Female Convicts and Invisible Agents

Available for over a year

The female is more deadly than the male. History enthusiast Susan Morrison interviews Dr Nadine Akkerman of Leiden University about her new book 'Invisible Agents. Women and Espionage in Seventeenth-Century Britain' where we'll be finding out the fieldcraft used by women spies and hearing the story of one of the Scottish spies Ann Murray, Lady Halkett who pulled a Flora Macdonald-style rescue long before Flora was even thought of. Then there's the problem of naughty women and where you put them when your society isn't really geared up for jails, Dr Eric Graham tells Susan the horrid saga of a cargo of female convicts bound for Australia on the ill-fated ship commanded by Captain John Hunter of Ayr. Then finally, happiness is not having your leg cut off whether smoking or not smoking on the battlefield. Dr James Kennaway of the Surgery and Emotion Project explores smoking in 19th century battlefield surgery and the suprising things it tells us.