Julie Wheelwright

Last updated

Julie Wheelwright
Born
Julie Diana Wheelwright

1960 (age 63–64)
Farnborough, Kent, England
Occupation(s)Journalist, writer, film-maker, lecturer
Years active1980-present

Julie Wheelwright (born 1960) is a British journalist, writer and film-maker, who lectures at City, University of London. Although raised in British Columbia, Canada, she was born in England and returned there in 1984 to complete a master's degree at the University of Sussex. Wheelwright worked as a journalist for national newspapers like The Guardian and The Observer and regularly wrote for Scotland on Sunday and BBC History . She published her first book in 1989 about women who cross-dressed to participate in war. Amazons and Military Maids: Women Who Cross-Dressed in the Pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness was chosen as one of The Times Literary Editor's Selections in February 1989. She has also published a biography and a film script exposing that although Mata Hari was convicted of espionage, she was not engaged in spying. Other works include a book and a film about her ancestor, Esther Wheelwright, and articles and a film about infanticide. Her latest book, Sisters in Arms: Female Warriors from Antiquity to the New Millennium, expanded on her first book and was shortlisted for the British Army Military Book of the Year in 2021. Since 2002, she has lectured at City, University of London. After earning her PhD in 2014, she became the director of the Centre for Culture and the Creative Industries at the university.

Contents

Early life and education

Julie Diana Wheelwright was born in 1960, in Farnborough, Kent, England, [1] to Patricia Doreen "Tish" (née Ball) and David Antony Wheelwright. [2] [3] Her mother was the daughter of Eva (née St. Claire) and Major Charles Ball, a veteran of both world wars. [3] [4] Tish was one of the children evacuated from Britain by the Children's Overseas Reception Board to Canada in 1940, where she lived until 1944. [3] [4] [5] After returning to Britain, Tish eared a degree in English literature at Trinity College Dublin. [6] Wheelwright's father was the son of Beatrice Ella and John "Jack" Sylvester Wheelwright, who was a wing commander and flew dirigibles for the Royal Air Force. [4] [7] David was a sub-lieutenant in the Royal Navy and served in Singapore during World War II. After his military service, he graduated from Keble College, Oxford, with a degree in medicine. [7] After their marriage in 1958, David and Tish lived in St. George's, Bermuda, where David worked as a medic for the Colonial Service and Tish cared for their first child, Geoffrey. The family moved back to England in 1960 and had two more children, Julie and Amanda, before deciding to move to Calgary, Alberta, Canada in 1962. Their youngest child, Penelope "Penny" was born in Calgary, where David worked as a physician for six years. In 1968, they moved to British Columbia, first living in Westbank and then Vancouver, before settling in Kelowna in 1971. [3] [7]

Wheelwright completed her secondary education in Kelowna, [3] and then enrolled in 1978 at the University of British Columbia to study history with hopes of becoming a journalist. [8] She began writing for the Vancouver Sun in 1980 and was elected as president of the Canadian University Press in 1981, [1] serving as president elect in 1982 and president in 1983. [9] [10] After graduating with her bachelor's degree, Wheelwright moved to London in 1984, [1] [11] and completed a master's degree at the University of Sussex in 1986. [1] [12]

Career

Wheelwright then worked as a journalist for both The Guardian and The Observer . [11] She also regularly published literary reviews and articles in journals like Scotland on Sunday and BBC History , and created documentary films for BBC Radio Four. [13] In 1989, she published her first book, Amazons and Military Maids: Women Who Cross-Dressed in the Pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness, which grew out of her research for her master's thesis. [14] Wheelwright said that the book was about women who wanted to escape from the narrow confines of their social roles and experience male privilege. She pointed out that while some of the women featured in the book were eccentric, others chose cross-dressing for economic reasons. [15] It was chosen as one of The Times Literary Editor's Selections in February 1989. [16] Michelene Wandor's review for The Times observed that the lack of records on women's history left gaps in the biographies covered, but called the book "clear and accessible". Wandor stated that Wheelwright discussed not only cross-dressing, but women's relationship to war, showing that there was not an automatic link between women and pacifism. [17] Martha Vicinus, a women's studies professor, said Wheelwright's book indicated that many documents confirmed that fellow soldiers often colluded with disguised women to keep them from being detected. [18] Wheelwright's chapter "Tars, Tarts, and Swashbucklers" in Bold in Her Breeches, edited by historian Jo Stanley (1996) was deemed by reviewer Joan Druett as "impressive" for the insight given into the motives and methods of women pirates, and why their stories have endured in popular culture. [19]

