Cecil Blanche Woodham-Smith ( Fitzgerald; 29 April 1896 – 16 March 1977)

CBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

was a British

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the stu ...

and

biographer Biographers are authors who write an account of another person's life, while autobiographers are authors who write their own biography. Biographers Countries of working life: Ab=Arabia, AG=Ancient Greece, Al=Australia, Am=Armenian, AR=Ancient Rome ...

. She wrote four popular history books, each dealing with a different aspect of the

Victorian era In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardia ...

Early life

Cecil Woodham-Smith was born in 1896 in

Tenby Tenby ( cy, Dinbych-y-pysgod, lit=fortlet of the fish) is both a walled seaside town in Pembrokeshire, Wales, on the western side of Carmarthen Bay, and a local government community. Notable features include of sandy beaches and the Pembroke ...

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...

. Her family, the Fitzgeralds, were a well-known

Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...

family, one of her ancestors being

Lord Edward Fitzgerald Lord Edward FitzGerald (15 October 1763 – 4 June 1798) was an Irish aristocrat who abandoned his prospects as a distinguished veteran of British service in the American War of Independence, and as an Irish Parliamentarian, to embrace the caus ...

, hero of the

Irish Rebellion of 1798 The Irish Rebellion of 1798 ( ga, Éirí Amach 1798; Ulster-Scots: ''The Hurries'') was a major uprising against British rule in Ireland. The main organising force was the Society of United Irishmen, a republican revolutionary group influence ...

. Her father Colonel James FitzGerald had served in the Indian Army during the

Sepoy Mutiny The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857–58 against the rule of the British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown. The rebellion began on 10 May 1857 in the for ...

; her mother's family included General Sir Thomas Picton, a distinguished soldier who was killed at Waterloo. She attended the Royal School for Officers' Daughters in Bath, until her expulsion for taking unannounced leave for a trip to the

National Gallery The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director o ...

. She finished her schooling at a French

convent A convent is a community of monks, nuns, religious brothers or, sisters or priests. Alternatively, ''convent'' means the building used by the community. The word is particularly used in the Catholic Church, Lutheran churches, and the Anglican ...

and afterwards entered

St Hilda's College, Oxford St Hilda's College is one of the Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. The college is named after the Anglo-Saxon Saint, Hilda of Whitby and was founded in 1893 as a hall for women; it ...

. She graduated with a second-class degree in English in 1917. In 1928 she married George Ivon Woodham-Smith, a distinguished London solicitor with whom she had an exceptionally close and deep relationship until his death in 1968. She possessed a gift for historical writing, but postponed her career until her two children had gone off to

boarding school A boarding school is a school where pupils live within premises while being given formal instruction. The word "boarding" is used in the sense of "room and board", i.e. lodging and meals. As they have existed for many centuries, and now exten ...

. In the meantime, she wrote pot-boilers under the pseudonym Janet Gordon; this training was to stand her in good stead as an historian, as she mastered the art of writing entertaining narrative.

Career

Her first book as a historian, a biography of

Florence Nightingale Florence Nightingale (; 12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910) was an English Reform movement, social reformer, statistician and the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale came to prominence while serving as a manager and trainer of nurses during t ...

published in 1950, took her straight to the top of her profession. Her meticulous research had taken nine years, and the book succeeded in restoring Nightingale's reputation, which had dwindled following

Lytton Strachey Giles Lytton Strachey (; 1 March 1880 – 21 January 1932) was an English writer and critic. A founding member of the Bloomsbury Group and author of ''Eminent Victorians'', he established a new form of biography in which psychological insight ...

's representation of her in ''

Eminent Victorians ''Eminent Victorians'' is a book by Lytton Strachey (one of the older members of the Bloomsbury Group), first published in 1918, and consisting of biographies of four leading figures from the Victorian era. Its fame rests on the irreverence and ...

''. Acclaimed for its combination of scholarship and readability, ''Florence Nightingale'' won the

James Tait Black Award The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are literary prizes awarded for literature written in the English language. They, along with the Hawthornden Prize, are Britain's oldest literary awards. Based at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, Unit ...

for biography. Her next book was equally well received. ''The Reason Why'' (1953) was a study of the

Charge of the Light Brigade The Charge of the Light Brigade was a failed military action involving the British light cavalry led by Lord Cardigan against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854 in the Crimean War. Lord Raglan had intended to se ...

