Jack and Eve: Two women in love and at war – A talk by Wendy Moore

Event details

Join us at Chelsea Library for a very exciting book talk with Wendy Moore.

Vera Holme, known as Jack, left a career as a cross-dressing actress to become official chauffeur to Emmeline Pankhurst, matriarch of the suffragettes. Evelina Haverfield, or Eve to friends, was the daughter of a Scottish baron, 14 years older than Jack. They met in 1909, fell in love and became public faces of the suffragette movement, enduring prison for the cause. War turned their world upside down. Eve co-founded pioneering organisations to recruit women for war work. Then together they travelled to Serbia, Russia and Romania to run field hospitals for allied soldiers and drive ambulances under bombardment. They carved radical new paths, demonstrating that women could drive emergency vehicles, run military hospitals, endure imprisonment and bear arms in the face of constant danger. They refused to compromise in their sexuality, and were determined to be themselves, 'forthright, flamboyant and proud'. In her new book, JACK AND EVE: TWO WOMEN IN LOVE AND AT WAR, Wendy Moore uses Jack and Eve's remarkable story as a lens through which to view the suffragette movement, the work of women in war and lesbian identity in the twentieth century.