Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - The Truth About Mythical Women

Episode Date: December 2, 2025

Myths are incredibly powerful, especially when it comes to creating nations.Why are mythical women so central to how we think about our nations? When women had so little power in creating them in the first place.Joining Kate to explore these fascinating and important ideas today is the fantastic author and historian Dr Janina Ramirez.This episode was edited by Tim Arstall and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. Thanks for listening to Betwicks the sheets. I'm so glad that you have returned once more. But before we can proceed together, I think you know what's coming. Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right. It's the fair do's warning. And here it is. This is an adult podcast, welcome by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way covering arranged adult subjects and you should be an adult too. I feel safer. Do you feel safer? The lawyers feel safer. Oh, thank for that. Let's get on.

with it. Hello, but Twixters. Thank you for joining me for a stroll through medieval Coventry. What a lovely day. There's absolutely nothing bizarre or unusual happening here at or hang on a minute. There is a naked chick on a horse. I didn't see that one come in. Do you see that one coming? It is Lady Godiva. Of course it is. Medieval Coventry. It's wall-to-wall naked women on horses. Well, that's if the story is to be believed, obviously. And there was only one. I don't know if the trend caught on. I just they're still doing it in Coventry. Maybe they are. Right, focus, focus, focus. Why was Lady Godiva going through Coventry in the nip? Well, she was trying to make a point to her husband about relieving the townspeople of hefty taxes. Well, that's all right then. We will accept

nudity in a socialist cause. And I am totally here for it. But, but, but, is there any truth to that story? Is any part of that true at all? Was there even a Lady Godiva? And more importantly, what do these kind of myths tell us about ourselves and about our sense of nationhood? These are important questions to ask, and I know just the person who can help us. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal and Society with me, Kate Lister. We love myths, don't we? We love telling myths. We love hearing myths. We're all about myths, especially when it comes to national identity. When did all of this begin? Why are women so central to these stories?

and yet had fuck all say in the shaping of our nations. Well, joining me today is the rather marvellous and not mythical Nina Ramirez, historian and author of the newly published Legenda, the real women behind the myths that shaped Europe. Are you ready to meet some fantastical mythic women? Well, I am too. Let's do it. Hello, and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets, finally. It's your Nina Ramirez.

How are you doing? Oh, Kate, I'm brilliant and I'm so delighted to finally get on this podcast which I absolutely love, by the way. I don't think there's a more fitting podcast for me to be talking about this subject on. So thank you for having me on. That's true. There isn't.

There isn't. I can authoritatively say that. That's not true. But we are delighted to have you, Nina. We're joining you mid-book tour. How is it going? How are you feeling? It's exhausting, exhilarating, exciting.

it's all the ease. It's so nice because I've been thinking about these ideas for such a long time, put them together in this book. But writing's quite a lonely business. It's sort of you and your laptop and my cat, of course. But in the process of that, you know, you're trying out these thoughts. You're like, does this work? Am I doing it right? Am I tying the stories together? Or am I talking yet? And then you get out and you start talking to like auditoriums and criminals and people. And you're not. And I'm not. It's actually good. And I was like, brilliant. This is good. It wasn't nonsense. It wasn't a mad spaghetti word scramble. It's not nonsense at all. Let's give it its full title. It is Legender, the real women behind myths that shaped Europe.

Where did this idea come from? Has this been bubbling around in the back of your head for a while? Or did you have like a lightning bolt moment on the road to Damascus type of inspiration? Well, it's funny, isn't it? It's sort of a bit of both, really, because the other two major history books I've written, the private loads of saints and then Femina. They were building out of each other, really. So I suppose if I take it right back to my childhood, please sit back and relax. I was brought up Polish-Irish-Catholic.

And the structure of that is so weird. So when I used to try and get to the bathroom in my Polish bubby's house, I had to pass like 50 saints and genuflect and bless myself just to get. So they were a real like presence in my childhood. And so when I came to write my first book, what I'd realize by studying the medieval period was that these people we call saints, these sort of one-dimensional symbols of sanctity, they actually were complicated, difficult, problematic people. So I start to unravel them in the first book. And then the ones that really

jumped out at me were Hilda of Whitby and Bridget of Kildare, who are these extraordinary early medieval women who were doing things that women are only just starting to get the power and autonomy to do now. I mean, we've only just got a female Archbishop of Canterbury. And so I wanted to focus in on them in the second book. And then when I was writing Feminart, I got to the end. And again, I guess it's part of my Polish thing. But the last chapter, second to last chapter, was on King Yadviga of Poland. So one of only two women kings in Europe industry.

And her tomb in Vaval Cathedral in Krakow, for 180 years when Poland didn't exist on a map, when it was divided up between Austria and Prussia and Russia. that tomb became a sort of a rallying point for thinkers, philosophers, politicians, who were imagining a Poland back into existence. So I was thinking, God, this medieval woman has been hijacked and attached to a nationalist cause. And then I thought, right, well, we're always being told, aren't me as historians? Get back in your box. Don't do modern politics.