In 1992, Wheelwright published The Fatal Lover: Mata Hari and the Myth of Women in Espionage. Reviewed by critic Anthony Cronin, the book chronicled the life of Margaretha Geertruida MacLeod, who became famous as Mata Hari an exotic dancer and courtesan. Cronin found Wheelwright's research was exhaustive and meticulous in verifying that Mata Hari was not engaged in espionage, but he called her writing "somewhat lacking in style". [20] Historian Tammy M. Proctor confirmed that Wheelwright had shown that the "spy-courtesan" label attached to Mata Hari was a myth, based in male fantasy and fear of betrayal, rather than reality. [21] Anne McElvoy of The Times called the book a "fascinating and well-researched study" about a bored Dutch housewife, who became a dancer to escape her marriage and access luxuries, but who was convicted on evidence of spying that the French prosecutors admitted, was seriously inadequate. Despite finding Wheelwright's "biographical craft" enjoyable, McElvoy took issue with the author's feminist reworking of the victimisation of women by men. She said the book failed to account for why many women are willing to engage with the world playing by rules made by men or explore fully male attitudes towards women engaged in espionage. [22] Working with director Françoise Levie and co-writer Jill Brett, the story was adapted as a French-language documentary film, Mata Hari: mythe et réalité d'une espionne (Mata Hari: Myth and Reality of a Spy) in 1998. [23] [24]

With her sister, Penny, Wheelwright wrote the script for Orkney Lad: The Story of Isabel Gunn, a 2001 documentary film directed by Anne Wheeler. The film told the story of Isabel Gunn, a Scottish woman who worked disguised as a man in the nineteenth century for the Hudson's Bay Company. [25] The two sisters produced the documentary Captive: The Story of Esther in 2005. The film told the story of their ancestor, Esther Wheelwright, an Ursuline nun, who had been captured by Wabanaki warriors as a child and taken from her home in Maine to Canada. After a Jesuit missionary negotiated for her release, Esther was taken to a convent, joined the order, and later became the first English-born mother superior of the Ursulines of Quebec. [26] In 2011, Wheelwright expanded on the topic in the book, Esther: The Remarkable True Story of Esther Wheelwright: Puritan Child, Native Daughter, Mother Superior. [27] Historians Peter Seixas and Tom Morton, based Chapter 5 of their textbook, The Big Six Historical Thinking Concepts on an evaluation of Wheelwright's book on Esther. They analysed how in Esther, Wheelwright dealt with changing historical perspective, meaning how historical figures viewed their own lives as opposed to how those lives were currently viewed. [28] Seixas and Morton praised Wheelwright's method of describing her research process and questions – such as how did Esther view her captivity, or her Catholicism as opposed to her Puritan heritage – while weaving in Esther's life story without the benefit of documentation from Esther. [29] They stated that Wheelwright made plain her recognition that her own life experiences – at a time where feminist ideals, multi-culturalism, and secular values were prevalent – were of no help in understanding Esther's eighteenth-century life and motivations. [30] Seixas and Morton wrote that Wheelwright's "transparency about the challenges she faced" in writing the book, served as a model for other writers "to arrive at plausible, evidence-based claims". [31]

Wheelwright wrote an article on infanticide for The Guardian in 1995, after Caroline Beale was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City on her return trip from a vacation heading to England with her deceased infant. [32] Over the next three years, Wheelwright began researching the topic for a BBC documentary and interviewed several mothers who had killed their children, publishing numerous articles on child murder. [33] The documentary, QED: Deadly Secrets, produced by Clare Richards, aired on BBC One on 5 August 1998. [34] [35] Wheelwright continued to investigate the topic, publishing a chapter on contemporary cases of infanticide in the 2002 book Infanticide: Historical Perspectives on Child Murder and Concealment, 1550 – 2000 , edited by Mark Jackson. [36] Her chapter analysed differences such as poverty and exploitation by men, which were reported historically, but were no longer relevant to the crime. The public reaction to mothers who kill had remained unchanged; they were either considered mad, garnering sympathy, or bad and condemned. She estimated that abandonment or murder occurs at a rate of about twenty cases annually in modern England and Wales. [37]

