Millicent Press

Ever since Laura Probert met a real live suffragette on holiday in Guernsey when she was eight years old she has been interested in the lives of women in late Victorian and Edwardian times. Her parents both grew up in Kent and Laura knew for many years that she would come to live in Ramsgate when she retired. Laura always enjoyed both her grandmothers' tales about their childhood and the First World War and when studying at university in Canterbury wrote a dissertation on the same period of German history. Laura has spent many days exploring Berlin on foot preparing a guide book on the sites associated with famous women in Berlin.

A founder member of the Edith Nesbit Society, Laura wrote several booklets for the society and began to study the lives of women in the Edwardian period more closely and was fascinated to see how many of the well-known writers, campaigners and social reformers all knew each other. These include the landscape gardener Fanny R Wilkinson, the socialist Maude Pember Reeves and the pioneer of birth control Marie Stopes. While still working in London Laura researched the lives of Emma Cons, founder of the Old Vic and Morley College, and Octavia Hill and her scheme to rescue open spaces especially old churchyards as "open-air sitting rooms" for the poor of the Metropolis . This led to her being asked by Robert Whelan of Civitas to be a contributing editor to his edition of Octavia Hill's "Letters to Fellow Workers", and a talk to the Lewisham Local History Society attended by the Mayor of Lewisham.

Laura has spent the last two years researching her first book, encouraged in her endeavours by fellow authors Helena Wojtczak and Nicholas Reed. She is now deciding which of her many projects to publish next!

Laura's other interests include art nouveau architecture and design, especially the more angular styles from the Glasgow School, the Bauhaus and the Vienna Secession. She also enjoys visiting museums and Roman sites like Herculaneum, and steam railways. She works part time as an exam invigilator and is also a trustee of NCHI, or National Concern for Healthcare Infections.