Don't do what's going on today. It's not a, you know, do the past. But I do think it's our responsibility to. look at what the big issues of the day are. So each of my books has sort of taken what I think is the biggest thing that's affecting us at the moment. So for Feminar, it was about identity, sexuality, gender. For this one, it's about nationalism. It's about the divisiveness of nationalism. And God, when I started writing it two years ago, I did not think we'd find ourselves in the world that we're living in now. It was going to get worse. I know. So it's so weird. You sort of feel

a bit like Cassandra, the prophetess, screaming, I know what's coming. And nobody's listening. But I do think it's an important book because I wanted to get to the very heart of how history is used and misused by politicians, by world builders. I mean, even today we've got these phrases of kind of make America great again and golden age mentality that we're going back to something. Yeah. But what is that thing that they're trying to tie us back to? We need to probe at it. History does play a really important part in nationalism and national identity politics. And it's strange the way it works because it's not necessarily actual history.

It's stories about history. And those stories become incredibly significant. I mean, anyone studying Viking history and Viking culture at the moment is dealing with the fact that Norse iconography is often appropriated by far right. groups. Absolutely. Why do you think that we do that? What is it? It's very much cherry picking back throughout history, isn't it? It's trying to find things. Absolutely. And that was the point behind this book, really. I see it all the time as an early medievalist. We've seen terrorist attacks taking place where medieval law has been cited as one of the motivators. And that's, that's something real that's happening now. And there is this desire to come.

of think, I suppose in this modern age, that these people who are performing these acts, that they have the courage of something of a bygone age, that they're harnessing some deeper ancestor in the process of this. But it's so divisive. And when I started the book, I started thinking about all sorts of legendary figures. I was thinking about exactly like you say, you know, Viking warriors, but I was thinking about Alfred Burning the Cakes. I was thinking about Charlemagne. I was thinking about Robin Hood, even, you know, these legendary Very figures. And absolutely King Arthur was there in draft one.

It was these people that are based on historical truth, but I've had these stories. And I think it's exactly as you point out, Kate, it's the fairy tale element, isn't it? It's the sort of the nursery room, classroom version of a story that becomes so tied up with a historical individual that the actual person disappears behind the story. And that was what I was trying to probe up. And it became really evident how perennial and how immediate this is. It's still happening today. I've been on this insane project for the last year where I've travelled to 25 countries in like nine months. And in the course of doing that, I was in India. I was in China. And I was seeing how they're using their history, their past, their religious frameworks as well to support current political ends.

This is not a finished, finite topic. This is still completely relevant. When we're looking at something like nationalism, we seem to have lurched into quite an extreme point of view around immigration. That seems to be the hot topic at the moment. And you often see history being a vote. And the way it seems to be being a vote there is that there was this time once upon a time when nobody left their countries and everyone lived in their countries and there was no immigration at all. And then everything was better then. That's like a really strong example of history being usurped, but a myth of history to. try and justify current political opinions. And there's a wonderful Stuart Lee clip about, you know,

coming over here, and he goes sort of right back to the beaker people and the Anglo-Saxons with their miserable poetry. So it's an absolute underpinning of nationalism that there are others. It's all about othering. So, you know, what I found in the book, I mean, the book covers seven different European nations. But in almost every instance, when, and again, The thing that I think struck me as a medievalist was how recent and ongoing nation building is. We've had new nations appearing just in the last few years. Nations are redrawing their lines. But the actual flurry of what we would call a nation doesn't really start until the French Revolution.

And then it is a big flurry. I know. So 1789 onwards, there's this flurry of activity where first France, then Spain, then Greece, then Belgium. they are drawing themselves onto maps. But in the process of drawing themselves onto maps, they are identifying what makes them different from their neighbours, the other. So it's so interesting. Like to be French is to not be English.

To be Spanish is to not be Portuguese. To be Belgian is to not be Dutch. And what really struck me in the process too, and I'm sure this is something that's come up in your podcast before, the woman is a nation, right? So we can identify with Britannia, we can think about Marianne, we can think about these, you know, Statue of Liberty. But no women have been involved in those early years of nation building, none. I searched and I wanted to see, you know, what about the architects?

What about the historians? What about the linguists? What about the philosophers that are creating a concept of a nation? Where are the women? And they're not at the table. There's none. And that's an interesting thing to say. Like, what about queens and princesses and people like that?

Could you explain what you mean a little bit about that? Yeah. There weren't any women there for the process of nation building. For the process of the political act of drawing a nation, absolutely. So you have figureheads. And actually, that's sort of the subtext of the book as well, the way that these female figureheads are sort of repackaged and made tolerable in the modern age. But in terms of the actual designers of countries.

So a really good example is the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, which comes out immediately after the French Revolution. That text deals with men and the active citizens. What it takes no account for are passive citizens. And passive citizens are the very young, the very old, the disabled, the disenfranchised, and all women. So a few years later, this brilliant writer, Olupp de Gauche, she dares to pen a response. And she calls it the Declaration of the Rights of Women and the Passive Citizen. And she's executed.

