Dimensions
156 x 235 x 12mm
The enigmatic and controversial Florence Nightingale had
boundless energy but chronic illness, a combination which
confounded biographers. Hugh Small, the only non-medical
scientist to have authored a full study of her; dropped his first
bombshell in 1998, by exposing a cover up which had prevented her
from telling us what really happened in her Crimean War
hospitals, thus tearing aside a sentimental portrait and
revealing an even greater heroine. This revised edition exposes
more secrets that history could not face. The puritanical
Victorian image is false; she was a red-blooded sexual being
whose romantic entanglements caused her anguish but also drove
her to change British society from the grass roots to the top.
She was a Cabinet Minister for a decade when the textbooks say
that this was impossible. Unsurprising then that her life has
resisted analysis for so long: it is completely against history
as it is taught.