By 2002, Wheelwright was lecturing on journalism at City, University of London, [38] where she became director of the master's course in creative nonfiction writing in 2007. [11] She earned her PhD from the University of London in 2014, was promoted to senior lecturer, and that year became the "director of the Centre for Culture and the Creative Industries at City University". [12] [39] Wheelwright expanded and updated Amazons and Military Maids in 2020, with a new title, Sisters in Arms: Female Warriors from Antiquity to the New Millennium. The updated work also included stories of women who no longer had to disguise themselves to participate in battle, but still faced "sex-based patterns of oppression and harmful stereotypes". [40] In her review of the book, Phyllis Reeve said that Wheelwright told the centuries-long history of women who fought using life narratives, which did not necessarily lend themselves to chronological organisation because of the complexity of their stories. [40] Political scientist Kristen Williams stated in her review that the book explored how the idea of women warriors creates tensions as a result of traditional gender expectations of masculinity and femininity. [41] Williams also noted that although the book includes the Greek myths about women warriors and early history, the majority of the work covered women from the eighteenth century and beyond. While saying that Sisters in Arms was highly reliant on historical texts and could have benefited from an interdisciplinary approach including scholarship from other fields, Williams concluded that it was an "informative resource and a pleasure to read". [41] In 2021, it was shortlisted for the British Army Military Book of the Year. [42]

Selected works

Film

Print

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mata Hari</span> Dutch exotic dancer (1876–1917)

Margaretha Geertruida MacLeod, better known by the stage name Mata Hari, was a Dutch exotic dancer and courtesan who was convicted of being a spy for Germany during World War I. She was executed by firing squad in France. The idea of a beautiful exotic dancer using her powers of seduction as a spy made her name synonymous with the femme fatale. Her story has served as an inspiration for books, films, and other works.

Baby farming is the historical practice of accepting custody of an infant or child in exchange for payment in late-Victorian Britain and, less commonly, in Australia, New Zealand and the United States. If the infant was young, this usually included wet-nursing. Some baby farmers "adopted" children for lump-sum payments, while others cared for infants for periodic payments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hannah Snell</span> British woman who disguised herself to become a soldier (1723–1792)

Hannah Snell was a British woman who disguised herself as a man and became a soldier.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Belle Boyd</span> American Confederate spy (1844–1900)

Maria Isabella Boyd, best known as Belle Boyd was a Confederate spy in the American Civil War. She operated from her father's hotel in Front Royal, Virginia, and provided valuable information to Confederate General Stonewall Jackson in 1862.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samantha Morton</span> British actress (born 1977)

Samantha Jane Morton is an English actress. She is known for her work in independent film with dark and tragic themes, in particular period dramas and is the recipient of numerous accolades, including the BAFTA Fellowship, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award and nominations for two Academy Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

<i>Swimming Pool</i> (2003 film) Film by François Ozon

Swimming Pool is a 2003 erotic thriller film co-written and directed by François Ozon and starring Charlotte Rampling and Ludivine Sagnier. The plot focuses on a British crime novelist, Sarah Morton, who travels to her publisher's upmarket summer house in Southern France to seek solitude in order to work on her next book. However, the arrival of Julie, who claims to be the publisher's daughter, induces complications and a subsequent crime. Both lead characters are bilingual, and the film's dialogue is a mixture of French and English.

Assia Esther Wevill was a German-Jewish woman who escaped the Nazis at the beginning of World War II and emigrated to Mandatory Palestine, via Italy, then later England, where she had an affair with the English poet Ted Hughes. While she was a successful advertising copywriter and a talented translator of poetry, she is mainly remembered in the context of her relationship with Sylvia Plath and Hughes.

<i>Casino Royale</i> (1967 film) James Bond spy comedy film

Casino Royale is a 1967 spy parody film originally distributed by Columbia Pictures featuring an ensemble cast. It is loosely based on the 1953 novel of the same name by Ian Fleming, the first novel to feature the character James Bond.