And this is what happens. Oh wow, they didn't fuck around with that, did they? Wow, okay. Head off, head off straight away. How shit is. And I mean, she wasn't even asking for the same rights. She just wanted some rights. And that's what I mean by this idea that in terms of the structuring,

the construction of national identities, women weren't included. And the women, it's so interesting, Kate, because I could have given you 40 magnificent medieval women for every chapter. You know, I had to be selective. I had to cut them down. And these women of the 8th, 9th, 11th, 12th centuries, they are breaking every convention. And you do, you have empresses.

You know, the Byzantine empresses wielded ultimate global power. The Otonian empresses wielded ultimate global power. We have papal diplomats like Catherine of Siena. We have these extraordinary, like you say, rulers, figures, who actively ruled. And then you see this gradual erosion. of women's involvement in the public sphere. Until we get to the point where I pick up the modern women, the sort of 1800s,

where the separate spheres is very clearly delineated. The public sphere is for men. The private sphere is for women. So that's why it becomes so much harder to actually find active women that were actively involved in the nation building process. I see. It's why.

We think it's like, we always think, don't we, that we're constantly stepping on the shoulders of giant, that have gone before, we're improving, we're moving towards something better. But when it comes to the position of women within society, it's been the opposite. It's been an erosion of rights. This is, because I was reading about this recently, and there's sort of one of the theories about what happened here is that it's with the rise of effectively the middle classes. It's with the rise of money that we start to see this separation of the home and the public life

because it wouldn't have been possible for most people in medieval Britain to have said the wife stays at home and does nothing. That's just, that's just ridiculous. I know. Everyone had to do something. Everyone had to do something. In order to have this like cult of the domestic, that requires money to be able to support that. But even so, like it's not something that poor people could buy into most of the time, is it? No, oh gosh, you're so right. And in every case, you know, it's an idealised. I mean, but that's what nation building is. It's creating an idealized version of what you perceive. And it's not poor people drawing up these laws, is it? It's not. It's not. And I've got, I mean, in terms of what you said about money and trade, I mean, that is absolutely central. It's a combination of factors, I think, because firstly, you have the idea that 50 plus percent of the population women, empowering them just creates 50 percent more antagonism and intervention for those few in power. So if you can deprive them of education, deprive them of emancipation,

It actually allows the few powerful people to maintain a greater control over society. So there's that side of things. There's also the sense in which the opportunities for education are withdrawn from women quite rapidly. So if we think about the impact of the Reformation, before the Reformation, there were convents. There were Abbasis. I mean, in the book I write about Beganages, you would love the Beganages, Kate, because these are the first female-only communes. They're not nuns.

They're not convents. These are communities of women who are choosing to live together for protection, but also absolutely, also for economic benefit. So they all work. They all put money in the park. They can bring children. They don't have to live celibate lives. But in these communities, in these beautiful, I mean, they're UNESCO World Sites now,

these Beganashes. They are creating these first feminist communes, these first hubs. and all of this opportunity for women to be educated and self-sufficient, empowered, the Reformation closed all of them, blanket closing on all monasteries and all convents. The monks were sent off into churches, into the cathedrals, they became parish priests. All of the women, all of the nuns, the beguines, the lay women, they were just told to go home and that the woman's place is in the home. and instantly it's an opportunity to learn and to better themselves.

Those places were closed. So that sort of triggers a start that you pick up on, which absolutely is the rise of the middle class, industrialisation, urbanisation, these things are terrible for the roles of women in many ways. So it is fascinating to kind of show the difference in agency that the earlier women had that the later ones don't seem to have. I'll be back with Nina after this short break. It's fascinating when you try and look at what happened.

That's another example of history that's picked up by certain men's rights and the people that don't think women should have rights, is they also hark back to this idyllic 1950s idyll where everything was perfect and brilliant. And that's bollocks too. They also have this idea that it used to be really good and now we've wrecked it somehow. and it's complete, complete bollocks.

Yeah, I mean, the whole trad wife thing is just like, what the hell is that even going back to? I mean, what do you want? That's never existed. That's, like, it's so performative and bizarre. And it's just like, do you have any idea how much money they're getting paid to pretend that they don't have any money and they're making, I don't know, cheese from scratch and stuff?

It's complete nonsense. But one of the things that you do is you're looking particularly like myths of certain women when it comes to nationhood. I think this is fascinating. Let's start with one example, who I love, and I think you're going to tell me that it's all ballocks. Lady Godiva. Why? I knew you'd break up on Lady Godiva. I knew it. When I was getting ready to come on the podcast, I was like, I cannot wait to talk about Lady Godiva with gay. I just knew you'd absolutely love the bones of this. Some girl who took her clothes off and rode round on a horse to try and, you know, for socialist ends. I'm all for that.

I think that sounds great. I knew it. It's so good. It's so good. I was so looking forward to talk about this with you because absolutely, I mean, Lady Godiva as a myth is about civic pride. It's about this idea that there was a taboo and she decided to cross it and why shouldn't she take her clothes off and why shouldn't she ride a horse?

