This was an excellent and highly readable biography!

I find Naomi Mitchison an absolutely fascinating person. Inspiring in some ways, of her time in others, and (she would be the first to admit) outrageously privileged. But she also - to use a metaphor repeated throughout this book - swam against the current in every stage of her life. She championed unpopular ideas or spoke uncomfortable truths. Furthermore she was prevented from pursuing a scientific career because she was a women in a British upper class household in the early 20th century.

I’ve mostly read her diaries (Among You Keeping Notes…), memoirs (You May Well Ask) and poetry (The Cleansing of the Knife), but next I want to give her historical fiction (The Conquered, The Bull Calves) and science fiction (Memoirs of a Spacewoman) a try.