Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians – Florence Nightingale

‘She spent the intervals of the London season in ragged schools and workhouses. When she went abroad with her family, she used her spare time so well that there was hardly a great hospital in Europe with which she was not acquainted, hardly a great city whose slums she had not passed through.’

Lytton Strachey was a founder of the Bloomsbury Group and famous for developing a new type of biography. First published in 1918, his Eminent Victorians followed the lives of four leading figures from the era:  Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold, and General Gordon. For this free Wireless Contemplation event, we focus on the only woman in that group, the nursing legend Florence Nightingale. For this special spoken word event, we are delighted to welcome Dr Juliette Atkinson from UCL as well as our resident speaker, Kate Thorogood.