I'm sorry to say it is all bollocks, but we'll come to the root of why it's all bollocks in a minute. I knew it would be. I knew it would be, really. There is not another figure. that I have discovered in the course of writing this book, who is as completely transformed by later historians as Lady Godiva. Not even her name has stayed the same. So the only thread of any historical truth in the Lady Godiva myth is Coventry.

That's the only thing that the real women and the legend have in common is they were both connected to Coventry. For anyone listening who might not be aware of the myth, can you just give us a quick cliff notes version of what that's... story was. So yeah, it's a famous English sort of folk-glorish legend that this wealthy princess, I suppose, lady, she is married to the evil Leifrick of Mercia. And he is taxing, boo, he is taxing, actually he's a really nice guy, we'll come back to it. But he is taxing the living daylights out of the people of Coventry. They can't afford to live. They're all starving. And the dear, kind, loving Godiva, she throws herself on the mercy of her husband.

She says, please relieve the taxes on these people. And he's very dismissively says, ha ha, I'll do that when you get on a horse and ride naked from the market square to the priory. And she's like, okay, fine, I'll take up the challenge. She goes to the people. She says, look, I'm going to do this. I'm doing it for you. But out love for me, don't look. And everybody closes their rising as this awfully dramatic kind of moment where she's, and one person looks, peeping Tom, he opens his eyes. And he's immediately, depending on your source, either, turn to stone, dies or is struck blind.

I didn't think that bit was real. Well, oh my God, but actually, funnily enough, that bit has more reality than something on the middle. Oh, fucking hell. I know, I'm going to blow your brains, right? So this procession has been performed year after year, and we've still got a Lady Godiva of Conventry. She's called Prouperata and she still does the procession.

But every year they would perform the procession. And in the 1700s, the procession was taking place. And actors from the different guilds get involved in it. And one guy from one guild was made Peeping Tom. He performed as Peeping Tom. And as the procession was happening, he actually died. No. So from that point onwards, no one wanted to play the role.

So they ended up using a statue instead because it was just thought to be cursed. if you played the role, the people he'd be done. Well, he died during the procession? Died during the procession, yeah. Do we know what of? He just struck down. Just struck down. Just struck down. That's all the info we're getting.

That's all it was struck down. So yeah, I mean, that's kind of cool. But in terms of why, okay, I mean, there's a, what's the reality and the why questions? The reality is that even her name is wrong. So, Lady, that's a title that didn't exist in the time when she was living, which is the beginning to the mid part of the 11th century. Godiva is a French version. Goddiver is on the second syllable.

Her real name was Godgifu, God's gift in Old English. So her name is wrong. She was married to Leophrick of Mercia. That's kind of true. But they were this power couple at a time that I think is one of the most seismic in English history. Because she was born around the turn of the first millennium, around the year thousand. And in her lifetime, she saw the reins of nine different rulers. She lived through four different regime changes and two conquests.

Now, we know about 1066, William the Conqueror and that conquest. She lived through the first one as well, King Knut. Because we forget that we were part of this Danish super empire. And it's just because Knut was a bit of a nicer guy than William. And she's the only woman listed in the doomsday book as having held onto her land after the Norman Conquest. She's badass and brilliant and generous and clever and a patron of the arts. And closed. Closed. And do you know what the absolute bullshit of this story is?

She owned Coventry. Her husband didn't. She owned it in her own right. So if anyone was begging anyone to reduce taxes, He'd beg her. So where does this story come from then? Because this just, a lot of the times with these kind of legends, like there's a kernel of truth in it somewhere.

And you can kind of go, well, that bit was kind of right. This just sounds completely deranged. This is just the fevered dreams of a lunatic. Where does this come from? I love your take on it. Absolutely. I mean, like, it's so completely messed up what happens to her story. the centuries after her death. And I had to do some serious kind of forensic detective work,

kind of pacing back through the texts. And the thing is, we know this as historians, that texts are so incredibly unreliable. If anything survives in a text for any period of time, there's a reason. Books are burnt. Books are destroyed. Books are removed from collections. They're edited. People are written out stories. Things are changed. That is just the nature of textual evidence. So going back through them, you can see kind of the thought processes, the editorial processes that take place in this, let's be honest, millennium between when she was alive and now. And it was really interesting because the first couple of hundred years after she dies, she's still really celebrated. Everyone thought, everyone thought she was amazing.

Even the incoming Normans, they were trying to destroy the reputations of pretty much all the Anglo-Saxon rulers. But they love. God Gifu. They thought she was brilliant. And they carry on writing about how generous she was, how much of an intelligent patron she was. And then you get to the 13th century. And honestly, I can place it at the feet of one man. And he is the inimitable Matthew Paris. Now we have a journalist today called Matthew Paris. He is his namesake, living 700 years earlier in St. Orban's. But I believe he's one of the first tabloid journalists that we see in the historical records. Oh, didn't he have a lot to say about King John as well? Wasn't he that him that was. Henry mostly. But yeah. So he was there through the whole Beckett conspiracy. He was really, really close to the crown. And as a result, he would sort of write his authorised version. And he included like pick up flaps where if you lifted up the manuscript, there was like his secret version up to me.

