History's People: Personalities & The Past, Lecture 4
In the 2015 CBC Massey Lectures, the great Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan explores some of the people - good and bad, dreamers, explorers and adventurers - who have shaped their times and ours. One historian's view of the people of the past who have intrigued, horrified or engaged her. **This episode originally aired November 5, 2015.
"When I started to compile a list of those characters in history who possessed to an exceptional degree the quality of curiosity, I was intrigued to notice that most of the names I came up with were women. This, I suspect, is not that women are naturally more curious than men, but because so often it has been more difficult for them to follow their own paths. Women throughout history have had to defy rigid conventions about what is and is not expected of them."
Curiosity, daring, and the desire to explore strange worlds don't in themselves guarantee lasting fame. Byron's daughter -- Ada Lovelace -- helped develop the world's first computer; Elizabeth Simcoe abandoned an aristocrat's life for the wildness of North America; Gertrude Bell rode a camel and understood geopolitics better than most men. Women have been among the greatest adventurers, and many have left a unique record of themselves and of the worlds they moved through. Their writings enable us to write a quite different history.
- Watch the 6-part series on YouTube
- History`s People: Personalities and The Past is published by House of Anansi Press.