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Reviews

MISS MURIEL MATTERS:

THE FEARLESS SUFFRAGIST WHO FOUGHT FOR EQUALITY

A long-overdue biography of the most inspiring woman you’ve never heard of

Author Robert Wainwright Publisher Allen & Unwin Price £18.99 Released Out now
“I then harnessed by the Women’s Freedom League,
quit the stage. A compelling speaker, her gifts were
have been in the midst of a seething mob
before, and I am ready to give up my life,”
declared Muriel Matters in 1908 when
one of a number of campaigning organisations that
made up the suffrage movement.
she was faced by jeering protesters who
Wainwright gives a vivid account of the night
violently opposed her demand for votes
for women. She was on the campaign trail with she chained herself to the Grille, a metal barrier
a fellow suffragette, travelling through southern in the House of Commons that confined women
England in a bright green gypsy wagon pulled by to a gallery from which they could barely view
a horse named Asquith — an ironic reference to the proceedings. Once padlocked, she loudly declared
politician’s opposition to her cause. It was a typically “We demand the vote”, thus becoming the first
courageous response from a woman who was to woman to make a speech in the House. The
become one of the brightest stars of the suffrage following year she took a risky trip on an airship
movement, yet who has unaccountably managed to distributing leaflets over London and gaining
slip from the public consciousness. worldwide fame in the process.
Muriel Matters honed her oratorical skills in her This feisty woman went on to promote
native Australia before moving to London in 1905 Montessori teaching, railed against war, campaigned
to build a career as a performer. However, as Robert for prison reform and spoke out against blood
Wainwright’s book reveals, her sense of natural sports — yet she ended her days in Hastings, alone
justice was outraged by the unscrupulous treatment and largely forgotten. This book rescues her from
of actresses and female stagehands and she soon historical oblivion.

MARIE CURIE: THE

waste
Radioactive
RADIUM FAIRY (of fascinating material)

RECOMMENDS… Author Chantal Montellier, Renaud Huynh Artist Chantal Montellier Publisher Europe Comics
Price £6.49 Released Out now
Destined For War
he achievements of Marie Curie are remarkable. larger and larger and it wasn’t due to the effect of X-rays!”
Author Graham Allison Price £18.99
Publisher Scribe Not only did she twice win a Nobel prize, but she “Was our joy too perfect to last? The wheels of fate would
In Destined For was the first female professor at the Sorbonne and soon turn against us…” Danielle Steel could do better.
War, Harvard pioneered the use of radiography in medicine. She As for the artwork, it has a certain stiff, grainy
scholar Graham T also stalwartly withstood critics who accused her of authenticity, but its over-reliance on photo reference
Allison makes
the case that the claiming credit for her husband’s work — she, in fact, was becomes laughable. Characters stare out from the page at
US and China by far the better scientist of the two — and racists who the reader, looking maniacal or emotionless, and there is
are headed for objected to a Polish Jew pushing her way to the forefront of some clumsy literalism. For instance, one panel depicts
war. Allison’s
arguments hinge the Parisian intelligentsia. She deserves to be celebrated. religious zealots as humans with identical sheep’s heads.
on what’s known Not, however, in a graphic novel as trite as this. Over Bulking out the remainder of the book is a timeline by
as Thucydides’s the course of 22 pages, Chantal Montellier’s Marie Curie: Renaud Huynh, director of the Curie Museum, which offers
Trap, a deadly
pattern that unfolds when a rising The Radium Fairy reduces its subject’s life to the level of a a mixture of text and archive photographs that is far more
pattern challenges a ruling one. The ‘photo love’ strip. Beginning with Curie’s arrival in France detailed and illuminating than anything preceding it.
scenario has played out 16 times in to conduct research at the University of Paris, the narrative
500 years and resulted in war more briskly covers her marriage to Pierre, the births of their
often than not, starting with Athens’
clash with Sparta in a little thing we daughters, their experiments, their discovery of radium
call the Peloponnesian War. Through and polonium, his death in a cycling accident, the scandals
uncanny historical parallels and war that dogged Marie throughout the remainder of her life,
scenarios, Allison shows how close we
are to the unthinkable. Crucially, he and finally her own death from leukaemia brought on by
also reveals how competing powers repeated exposure to ionising radiation.
have kept the peace in the past — and Cringe-worthy captions abound: “One magnetic attraction
what painful steps the US and China can disguise another and when it came to Marie and Pierre,
must take to avoid disaster today.
the attraction was irresistible.” “Marie’s belly was growing
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