Sylvia Pankhurst: Natural Born Rebel

Sylvia Pankhurst was born into one of Britain's most famous families but she always carved her own way. As well as a militant campaigner for women's suffrage, she was a gifted artist and orator, a designer, newspaper editor and radical visionary.

Her activism landed her in Holloway prison where she was tortured, and her notes from this episode are featured in our Unfinished Business exhibition. Pankhurst's life of campaigning led her to America, Soviet Russia, Scandinavia, Europe and East Africa.

Biographer Rachel Holmes shares her adventures from inside the Unfinished Business exhibition space, in conversation with Shami Chakrabarti.

Rachel Holmes is the author of Sylvia Pankhurst, Natural Born Rebel. She also wrote Eleanor Marx: A Life, The Secret Life of Dr James Barry and The Hottentot Venus: The Life and Death of Saartjie Baartman.

Shami Chakrabarti is a barrister and human rights activist. She was shadow attorney general for England and Wales from 2016 to 2020 and was the director of Liberty, an advocacy group promoting civil liberties, from 2003 to 2016.