The winners of the Make Space for Women competition have been announced – a stunning selection of bold and inspiring artwork. It took the judges hours of discussion to decide on the final winners – with 90 entries, ranging from paintings, photography, drawings, crochet and multimedia, to poetry and prose. The competition was run by […]
I’m looking forward to teaching an Autobiography into Fiction course for City Lit on April 24th, where we will be learning how to turn real life experiences into fiction. What are the problems – and benefits – of using personal material in fiction? Where should we start, what techniques can we use, and how can […]
I’m delighted to be joining City Academy, and look forward to teaching Online Blogging (July 8-Aug 12), Online Creative Writing for Beginners (Sept 1-Oct 6), and a one day Blogging for Beginners in June.
Author and poet Leslie Tate runs weekly interviews on the creative life, this week I chat about Bad Girls and Queens of the Underworld.
Holloway Prison, the most infamous jail for women in Europe, closed in 2016. Campaigners have been working tirelessly ever since to make sure the site is developed for the community, and that includes a proper Women’s Building. BUT there is not enough space allocated to the building at the moment – there needs to […]
Photographer Ruth Corney has published a book celebrating 20 years of photographing the Kenwood Ladies’ Pond on Hampstead Heath in London. All proceeds go to the Alexandra Wylie Tower Foundation, and the book can be bought via their website. Ruth has been capturing scenes at the pond since 2000, and some of the photos […]
Harry Gurr, champion swimmer of England in the 1860s, was also known as the Man Fish and was famous for his underwater acts, often performed in glass tanks. Born in Bethnal Green, London, in 1847 he was described as a ‘pocket Hercules’, five foot tall with well developed muscles, a ruddy complexion and fair […]
Warwick Globalist has run a review of Bad Girls, by Arts & Culture editor Isaac Little. ‘A compelling and easy to read narrative that raises uncomfortable questions for how the justice system has treated women…As a social history, Bad Girls makes a criminally understudied part of our past accessible to all.’
Reclaim Holloway is a coalition fighting for a Women’s Building to be built on the site of the former Holloway Prison. It has a revamped website, with more information on the building, as well as designs by artist Niki Gibbs. A new exhibition, The End of the Sentence, by artist and filmmaker Judy Price, runs […]
Vox is a series of bite-size audio recordings in which Royal Literary Fund Fellows explore topics around writing. Here I attempt to respond to the issue of ‘Marketing and Me’…
The Hornsey Road Baths in Islington were once famed for hosting swimming superstars, including the Beckwith family who inspired Daisy Belle: Swimming Champion of the World. Read the Islington Gazette feature here
A large print edition of Bad Girls has been published by W.F Howes, under the Clipper Large Print imprint.
I’m thrilled that an extract from Place of Reeds has been included in Botswana Women Write, an anthology of writing by and about Batswana women. The 55 writers include the legendary Bessie Head and the poet Tjawangwa Dema, as well as many women being published for the first time. The book will be launched […]
In 1952 Pat Seares, a ‘housewife from London’, was jailed at Holloway Prison because she’d shouted protests after a showing of Rommel the Desert Fox at the Leicester Square Odeon. The film told the story of the Nazi general, and after it had been shown Pat stood up and cried, ‘Do not go to […]
Bad Girls has been longlisted for The Orwell Prize, the UK’s ‘most prestigious’ prize for political writing. Four prizes are awarded, for work which comes closest to George Orwell’s ambition ‘to make political writing into art’. I’m thrilled that the story of Holloway Prison has been recognised as political, and that it has been chosen […]
Filmmaker Anne-Sophie Gomez has made a series of short thematic videos about swimming pools in art. In her latest, Soyez Synchro!, she takes a look at synchronized swimming, which features an appearance by Agnes Beckwith and Daisy Belle. It includes some beautiful archive shots of synchronized swimming routines. Watch the full video here.
The London Review of Books has covered Bad Girls in its latest edition, providing a potted history of HMP Holloway.
Family Likeness features in a series of book cover rocks to be displayed during The Care Experienced Conference at Liverpool Hope University on April 26th. The rocks were painted by @PoisonPinkDaisy, and include mum’s books Shadow Baby and How to Measure a Cow and dad’s book Relative Strangers. The conference will debate the care […]
I’m thrilled to be starting work at the magnificent Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) as a Royal Literary Fund Fellow, offering bespoke writing advice to students and staff. This is a new partnership between the RLF, the V&A and the Science Museum. The RLF Fellowship scheme was launched 20 years ago, to place established writers […]
Last May I was lucky enough to swim with seals in the Scilly Isles, thanks to a trip organised by VisitIslesofScilly.com and Scilly Seal Snorkelling. The islands are home to around 700 Atlantic grey seals, and we provided their evening entertainment. A shortened travel feature appears in the Mail on Sunday.
The Ponds: Still Waters Run Deep follows the swimmers of Hampstead Heath over the course of a year. It’s a joyous film that really captures the spirit of pond swimming, at a place where people having been enjoying the waters since the early 1800s. Watch a trailer here. The film, directed and produced by […]
An interview in the Ham & High about the women who inspired Daisy Belle, ‘the story of a courageous Victorian swimmer, who races down the Thames, floats in a whale tank, and tries to swim across New York harbour.’
Hornsey Road Baths in Islington, north London, were once known far and wide for staging performances by international swimming champions, which was why I decided to use the baths as a setting in Daisy Belle. They opened in 1892 and famous performers included Jules Gautier and Annette Kellerman. I describe some of their history […]
‘Set in a moment of the 19th century when showbusiness fell in love with swimming, young Daisy Belle’s aptitude for the water is spotted early by her father, who stages displays of ‘natation’… Based on the life of the largely forgotten Agnes Beckwith, this is an excellent addition to the literature of swimming and its […]
November 22, 2018 Edith Thompson, executed at Holloway Prison in 1923 for a crime she didn’t commit, was today reburied at her family’s plot in the City of London Cemetery. Edith was hanged after her lover, Freddy Bywaters, killed her husband Percy Thompson. Her death was one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British […]
The Ham & High covers the Unbound Courageous Women bookshop tour.
‘ Daisy Belle is a love letter to a forgotten golden age of swimming…Davies has a beautiful turn of phrase. To read her descriptions of water and its locations is transportive – here, you can smell the piping, hear the echo over shiny tiles and feel the warmth of the Lambeth baths; there, feel […]
The Independent Monitor, the magazine for the Association of Independent Monitoring Boards in prisons, has reviewed Bad Girls in its October issue. ‘Caitlin Davies sets out a compelling study into the women who were held in Holloway, using individual case studies to highlight sometimes appalling miscarriages of justice and vividly illustrate what life was […]
The award winning author Sheena Wilkinson, described by the Irish Times as ‘one of our foremost writers for young people’, has written a review of Bad Girls for the Writers Review. The book raises important questions about what constitutes crime and punishment and the extent to which this is determined by changing social mores…It […]
In 1927, Mercedes Gleitze became the first British woman to swim the English Channel. Now her daughter Doloranda Pember has written the first biography of this incredible swimmer. I first met Doloranda when I interviewed her for Downstream, and can’t wait to read In the Wake of Mercedes Gleitze, published by The History Press on […]