Episode 1

Miriam Margolyes reads from Jane Robinson's account of the pioneering British women who overcame all odds to get a university education.

Women had to wait until 1869 before they could enrol at Cambridge University, and even then the odds were stacked against them. Female brains were considered too small to compete with those of men, and the country's leading doctors warned that if women studied too hard their wombs would wither and die.

This episode tells story of the sacrifices made by the first young women to arrive at Cambridge in 1869, as well as the pioneers who helped to get them there. And why the first Bluestocking wasn't a woman at all.