Episode

History's Toughest Heroes: Constance Bulwer-Lytton: Suffragette Rebel

Podcast
History's Heroes
Published
Nov 4, 2025
Duration seconds
1736
Processing state
not_requested
Canonical source
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002ld5q
Audio
http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/6/redir/version/2.0/mediaset/audio-nondrm-download-rss/proto/http/vpid/p0m95t9m.mp3
JSON
/v1/public/podcasts/history-s-heroes-6396729/episodes/history-s-toughest-heroes-constance-bulwer-lytton-suffragette-rebel
Markdown
/podcast/history-s-heroes-6396729/history-s-toughest-heroes-constance-bulwer-lytton-suffragette-rebel.md

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Summary

Constance Lytton was raised an aristocrat. But when she wakes up to women's suffrage, she goes undercover in solidarity, joining her working-class comrades in prison and staging a series of dangerous hunger strikes. In History's Toughest Heroes, Ray Winstone tells ten true stories of adventurers, rebels and survivors who lived life on the edge. As a lady, and part of the English upper-crust, when Constance Lytton was arrested for her involvement in the women's suffrage movement, she was given special treatment in prison. Desperate to be treated like everyone else, she disguised herself as the working-class ‘Jane Warton’. But when the time came to endure the horror of force feedings, it took everything she had to hold on to the mantra ‘no surrender’. A BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds. Producer: Michael LaPointe Development Producer: Georgina Leslie Executive Producer: Paul Smith Written by Imogen Robertson Commissioning editor for Radio 4: Rhian Roberts