No Place For Ladies

I was in urgent need of a good,solid non-fiction diversion. All this story reading is fine and dandy but eventually I suddenly need a complete change of direction.That's not to say I don't still have several fiction books on the go but there's suddenly a yawning gap to be filled and it's the "learn something new" space.
Just to update on current ongoing projects.
Virginia Woolf is chugging along nicely and I suspect will now continue to do so for evermore.An endless supply of essays,diaries and letters with a timelessness that always seems to speak of the moment, a fine backdrop to all reading.
Decca The Letters of Jessica Mitford are wonderful and ongoing and there's nothing like a dose of Decca every so often.
Thomas Hardy has stalled badly, just not exciting enough to drag me back, so rather than have him staring at me reproachfully I've temporarily moved him out of the guest room and moved Florence Nightingale in.
The arrival of No Place for Ladies : The Untold Story of the Women of the Crimean War by Helen Rappaport couldn't have been better timed.
Feeling very end of winter-ish and a bit post-virally apathetic there's nothing like some tales of feisty women to stir your stumps and get you galvanised.I also needed a good offering for the Endsleigh Salon war-themed reading evening this Tuesday and so this will be mine.
As you sit in the comfort of your woodburning stove's radiant heat and read about the deprivations of these poor women who actually went to war with their menfolk you just have to thank your lucky stars and throw on another log.I had very little idea about it all and that is always exciting, nothing like new knowledge to wake you up and get you scouring your shelves for anything else relevant.
Out have come I Have Done My Duty : Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War 1854-1856 ed by Sue Goldie, a selection of Flo's letters and a whole stack of nursing history books that have been waiting for this moment.I shall dip in and out of all of these and report back.
Back to No Place for Ladies. For a start my knowledge of the Crimean War was woeful, not a lot beyond balaclava's to be honest.I had heard of Inkerman but possibly more because it was the name of a road in the early days of Coronation Street than the site of a battle.
Helen Rappaport to the rescue because this and much more is explained in this book and my first impressions are of a clear, very enjoyable and engrossing style. All to the backdrop of the involvement of the women in a conflict that I'm thinking seems at best pointless and at worst the result of an arrogant belief in the power of the British military machine.Sadly unprepared for conflict compared to the French who arrived everywhere first and had set up a mini-Paris with all its comforts while the British were scavenging for food and shelter.
Flo hasn't arrived on the scene yet but it can't be long, I'll let you know.
I'm completely engrossed in this one and will have trouble putting it down to watch the forthcoming latter-day battle between Plymouth Argyle and Watford, but I'll have to and I can hear shouts and more from the kitchen where I think something quite dramatic is in progress between Chelsea and Spurs.