International Women’s Day, Alexandra Grantham

Contributed by Dr Vivien Newman According to its own website, International Women’s Day ‘celebrates the social, economic, cultural and political achievement of women.’ I admit to being skeptica...

History of Dawlish Violets

Dr Julia Neville is an Honorary Fellow in the History Department at Exeter University, and serves on the Council of the Devon History Society.    The Strand Centre in Dawlish have published a leaflet...

Berta Ruck: A war-time best-seller

Contributed by Andrew Maunder In its notice of her death in 1978 The Times explained of Berta Ruck (1878-1978) that she had been “a novelist of popular stamp, who wrote very largely for and about you...

Back to the Front Project – Handmaidens of Death

As part of the Abbot’s Langley’s ‘Back to the Front’ project the Flatpack Theatre Company will be performing Herbert Tremaine’s Handmaidens of Death, a First World War play which deals with the exper...

Gertrude Jennings: Human Comedy Human Conflict

Barry Edwards has been researching the life and work of playwright Gertrude Jennings. She was a successful writer whose plays have been unjustly neglected since the peak of her fame in the first thir...

The National Kitchens movement in Devon

Dr Julia Neville is an Honorary Fellow in the History Department at Exeter University, and serves on the Council of the Devon History Society.    In 1917, as food shortages started to make an impact ...