To compare, the 2021 London census reported around sixty percent of the population as white and the remaining forty percent as Asian, Black, mixed, and other, encouraging a re-evaluation of London’s medieval streets as similarly cosmopolitan and diverse. Ramírez' prose made it feel like I was being spoon-fed with delightful history, loving every single bite. I like the premise and the main idea about reframing history back into the context of the past instead of through our own lenses still stood out.

Ook is in de loop van de geschiedenis de vrouw naar het achterplan verdwenen, onzichtbaar en ondergeschikt geworden, terwijl enkel de geschiedenis van de machtigen en de heersers werd bewaard.Meaghan Allen is a Third Year PhD at the University of Manchester interested in the intersections of the medieval and the modern, especially violence towards women.

The backdrop of taxidermy is also fascinating, since it is an art form that tries to capture time and preserve life after death. The author is a television presenter and you can really, really tell—she spends a long time setting the scene in each chapter, including multi-page “imagine yourself in 7th century Loftus. It is a neat illustration of the way the motivations and biases of those who record history can change it. One of my favourite genres is books centering forgotten female stories and figures, and this is exactly what Ramírez has written in Femina.The Prix Femina is sometimes spelled Prix Fémina, but it is officially spelled without an accent, even in French.