inequality is damaging the health of all of us. It is not simply about money and it is not just the poor who suffer.
Presented for the first time in one cohesive narrative Sir Michael lays out the evidence he has gathered over the last 40 years. He explains how where you are on the socioeconomic ladder directly affects your health and life expectancy, and shows we know what to do to improve health for everyone. The key is being in control of our lives, living lives that we value.
The Health Gap explains why a focus on lifestyle and personal responsibility is missing the point.
Health can only be a personal responsibility if society’s conditions allow individuals to make healthy choices. Sir Michael’s evidence from round the world shows we need to change the way we think about health, and indeed society, radically. Creating fairer societies is the way we can all live longer in better health. Sir Michael Marmot, Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health at UCL, is Director of the UCL Institute of Health Equity and, a leading expert on health inequalities both in the UK and globally. He took up presidency of the World Medical Association in October 2015 and is currently Harvard’s Lown visiting professor. He chaired the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health (2005-8), the recommendations of which have been adopted by the World Health Assembly and by many countries. He conducted a review of health inequalities for the British Government in 2010. The ‘Marmot Review’ and its recommendations are now being implemented in three-quarters of local authorities in England. He previously published Status Sydrome with Bloomsbury in 2004.
£1 off early bird tickets bought before 29th January from Oundle Box Office.
Tickets £8, conc. £6, available from the Oundle Box Office, 4 New Street, Oundle, open Mond- Fri 10am to 1pm, on 01832 274734 or at www. oundlefestival.org.uk
Any queries, call Helen on 07743 988 181 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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