Theatre Review: Emily - The Making of a Militant Suffragette
9th April 2014
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It’s 101 years since Emily Wilding Davison died underneath the king’s horse at Epsom Derby and in doing so made herself the most famous suffragette of all (barring, perhaps, Mrs Pankhurst.)
Now, a play documenting her life is attempting to cut through the layers of history and give life to the woman behind the rhetoric – Emily: daughter, Oxford graduate, governess and teacher. And, possibly, martyr to the cause of female emancipation.
In the year since the centenary of her death questions have continually been asked about whether she meant to take her own life (if so, why would she have bought a return ticket to London?), but Emily chooses not to address this aspect of her story, rather focusing on the events that led up to 8th June, 1913.
Emily closed its run last night in the supposed home of modern democracy, Parliament’s Portcullis House - which offered some irony, considering the events that the play recounts.

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