, a military disaster during the

Crimean War The Crimean War, , was fought from October 1853 to February 1856 between Russia and an ultimately victorious alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia. Geopolitical causes of the war included the de ...

and one of the defining events of the Victorian age. It became her most popular book, and afterwards she explained to a television audience how she wrote the Charge itself: working at a gallop through thirty-six hours non-stop without food or other break until the last gun was fired, when she poured a stiff drink and slept for two days. Though the work was critically acclaimed, it came to the conclusion that the allies had lost the Crimean War, which most historians conclude is not true. She produced two more notable works. The first was '' The Great Hunger: Ireland: 1845-1849'' (1962), a history of the

Great Irish Famine The Great Famine ( ga, an Gorta Mór ), also known within Ireland as the Great Hunger or simply the Famine and outside Ireland as the Irish Potato Famine, was a period of starvation and disease in Ireland from 1845 to 1852 that constituted a ...

of the 1840s that was critical of the British government's handling of the famine, in particular singling out Sir

Charles Edward Trevelyan Sir Charles Edward Trevelyan, 1st Baronet, (2 April 1807 – 19 June 1886) was a British civil servant and colonial administrator. As a young man, he worked with the colonial government in Calcutta, India. He returned to Britain and took ...

for criticism, although she did acknowledge that the British government assisted during the first phase of the famine. The second was the first volume of ''Queen Victoria: Her Life and Times'' (1972). She was unable to complete the next volume of the biography, and died in London in 1977 at the age of 80. Cecil Woodham-Smith was appointed

in 1960. She received honorary doctorates from the

National University of Ireland The National University of Ireland (NUI) ( ga, Ollscoil na hÉireann) is a federal university system of ''constituent universities'' (previously called ''university college, constituent colleges'') and ''recognised colleges'' set up under t ...

in 1964 and the

University of St Andrews (Aien aristeuein) , motto_lang = grc , mottoeng = Ever to ExcelorEver to be the Best , established = , type = Public research university Ancient university , endowment ...

in 1965. She also became an honorary fellow of St Hilda's College (her alma mater) in 1967.

Alan Bennett Alan Bennett (born 9 May 1934) is an English actor, author, playwright and screenwriter. Over his distinguished entertainment career he has received numerous awards and honours including two BAFTA Awards, four Laurence Olivier Awards, and tw ...

wrote of her:

Cecil was a frail woman with a tiny bird-like skull, looking more like
Elizabeth I Elizabeth I (7 September 153324 March 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. Elizabeth was the last of the five House of Tudor monarchs and is sometimes referred to as the "Virgin Queen". El ...
(in later life) than
Edith Sitwell Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell (7 September 1887 – 9 December 1964) was a British poet and critic and the eldest of the three literary Sitwells. She reacted badly to her eccentric, unloving parents and lived much of her life with her governess ...
ever did (and minus her sheet metal earrings). Irish, she had a Firbankian wit and a lovely turn of phrase. ‘Do you know the Atlantic at all?’ she once asked me and I put the line into ''
Habeas Corpus ''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a recourse in law through which a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court and request that the court order the custodian of the person, usually a prison official, t ...
'' and got a big laugh on it. From a grand Irish family she was quite snobbish; talking of someone she said: ‘Then he married a Mitford … but that’s a stage everybody goes through.’ Even the most ordinary remark would be given her own particular twist and she could be quite camp. Conversation had once turned, as conversations will, to fork-lift trucks. Feeling that industrial machinery might be remote from Cecil’s sphere of interest I said: ‘Do you know what a fork-lift truck is?’ She looked at me in her best Annie Walker manner. ‘I do. To my cost.’

References

External links

LibraryThing author profile
*The Great Hunger, Referenc

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Woodham-Smith, Cecil British biographers 1896 births 1977 deaths Alumni of St Hilda's College, Oxford People educated at the Royal School for Daughters of Officers of the Army People from Tenby Great Famine (Ireland) Women biographers Welsh people of Irish descent James Tait Black Memorial Prize recipients 20th-century British historians 20th-century British women writers British women historians Historians of Ireland 20th-century pseudonymous writers Pseudonymous women writers