Oh, I like that. He was a caricaturist as well. Pop up gossip. Pop up goss. And he would pepper the margins with like these quite insulting in the images of the king, of the royal household. He's a cheeky bugger, but he's a brilliant writer because he uses adjectives. He doesn't just write chronicles. He's like he wants to bring drama and kind of intrigue into his history. And he is the one coming out of St. Albans that secures this legend of the naked ride for the first time.

Why does he do it? Well, the monks of St. Albans hate the monks of St. Mary's Priory in Coventry. They're like rivals. So what better way to kind of cast a little bit of shade on the ones you don't like than to say that their sacred holy patron was actually this woman who did this weird thing with riding around naked. So it was invented to kind of cast a little, yeah, to kind of cast some shadow. But it's a complete invention.

And then it gets leaned into so much. Everybody loves it. In the book, I start the story with Queen Victoria gifting Albert a Godiva statue. And it's erotic. It's sexy. It's all about that conceal and reveal thing going on because her hair apparently covered it. But of course you know she's naked. And it just becomes more and more popular. And by the 1850s, Tennyson's writing poetry about her. All the artists, all the pre-raps, they're all painting her. Lost their shit about this one completely, didn't they? They really did. They really did. They. I love a bit of titillation. As much as we think of them as these kind of buttoned up, like tight people, they are all about the sex. You know, when you go to Osbourne House, that is a sex palace. And she is so leaning into this image of her as she wants Albert to see her as Godiva.

She's submissive. She's all his. She'll do whatever he says. And there's all this subtext going on in that chapter that I just loved unraveling. It was fun to write. I bet it was. What did Godiva come to mean to the Victorians? I mean, it can't just have been like, oh, look, boob.

Because like the Victorian... I need be surprised. Well, you know, I wouldn't be surprised. But like there's a medieval revival that happens in the 19th century. Godiva is part of that, along with like King Arthur and sort of the pre-raphalites, no philia madness, this stuff. How does Godiva get co-opted into a sense of nationalism? Because it can't just be that like, oh, we like being named.

naked. So that's, that's, we're writing about this. The Brits love being in the nip as well. Like how, how did, how did they come to understand this myth and how did Godiva become part of nationhood? Yeah. Well, it's exactly as you said right at the top, Kate, that she starts to represent this sort of civic pride, this idea that, um, the ruler, the leader, the kind of the, the, the queen, let's say in this case with Victoria, that she will do anything for her people, that they are the servant of the people. And, doubled up with the fact that it is a sexy kind of element with the way that she's naked, there is so much about that myth that they just love, they cannot get enough of the fact that

it's medievalism. And this goes right to the top of this book, which is, the past is better. Let's go back to a golden age. Let's go back to a time. There's also a weird little twist on this, which is that Victoria and Albert in particular, Albert, have this slightly uncomfortable relationship with their own identity because they're coming, he in particular is coming from this German line. He's seen as a foreigner

actually. By most parliamentarians he's seen as this sort of German interloper who's at the top of the tree and tying themselves back to ancient English rulers is a sort of a way of showing that they've always

been, they've always had divine right to rule that you should always respect the monarchy because we could go back through all these different generations and see where Vic Toria and Albert emerge. But they love it. The first costume ball, where there was still quite a young couple, they dressed up as Edward III and Philippa of Haino. So going back to like this, this great time of the Hundred Years War, these medieval monarchs. And it, yes, it's a bit of

playful dress-up, but it's more than that. She's signaling, she's signaling so much through the use of these medieval women. And a lot of it's about humility, actually. And it's about evoking the Germanic nationalism of Albert because when you go far out about the Anglos and the Saxons they came over and there's all this kind of like look we're all German anyway thing. Yeah yeah yeah it's fine

it's fine. We're all connected we're all the same there's so much going on but the medievalism that you mentioned I mean we can look at the houses of parliament the fact that that was designed in a gothic manner we can look at the revivalism the medieval revivalism that means we still have churches

and cathedrals surviving because the Victorians went in and renovated them. So there's this sort of curatorial misappropriation of the medieval. It's not accurate. It's not an accurate rendering of the medieval period. But it is this sort of like fascination with it and an idea that it was better. And I think the other thing, Kate, is we have to remember that they're dealing with the rapid onset of industrialisation. So when you've got steam trains and progress and factories and smog and cities, that sort of idealism of a perfect agricultural, rural, simpler life has got a lot of appeal

and it's got a romance to it. So she's tied up in all of that. But it's interesting, isn't it? Because you take this one figure, this one individual who's a real historical figure, and this whole like spider's web of connections and changes come out of her. she herself is worthy of being known about. The actual God Gifu is a blooming excellent human, you know, really interesting, fascinating historical human being. It's great. It's a complete jigsaw puzzle. What I like about the book is that you haven't just,

although you know you're a medievalist by trade, like you haven't just stuck to the medieval here. You've covered a really impressive range of women, times and cultures. And one of my favorites is Lola. Lola Montez. Lola. I've got such a soft spot for the sluts. I always do.

