Dora Russell is usually thought of only as the second wife of the philosopher Bertrand Russell. But she is still a vigorous campaigner for issues she has always cared about - education, women's rights and world peace. She has described her life as a quest for love and liberty. Now her work is being discovered by a whole new generation.
The second in a series about six remarkable women, all born around 1900, in an age when it was difficult for them to fulfil their talents. Naomi Mitchison interviewed by Leonie Caldecott Naomi Mitchison has written over 80 books, as well as poems, plays and articles. Her literary output has been phenomenal, and controversial. In the 30s and 40s she was well ahead of her time, writing from the women's point of view about life and love. She was involved in the early struggle for birth control. She has also been a farmer who only gave up driving a tractor when she was 80, and owns a Scottish fishing trawler. Naomi Mitchison is the mother of five and is also honorary mother of an African tribe which she visits every year. She talks about her full life.
Flora Robson is recognised as one of Britain's outstanding actresses. But after graduating from RADA in the 1920s, she had to struggle to find work at first. The acting profession at that time favoured glamour rather than dramatic ability. Eventually Flora Robson gave up and found employment in a factory. Four years later, she returned to the stage and never looked back. For over five decades she took leading roles in the theatre, in films and on television. Her outstanding performances won many awards, but one of her most famous roles was Elizabeth I in the film Fire Over England. Now retired, Dame Flora lives on the Sussex coast.
Barbara Wootton is regarded as one of Britain's most distinguished social scientists. As an economist during the depression in the 30s she was concerned with the wages of the British worker. She has advocated a fairer distribution of income controlled by the Government, and more planning. Her ideas have always been more radical than many in the Labour Party. Barbara Wootton has also done much to further the cause of women's equality - yet she does not call herself a feminist. As one of the first women magistrates she served on the bench for 40 years. As one of the first women life peers she has been involved with both the abolition of the death penalty, and the move to legalise cannabis. And she would like to abolish the House of Lords. A life-long workaholic, she has achieved eminence in many careers-social scientist, criminologist, economist. Yet her personal life has included tragedy. At the age of 18 she was left a widow after just two weeks of marriage to Jack Wootton , who was killed in France at the end of the First World War.
British painter Vézelay was neglected and ignored by the British art establishment for most of her long life, but she can claim to be Britain's first abstract artist. She was born Margery Watson-Williams in Bristol in 1892, and changed her name when she went to live and work in Paris in 1926. Her studio was a street away from Picasso's, and she was part of the group of artists who contributed to the revolution in modern art of the 1920s.
Janet Vaughan has led a very full life. In her early work as a doctor in the 1920s she helped establish the cure for anaemia, a common blood disease which used to prove fatal. Just before the Second World War she helped set up Britain's first National Blood Transfusion Service, and she treated the victims of the blitz. When the war ended Janet Vaughan went to Belsen, and saw the horrors of the concentration camp. After the war she became Britain's expert on the effects of radiation on humans, with her work on strontium and plutonium. As Principal of Somerville, the women's college in Oxford, Janet Vaughan was instrumental in raising the number of women and getting the women's college the same status as those of the men in Oxford. An eminent scientist and a brilliant academic, Dame Janet Vaughan is also a witty talker.
Dame Sylvia Crowe interviewed by Anna Ford. Dame Sylvia Crowe is one of the 20th century's most influential figures in the environment. A modest, self-effacing person, her work as a landscape architect in the new towns, reservoirs, forests and many other areas has made her name synonymous with the British landscape.
The Hon Miriam Rothschild interviewed by Polly Toynbee. Throughout her life the Hon Miriam Rothschild, Commander of the British Empire, Fellow of the Royal Society, has been consumed by a passion for natural history. She had no formal education but has been honoured by universities and scientific institutions throughout the world. An indomitable and public-spirited campaigner, she cares deeply about life - people, plants and animals.
Lettice Cooper interviewed by Anne Karpf. Novelist Lettice Cooper has been writing for more than 60 years. She was highly accliimed in the 1930s but has been curiously neglected since the war. However, in celebration of her 90th birthday last year several of her novels were republished and have been selling well
Rachel Kempson interviewed by Jane Asher. In 1933, 22-year-old Rachel Kempson as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet took Stratford by storm. The national press hailed her as a new star. More than 50 years later Rachel Kempson is still acting in the theatre and in films. Married to Sir Michael Redgrave until his death three years ago, mother to Vanessa, Lynn and Corin and grandmother of ten including actresses Natasha and Joely Richardson, Rachel Kempson is at the centre of an English theatrical dynasty.
Helen Muspratt worked as a portrait photographer for nearly 50 years. In the 1930s she worked in Oxford and Cambridge. Her files catalogue the famous and the infamous of the future - Burgess, Maclean, Blunt, poet John Comford , broadcaster Alistair Cooke and many more. At 81 Helen Muspratt enjoys a respected place in the history of photography. In retirement, she now lives in Swanage where she opened her first portrait studio in 1929.
Mary Stott is best known for her 15-year editorship of The Guardian women's page but she is also a successful author, a life-long journalist, a veteran women's rights campaigner and a talented musician. Yet Mary herself insists her life is a tale of thwarted ambition rather than a catalogue of achievements.