Author Kate Mosse talks about her upcoming theatre tour that starts in Stafford

Kate Mosse OBE, the international number one multi-million selling author, will embark on her first ever theatre tour in Febrauary 2023.

Her show, Warrior Queens & Quiet Revolutionaries: How Women (Also) Built the World, is inspired by her best-selling book of the same name, and will start at the Stafford Gatehouse on February 28 and be at theatres around the country until April 12 2023.

The show will see Kate celebrate the lives of extraordinary, brilliant, trail-blazing and heroic women from throughout history whose names deserve to be better known.

It’s part detective story into her own, sometimes heart-breaking, family history - as she’ll share how she tracked down her own long-forgotten relative, Lily Watson, in whose literary shadow she is walking – part fanfare to the incredible women in whose footsteps we all walk, and part love letter about how history is made and who gets to make it.

In each show, Kate will shine a spotlight on fascinating and often overlooked, or ignored, facts about the women who made history, from every corner of the world and in every period of time.

Here she answers some questions about what audiences can expect.

Q: What inspired you to turn your best-selling book, “Warrior Queens & Quiet Revolutionaries: How Women (Also) Built the World,” into your first ever live show?

A: I'm in my 60s now, and I like to have new challenges. You've got to be brave, haven't you? I love being a writer, but you can't just think, “I'll keep doing the thing that I've always done.” You've got to push yourself and keep trying.

Q: Are you looking forward to performing this show live?

A: Yes. I've really enjoyed book events in the past. I had been really disappointed during lockdown not to be out and about meeting readers. WQQR, the book, is a celebration of nearly 1000 incredible women from all periods of history and all corners of the globe. The tour will be the same.

It was my lockdown project, researching all these amazing women – and turning detective for my own family history too - and I wouldn't have had time to do it otherwise. And then I thought, “I would just really enjoy sharing these stories with bigger audiences.”

Q: What are you hoping to achieve with the show?

A: A really great night out in the theatre. It's for everybody. It's for girls and boys, men and women, dads and their daughters, mums and their sons, friends and neighbours. There will be music, props, a proper set, pictures – and me! I've never done anything like this before so, of course, I'm a little daunted. But I am going to give it my best shot.

During the course of the show, as well as plenty fun facts and ‘did-you-knows’, I’ll tell the life stories of some of the most interesting, most inspiring, most astonishing women from the book - from Joan of Arc and Mary Seacole to Florence Nightingale and Agatha Christie, from the Mongolian princess Khutlan to Rosa Parks, from the notorious 18th century pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Reid to Beatrix Potter and the legendary English footballer, Lily Parr.

Some of the stories are tragic, some are hilarious, and some make you gasp out loud because you can't quite believe it. My choices are inspired both by stories that are the most fun to share, at the same time as trying to give a flavour of all the different types of characters from in the book. But I want people to come out of the theatre just going, “Oh my God, I never knew that!”

Q: Why have so many women disappeared from history?

A: I'm not a historian - although I read a lot of history and hang out with a lot of real historians – but I am somebody who's curious about the past. And that's what my readers like, whether it is nonfiction like Warrior Queens or in my novels.

There are four different reasons – first, deliberate erasure of women from history. We're seeing that in Afghanistan and Iran at the moment, for example; second, because most history was written by men, within religious institutions and universities and places that were closed to women, they just did not believe that women did anything of value at all; third, achievements by women – painters, inventors, scientists, writers – have often been misattributed to the men who worked alongside them, or came after them.

Finally, the question of legacy – if women didn’t have someone fighting to keep their reputation centre stage, then their works disappeared. But, together, we can change this.

Q: It’s a particular problem in science, isn’t it?

A: Yes, in science it is called the Matilda Effect – a phrase coined in 1993 by an American science writer called Margaret W Rossiter to refer to the routine attribution of women's discoveries to the men who worked for them, or alongside them, because the male science historians just didn't believe women could be scientists.

Did you know that the great scientist Mary Somerville, who gave her name to Somerville College, Oxford, is the reason why we have the word “scientist”? Before her, the phrase was “men of science”, so the word “scientist” was created for Somerville because she was brilliant, but she was not a man! How else could they describe her?

Q: You start writing every morning at 4am. Is that the most productive way of working for you?

A: Yes, absolutely. I'm best at that liminal time between being asleep and being awake. Everybody knows that for a writer it's the fear of starting, the procrastination that does for you. So I've always been an early riser and early to bed person. I don't set an alarm, I just wake up when I wake up.

My imagination has always been more active in the early morning. At that time, there's a great joy of being the one person awake in the house and writing. It means that I can get four, sometimes even five hours’ work done before I need to step into my other role as a carer, or load the dishwasher, or feed the dog, or get on a train to go to London for meetings!

I've never been very good at writing in the afternoons, and I don't like working in the evenings. I'm asleep on the sofa by eight o'clock!

Q: You set up the Women's Prize for Fiction 28 years ago. Why do you think it still has such clout?

A: Because we were always very clear that it was about celebrating the very best and putting exceptional novels by women into the hands of men and women who’d appreciate them. It's exactly in the spirit of my tour, where, like the Prize, I will celebrate, honour and amplify incredible women from the past.

Lots of people tried to attack us and say, “This is really sexist,” or said daft things like “If women were any good, they would win the real prizes”, so completely ignoring the stats of who was published and how few women were shortlisted for literary awards.

But we were determined to shine a spotlight on excellent, original, dazzling novels by women, written in English from all over the world, and that is what we continue to do.  And watch this space for a big announcement coming in February 2023.

Q: What feelings do you hope to engender in the audience for “Warrior Queens & Quiet Revolutionaries”?

A: Amazement, delight, gratitude for all those courageous women who fought for the rights we have now, curiosity about the world, a passion for history.  I also want people to go home and think, “We need to protect the freedoms and the rights we have.”

We're very lucky, most of us, to live in a country where, even if it's not quite true, women and men have equal rights and most people think they should be paid the same. In a country where our daughters and our sons can expect to be judged on their merits and not because they're a girl or a boy. We’re not quite there yet and, sadly, it isn't true for everybody in the world.

I also hope the audience will leave inspired to search out even more women’s stories, so that a fab night in the theatre will be the beginning of a conversation for everybody. Wouldn’t it be great if people went home and talked to their friends who weren't there about some of the women they admire and ask why they're not better known? Let's get the conversation started.

Q: What else do you hope audiences will take away from the show?

A: I’m putting all these great stories out there, so that men and women, boys and girls, everyone, will come along to the show and be entranced, blown away, mesmerised by these tales.

I believe in travelling hopefully, in trying to change the world for the better. Often, I think it’s easier to change hearts and minds by being positive stories rather than by being angry. For some people, of course, anger is very important and fuels their activism: sexism, racism, misogyny, religious intolerance, enslavement, war, a lack of equality or rights, quite rightly anger is what gives people the power to act. It’s what drives them forward.

But, for this theatre show, what I want is a whole theatre full of people gasping, turning to each other and saying, “Oh, I never knew that!”  and for them to leave feeling uplifted.

Kate will start her tour at Stafford Gatehouse on Tuesday, February 28 from 7.30pm. To book tickets call the box office on 01785 619080 or visit their website.

Get all the latest news, updates, things to do and more from Stafford, Staffordshire's dedicated InYourArea feed.