And Lola. Oh, my God. Ultimate Super Sluts. I love her so much. Oh, I'm so glad you picked up on Lola. I could not include Lola. She was just such a badass. Give us a quick overview of who Lola is.

Oh, Lola. So Lola Montez. She's actually an Irish, sort of semi-noble. Not Spanish, but not. No. She reinvents herself as a Spanish dancer. and the way she makes her name is through her spider dance. I know you know this.

She would go on stage. I mean, she wasn't well trained. She was doing a sort of performative version of Spanish dance, of which she knew nothing. But in it, she pretends the spider has crept up underneath her petticoats and that she's having to kind of brush it off. And of course, it's a bit like the Godiva thing. It's reveal and conceal, isn't it?

It's like sexy because you can see a bit of ankle, then you can see a bit of calf. But she ends up on a sort of global. stage. She goes to Australia. She's on Broadway and, you know, she travels so far and wide. But she appears in my story because she happens to end up catching the eye of the king of Bavaria. She's in the 19th century, by the way, isn't it? 1848. So it's, so there's like bubbles of revolutionary activity that happened throughout the book. And I try and pick a modern woman that's there at that moment. So for Germany, the big moment of nation building starts.

with 1848 and these riots. Lola says she's a liberal. She hates the Jesuits who are kind of in control of the education systems and a lot of the political systems. She wants payment for teachers. She wants sort of rights for women and for the disenfranchised. But she gets the ear of this elderly king who absolutely dotes on her. He's actually, he sees her for the first time when he's gone to it. She does like the warm-up act for a play that's called The Enchanted Bechews.

Prince. I mean, you couldn't write it. And then he becomes completely enchanted and infatuated with her. She starts having a huge influence on him. And everybody around him is starting to panic that this radical woman is whispering in his ear. Radical woman and an Irish dancer as well. Like no reason at all to be talking to the king. In the heart of politics. Really? It's so wild. It's so wild. And the thing is, she does herself absolutely no favours because she walks around with a stick, which she smacks people with if they annoy her. She gets her own little band of bodyguards. She kind of gets her favorites,

her like her red cat boys that sort of surround her and look after. And she incites riots everywhere she goes. So she's just walking down the street. There's a riot taking place right behind her, you know. She's just, she's a one woman nightmare. Not like riots as in like,

yay, Lola. Like riots, no. Like kill Lola. Kill Lola. Kill Lola riots. Kill Lola riots. Somebody kill Lola. But she does,

Again, she doesn't step back. She wades in. So I start the chapter with her. She's already had one riot taking place on one side of town. And she's so annoyed that she goes back to her house and gets a gun. And then goes out and starts another riot. She's so troubles. I would go home.

I would have been off long before that. I wouldn't have gone in the first place. No. No. You would have just kept quiet. It's gone, this is weird. I've sugar baby too hard. And now somehow I'm living in the Royal Palace.

with the king. I'll just keep stum. I'll just, I won't put anyone else off. I'll just try and keep her mouth shut a bit. Don't do any of that. Not, Lola. One riot in the day isn't enough. You've got to inside a good couple. So she's amazing and she's,

and he loves her so much. He elevates her to the position of a countess. He declares her a countess. So she kind of reaches these mad heights. And I can't express to you how kind of unusual this is, really, in terms of how a lot of these modern women are manifesting in the book. I'll be back with Nina after this short break. Every one of the modern women I feature at a seminal moment

when they're sort of wading into extraordinary times. So they're wading into revolution. They're wading into war. Laskarina Bubolina. Isn't that the best name? Lascarina Bubilina. She's the first ever female admiral of the Navy and she leads the assault that kind of wins.

the War of Independence for Greece. She's incredible. And I mean, oh, God, she's so cool. She has a scimitar that was given to her by the Tsar of Russia, which has a poison release trigger. So you stab the person. James Bond madness is this.

I know. And then you release the poison and you get a double-bubble opportunity to destroy your enemy. She's got a armory. I mean, this woman has like a mad armoury. Augustina of Aragon, she, when the Napoleonic troops

are assaulting Zariariari. The men are up on the barricade, but all the soldiers have either run away or died. So she climbs on top of their bodies and lights the cannon. And in the process of lighting the cannon, she ends that assault. So these women are being like super, super brave, but I tell you what annoyed me. In every article about them, every report, every newspaper, they always use this phrase, the woman stepped outside of her sex. So they could be brave, but only because for that moment,

they stepped outside of their sex. What happened to Lola? People will want to know. She just goes off and has an amazing life. But it led to the king being chucked out, didn't it? And at which point she went, oh, well, never mind then. Oh, well, off to America. I'll try my look as a beauty influencer, which is basically what she did.

