International bestselling author Kate Moss set to appear at The Apex

International bestselling Author Kate Moss OBE (pictured above) will soon embark on her first ever theatre tour – “Warrior Queens & Quiet Revolutionaries: How Women (Also) Built the World” and she is due to appear at The Apex, in Bury St Edmunds, next month.

As founder of the Women’s Prize For Fiction and the #WomenInHistory campaign, she has long championed the achievements of women in her literary work. Her latest best-selling book, “Warrior Queens” makes use of her rich and detailed knowledge of unheard women’s history.

Kate asks: – “Think back to your classroom, to the roll call of inventors and politicians, military leaders and scientists, philosophers and composers, thinkers and mystics and ask yourself this question. Where are the women?”

Joyous, celebratory and engaging, Kate’s book and talk is for everyone who has ever wondered how history is made.

She questions: “Who decides which people deserve to be remembered, lauded – or vilified – and those who will be forgotten? Why is it that some documents and reputations are preserved, and others are lost or allowed to fade into silence?”

Audiences can expect an evening of entertainment with storytelling, music and images as we meet those who fought for what they believed and those who reached for the stars.

Kate explains: “It’s basically a really great night out in the theatre. It’s for everybody – girls and boys, men and women, friends and neighbours… 

“As well as plenty of fun facts and ‘did-you-knows’, I’ll tell the stories of some of the most interesting, inspiring and 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 notorious 18th century pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Reid to Beatrix Potter. Some of the stories are tragic, some are hilarious, and some make you gasp out loud because you can’t quite believe it.

“One of the women in the show is the great British footballer, Lily Parr. She is a legend who scored more than 1,000 goals in her time. Her story is really illustrative of how once famous women are deliberately left out of history.

“Women’s football was the biggest sport in the early 20th century, particularly when most men were away during the First World War. In 1920, there was a famous Boxing Day match between the leading women’s teams that was watched by 48,000 people. It was the biggest ever crowd for a women’s match … until the Lionesses winning the European Cup Final in 2022, of course!

“When the men came back from the war, the FA said, ‘We don’t want this.’ So they banned women from playing on their pitches. It was a decision to actively kill the women’s game. That ban wasn’t lifted till the 1970s. So, when you look at Ellen White or Chloe Kelly or Megan Rapinoe, they are following in the footsteps of incredible, really successful footballers whose careers were taken away from them.”

At every show, Kate will ask the audience to nominate the one woman from history they would have put in the book.

“I’m hoping many of these will be important women locally who I won’t have heard of. People can nominate anybody they want,” she said.

When asked why so many women have disappeared from history, Kate says: “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. Third, achievements by women – painters, inventors, scientists, writers – have often been misattributed to the men who worked alongside them. Finally, the question of legacy – if women didn’t have someone fighting to keep their reputation centre stage, then their works disappeared.”

You can hear Kate’s talk at The Apex on Tuesday, April 4, at 7.30pm. Visit the website www.theapex.co.uk or ring 01284 758000 for more information or to book tickets.