Contacts and Contrasts

Helena Gleichen, Queen Victoria's great-niece and cousin to George V, gives the lie to the belief that Victorian women were meek, submissive and led restricted lives. A passionate horsewoman and successful artist, the autobiographical anecdotes in the earlier part of the book are lively and amusing. The longer second section gives a detailed account of how she and Nina Hollings, her long-term companion and sister of the composer and suffragette Ethel Smyth, raised and manned one of the first mobile X-Ray units to be used by the British in World War I - Marie Curie was organizing the French radiography service - for which they both received numerous decorations. Helena Gleichen paints a vivid picture of the war in Italy, which tends to be little remembered compared to the Western Front, and above all gives an extremely interesting account of how the X-ray Unit was set up and operated, and the considerable impact it had on the treatment and survival rate of the wounded.

Helena Gleichen (1873-1947).

Caroline Stone was educated at Cambridge and the University of Kyoto, Japan. She has lived and worked largely in Rome and Seville, with periods in Tunisia and Saudi Arabia and Cambridge. Interests include textiles - with a book and several catalogues on Chinese export embroideries published in Spanish - and travel accounts, particularly those written by people who don't normally write books - the poor, women, slaves... Work in progress includes a cookery book and family history written for Syrian Christian friends in Kerala and an edition of letters written by a family connection: the composer, and suffragette Ethel Smyth.