So true. She wrote that text on beauty. Oh my God. I never thought of Lola as a beauty influencer. You just, you've just given her. I do talk about Catherine of Siena being like Katie Price. Nice. But yeah, it's so interesting. Yeah, so she, yeah, she runs away. He kind of gets her out to safety, but he stays and everything goes to pot and he's overthrown and Munich is in disarray. So she leaves this sort of trail of destruction behind her. Then she marries again. That doesn't work out. she marries another time, that doesn't work out. And she keeps trying her luck in different places. She goes to Australia and she does the spider dance there and they can't stand it.

They think she's immoral and maybe a shit dance. A bit of a shit dance, but they kick her out. They're not interested in Australia. She does pretty well on Broadway. She makes enough money. And then like you say, later in her life, she settles into this position of being kind of a public speaker. And she goes around, she gives these sorts of lectures on beauty. lectures. Actually, she gives lectures that are really insightful on things she's seen in her

remarkable life. So she writes about remarkable women that she's encountered when she's traveled, but she also loves to write about historical women. So she writes about Cleopatra. She writes about these sort of legendary women a bit like I do. But she has a good life. I mean, she really lived. And I think that the fact that in her younger years, she was just unstoppable. She was this force of nature. That means that when she is retiring, when she is slowing down, a bit. People still want to hear what she has to say. She'll pack out a lecture theatre, you know, because people are interested in her. Does she still have a mythology in, I'll say Bavaria, but Germany now, the way that Godiva does over here? Like, I'm trying to think,

how has her history been appropriated or reappropriated for a sense of nationhood? That's such a good question. And it's a question that I struggled with throughout writing the book, because what the legendary medieval women have is this sort of iconic status. They're sort of tidied up repackaging. It takes us right back to the beginning with our saints. You know, Catherine has a wheel. Lawrence has a gridiron. They become instantly recognisable. They become kind of an icon of legacy. Whereas the modern women are so problematic that it's actually very difficult for them to achieve national status. I think the only one that's done it well is Augustina. So in Spain, she is still recognised as a heroine. She's buried in a chapel called

the chapel of the heroines. There's statues to her where she seems really heroic with her medals. She's the only one. The others, all the other modern women I write about, have been dismissed as hares, harlots, difficult women, problematic, those who step outside their sex. Some are getting the recognition they deserve, but others are still really struggling to have their legends overturned. So I'm trying to do that with the book too. I'm sort of say, why are the modern women the problem? Why are they the ones that society are struggling with? I think it might be because we've got enough history about them to like, if something's that far back in the past,

it enters this kind of like misty world of vague medieval type of myth that we all think that we know, but we don't. It's sort of just a Disney middle ages. That's not that easy from like 1850 onwards. It's like how do you understand that? How do you repackage that? And the easiest way to do that, I suppose, in the case of someone like Lola, is just to go, oh, you're big slag.

You wrecked everything. You are right. I mean, I always say being a medievalist is a bit like doing like a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle with eight bits. And you kind of drag bits out from other. You're like, oh, that's a bit of archaeology. Use a bit of my history. Need a bit of landscape archaeology. Whereas with the modern, well, this is, I found it's so wonderful to actually have source material at my fingertips

with every one of the modern women. I bet you're right. I bet you're a whale over time. Oh, my God, there are photographs. I'm drowning in newspapers. I can see that, look, portraits. What the hell? This is amazing. Kid in a sweet shop. But in that process, you're absolutely right. Because what happens? The complexity of that historical figure comes to the fore. You can see they're not just one thing. I mean, they could be dismissed as just a whore or just a slut or just a witch. But their actual evidence for them shows that these are living people with very complicated lives that are sort of

unfurling over time and space. I mean, Lola lives a long life. She travels all over the place. She's a different Lola in 48 to the Lola that she is later. So having that evidence to sort of go, right, well, she's not just a heroine. She's not just an icon. I think that actually means that you see them in their true complexity and individuality. I find it really exciting. I love it. It's like, this is a real person, like a real living, breathing person. And I try and do that with my medieval women as well. So to kind of round this off, although I could just sit here and talk to you forever, but my producer won't let me do it. But we are, as you said earlier, in quite mad times now. And I often wonder what the on earth historians of the future are going to make of this particular

time period. In weird ways, it also answers a lot of questions people have about history. Like, you know, people always wondered about Germany in the 1940s. Like, how did that go bad so quickly? Oh, well, you know, now we're kind of learning about how that kind of stuff can happen. But when you're looking throughout history at women and this sense of nationhood and nationality, who do you see as like the main players today? Do you see them fulfil in any roles that historians, if we're still here, hundreds of years from now, I'll be looking back and picking out stories and going this person, their story was really important. It's really interesting, isn't it? Because, you know, I could cite you politicians. I could cite you.

