Carol Dyhouse

Carol Dyhouse writes on the social history of women in modern Britain. She has published widely on the subject of girls' upbringing and schooling and on women in higher education.

A fascination with the visual and material culture of femininity (vintage clothes, cosmetics, perfume and fur) is reflected in her book on the history of glamour. This book explores the changing meaning of glamour, how it relates to fashion and femininity, and what glamour has meant to women.

Carol's book, 'Girl Trouble' looks at the history of girlhood as a history of trouble, and asks whether young women have been winners or losers in modern history.

'Heartthrobs: A History of Women and Desire' explores the cultural history of the heartthrob from Byron to boy-bands. Feminists have commonly represented women as 'objects of the male gaze', but this book turns things round, looking at men through the eyes of women.

'Love Lives: From Cinderella to Frozen', was published by Oxford University Press in 2021. It tells the story of how women's lives, loves and dreams have been reshaped since 1950, the year of Walt Disney's version of Cinderella, a time when teenage girls dreamed of marriage, Mr Right and happy endings.

Carol's most recent book is 'Appearances: Memory, History, Clothes',(Unicorn Publishing, 2025). It is both memoir and cultural history. It considers attitudes to personal appearance through four generations of the author's family, weaving memory through a wide-ranging exploration of fashion, femininity and feminism in the recent past.