Episode 67. Prudent Revolutionaries: Portraits of British Feminists between the Wars

SYNOPSIS

Shortly after the foundation of the Oral History Society in 1973, the historian Sir Brian Harrison conducted a series of oral history interviews with surviving suffrage campaigners, their relatives and employees about the British suffrage movement, as part of a project funded by the Social Science Research Council. The interviews were conducted between 1974 and 1981 and were later used extensively in his 1987 book, Prudent Revolutionaries: Portraits of British Feminists between the Wars.

The original aim of the project was to provide material to supplement documentary sources on the Edwardian women’s suffrage movement in Britain and to make these interviews available to scholars subsequently working in the field. The recordings were deposited with the Women’s Library at the London School of Economics in 1981. The collection consists of 205 interviews with 183 individuals.

The episode explores how Sir Brian came to be expert in the recording and transcription of oral history interviews. It covers some highlights from the archive. An account of the opening of Corpus Christi, Oxford to women undergraduates in the early 1980s is interspersed within the discussion.

GUESTS

Sir Brian Harrison is a social and political historian of Britain, and was Fellow and Tutor in Politics and Modern History at Corpus Christi College, Oxford from 1964 to 2004, since when he has been an Emeritus Fellow. He was Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford from 1996 to 2004, and succeeded Colin Matthew as editor of Oxford Dictionary of National Biography from January 2000 to September 2004. Since the early 1960s he has published extensively on British social and political history from the 1790s to the present.

Simon’s interview with Sir Brian Harrison was recorded at his Oxford home on 26 March 2025. Interview transcript with Sir Brian Harrison’s Notes can be accessed here.