you know, the big players on the world stage. I think two things. I think firstly, everything, what history does teach us is that everything we think we have now can be taken away very quickly. Everything we think we've earned, democracy, you know, freedom for women's rights, inclusivity, they hang by a thread and they can twist instantly. And this, the whole way through this book, it's, oh, the ping-ponging that goes on between, you know, the ideals of these people, how they're

shifting sands, constant shifting sands. So I think that we'll be seen as part of this continuum of shifting sands. I think Pandora's box is open. I think that with the internet, with your global communications, it's going to be very, very hard to push all those rights back in the box and say, no, you can't have them. But my God, are people trying. There is a huge backlash. that we're living through at the moment. I sort of think of it as like when a dog is injured and it sort of crawls into a corner because it knows it's dying,

but it still wants to bite your legs off. That's how it feels for me at the moment in terms of the retaliation of traditional ideas of sort of these things that I hoped maybe we might have left behind. They are still there and they are fighting fit. We have to listen to everything we're being told. We have to listen to our politicians' rhetoric.

when they cite the past, how are they using history? How are they using and abusing it? So, you know, I think historians of the future, I mean, obviously we live through one of the most seismic events humanities ever experienced with the digital revolution. But I think that it's an inevitable that in the face of such rapid change, you would get such a desire for traditionalism and a return to something. Yeah. So it's a pendulum swing, isn't it? It's a constant pendulum swing. So it's almost natural that people want to cling to an idea of a nation of an older identity. But we have to question it. We have to probe at it. We have to look at it. What is the nation you're willing to live and die for? Where has it come from? What are its roots?

Why are you being led by it? One of the most interesting things I find is when you study, to matter how far back you go in history, to like the earliest scratchings on a cave wall somewhere, they are always evoking an idealized past. You never get to the bit that like it's, oh, it's perfect. We had it fixed. In the medieval period, they're still there talking about this golden age of King Arthur. And then you go back a bit further. And again, it's like they're harking back. We are always imagining a romanticised past where everything was fine and it wasn't complicated anymore.

Absolutely. You are so right. And again, every woman in this book that I write about medieval and modern, we forget that nobody can see into the future. When we as modern historians go, oh, Joan of Arc anticipated feminism and oh, look at that that they were doing there. That's obviously the foundation blocks for industrialisation.

They can't see forward. They have absolutely no idea what's coming after them. All that we ever can do is make sense of where we are from where we've come from because we can't see into the future. So this idea of being careful with history, being really precise, it's difficult because now everything is being questioned. What is a truth? What is a fact?

These things are tentative even through AI and through developments at the moment. But to really connect with the historical figures, you have to see them as coming out of their past where they came from, how they got there. And I try and do that really carefully with all of the figures. And it's fascinating, you know,

how Isabella of Castile crafted her legacy from the past. She was all about dynasty going backwards, looking for the past for inspiration. Joan of Arc, she didn't appear in a bubble in a vacuum. She was going on ancient myths and prophecies and legends leaning in to the past. And, you know, that's something we had to be really careful about. And that's why I think the whole of the historian is more important than ever. I think we're needed. Let's hope that we're needed.

Apparently, we're the second most likely professions be replaced by AI. Did you see that? Oh, fuck off. Yes, I did see that. Well, AI can go into the British Library Archives then and sit there attempting to translate 15th century French piss off. Oh, it gets on my wick. AI can, yeah, it's mental, it's like, I mean, I think we've got to be brave all of us going forward.

It's like uncertain times, like really uncertain times. But then it's always felt like that, you know, I keep reminding everyone that's panicking. Oh, my God, the world's in ruins. I'm like, go about 50 years, go about 100 years. There's never been a time where there isn't, yeah, issues. we have to address together. But I think it's that togetherness, community. And what nationalism at its worst does is it others.

It divides. It separates those who are from those who are not. And I don't think that is the answer going forward into uncertain times. You've got pulled together community matters and friendships matter. And yeah, look after each other, I guess. Nina, you have been amazing to talk to. Thank you so much. And if people want to know more about you and your work, and frankly, they should, where can they find you?

Oh, my goodness. Well, I am on various social medias. I am actually now Professor Janina Ramirez. But my handle is... Oh, congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. But I'm Dr. Janina Ramirez on the socials. You can find my old documentaries on iPlayer and on YouTube and my books are all out there ready to buy. Legenda, by the way. I don't know if you're going to be able to include an image of it. The cover is one of the most beautiful things. I've ever seen. And for the purposes of my book, my publishers developed a new form of gilded ink, which has no need for a laminate cover. So it is officially the sparkliest book ever made.

Sparkles! Incredible. I know. I'm so great. I'm such a magpie. My covers have to be like super sparkly or I'm not in. I'm going to go and phone my editor right now. I want a sparkly book. You want sparkly covers. Come on. More gold. More gilded. Come on. You have been amazing. Thank you so much for dropping by. I absolutely loved it.

I was so looking forward to this and it's exceeded all my expectations. So love to you, love to the whole gang of listeners and hopefully I'll see you very soon. Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Nina for joining me. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like review and follow along wherever it is you get your podcasts.

Coming up, we have got an episode taking us back to sex and scandal in ancient Egypt of all places how utterly shocking and another one on Margaret Beauford, the woman who kick-started the Tudor period. If you want us to explore a subject or maybe you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at betwixt at historyhit.com. This podcast was edited by Tim Arstall and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The Senior Producer was Freddie Chick.

Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.