Her Brilliant Career
“In a series of engaging, gossipy essays, filled with sharp observations, she examines the lives of 10 very different women…. It’s clever and amusing, a series of sketches that provide a revealing glimpse into the culture of 1950s Britain.”
Wall Street Journal
In her apron and rubber gloves, the woman of the fifties has become a cultural symbol of all that we are most grateful to have sloughed off. But what if there was another side to the story?
In Her Brilliant Career, 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 theater owner. Nancy Spain, journalist and radio personality. Joan Werner Laurie, editor. Jacquetta Hawkes, archaeologist. Rose Heilbron, QC.
Plucky and ambitious, these women left the house, discovered the bliss of work, and ushered in the era of the working woman.
This is the fifties, retold: vivid, surprising, and, most of all, modern.
Praise