Wildly different: how five women reclaimed nature in a man’s world - Sarah Lonsdale

For millennia the ‘wild’ was a place heroic men went on epic quests. Women were prevented from doing the same, either through physical control or powerful myths about what would happen if they ventured beyond the city wall or village boundary. So how did women claim their place in the remote and lovely parts of our planet?

In Wildly different, historian Sarah Lonsdale traces the lives of five women who fought for the right to work in, enjoy and help to save the earth’s wild places.

We’ll meet

• Mina Hubbard, who outraged the exploration community when she stepped into a canoe in northern Labrador;
• Evelyn Cheesman, who became the first female keeper of insects at London Zoo;
• Dorothy Pilley, who shocked polite society by donning men’s climbing breeches;
• Ethel Haythornthwaite, who helped make the Peak District Britain’s first National Park;
• And Wangari Maathai, who started a movement to plant millions of trees across sub-Saharan Africa.

Drawing on interviews with Sir David Attenborough, Wangari Maathai’s daughter and others, Lonsdale recounts the women’s adventures across five continents.

About the speaker

Sarah Lonsdale is a historian and Senior Lecturer in Journalism at City, University of London. She writes for the Times Literary Supplement, History Today and The Sunday Times.

Booking information

• Advance booking for this event is not required.
• Tickets can be purchased on the door. Tickets are £2, and free for RGS-IBG members.

If you have any questions please email events@rgs.org

This event has been organised by the Midlands committee.