Mostrando resultados por narrador "Katie Hickman" en Todas las categorías

Hard-drinking, hard-living poker players and prostitutes of the new boom towns; wives and mothers traveling two and a half thousand miles across the prairies in covered-wagon convoys, some of them so poor they walked the entire route; African-American women in search of freedom from slavery; Chinese sex-workers sold openly on the docks of San Francisco; Native American women brutally displaced by the unstoppable tide of white settlers–these were the women who settled the American West, whose stories until now have remained mostly untold.

In this fascinating BBC Radio series, Katie Hickman examines the lives of 'diplomatic women' through their letters and diaries. From the first exploratory expeditions into foreign lands, through the heyday of the British Empire and still today, the foreign service has been shaped and run behind the scenes by the wives of ambassadors and minor civil servants.

Women made their way to India for exactly the same reasons men did - to carve out a better life for themselves. In the early days, India was a place where the slates of 'blotted pedigrees' were wiped clean; bankrupts given a chance to make good; a taste for adventure satisfied - for women. They went and worked as milliners, bakers, dress makers, actresses, portrait painters, maids, shopkeepers, governesses, teachers, boardinghouse proprietors, midwives, nurses, missionaries, doctors, geologists, plant collectors, writers, travellers and - most surprising of all - traders.

The true-life story of women's experiences in the 'Wild West' is more gripping, more heart-rending, and more stirring than all the movies, novels, folk-legends and ballads that popular imagination has been able to create. Whether they were the hard-drinking hard-living poker players and prostitutes of the new boom towns, 'ordinary' wives and mothers walking two thousand miles across the prairies pulling their handcarts behind them, all have one trait in common: that of extreme resilience and courage in the face of the unknown.