<i>Where the Spirit Lives</i> 1989 Canadian television film by Bruce Pittman

Where the Spirit Lives is a 1989 television film about Aboriginal children in Canada being taken from their tribes to attend residential schools for assimilation into majority culture. Written by Keith Ross Leckie and directed by Bruce Pittman, it aired on CBC Television on October 29, 1989. It was also shown in the United States on PBS on June 6, 1990, as part of the American Playhouse series and was screened at multiple film festivals in Canada and the United States.

Densey Clyne was an Australian naturalist, photographer, writer, and documentarian. She is especially well known for her studies of spiders and insects. Clyne worked as a researcher, writer, narrator and/or adviser on a number of productions in partnership with cinematographer Jim Frazier.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Flora Sandes</span> First World War soldier and nurse (1876–1956)

Flora Sandes was a British woman who served as a member of the Royal Serbian Army in World War I. She was the only British woman officially to serve as a soldier in that war. Initially a St John Ambulance volunteer, she travelled to the Kingdom of Serbia, where she was welcomed and formally enrolled in the Serbian army. She was subsequently promoted to the rank of sergeant major, and, after the war, to senior captain. She was decorated with seven medals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Magda Sonja</span> Austrian-American actress (1886–1974)

Magda Sonja was an Austrian-American actress. She appeared in 42 films between 1917 and 1936, although she is perhaps best known for her portrayal of Mata Hari in Mata Hari: The Red Dancer (1927). Prior to becoming an actress, she was a cabaret performer and chansonnière. She is considered to be one of Austria's first movie stars, only paralleled by Liane Haid.

Annette Frieda Kuhn, FBA is a British author, cultural historian, educator, researcher, editor and feminist. She is known for her work in screen studies, visual culture, film history and cultural memory. She is Professor and Research Fellow in Film Studies at Queen Mary University of London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rosalie Slaughter Morton</span> American physician

Rosalie Slaughter Morton was an American physician, surgeon, and author. In addition to running her own medical practices, she became the first woman appointed as Attending Surgeon at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in 1916, and became the first chairperson of the American Women's Hospitals Service the following year. Morton served as a medic during the First World War, and was the first chair of the Public Health Education Committee. She was also one of the first women to join the faculty, and to later become a professor, at the Polyclinic Hospital of New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Esther Wheelwright</span> Ursuline nun (1696–1780)

Esther Wheelwright, also known as Mère Marie-Joseph de l'Enfant-Jésus, was born in Wells, Massachusetts. Wheelwright was captured during an attack of her village during Queen Anne's War in 1703 by a group of French-Canadians and Wabanaki Indians, or First Nations Peoples. For five years, Wheelwright was raised by the French-allied Catholic Wabanaki, and then was brought to Québec where she was placed in the school of the Ursulines of Québec. She remained there the rest of her life, becoming a choir nun and eventually the Mother Superior of the convent in the immediate aftermath of the 1759 British conquest of Québec. She is notable not only for having lived in three major North American cultures, but also because she was and remains the only foreign-born Mother Superior the Ursulines of Québec have ever elected.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Agnes Mary Field</span> English film producer and director

Agnes Mary Field was an English film producer and director, particularly associated with documentary, educational, and children's films.

"Rinse the Blood Off My Toga" is a comedy sketch by the Canadian comedy duo Wayne and Shuster. First broadcast on The Wayne and Shuster Hour on CBC Radio in 1954, it was reenacted for their British television debut in 1957 and their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1958. The sketch recasts the Shakespearean historical tragedy as a detective story with gangster overtones. Set in the Roman Senate right after the assassination of Julius Caesar, the script has Brutus (Shuster) engaging the services of private eye Flavius Maximus (Wayne) to identify Caesar's assassin. Several lines from the sketch became popular catchphrases, including Flavius's order of a "martinus" in a Roman bar, and the repeated lament of Caesar's widow Calpurnia in a thick Bronx accent, "I told him, 'Julie, don't go!'" It is considered Wayne and Shuster's most famous sketch.


Elisabeth Krimmer is an American academic whose work has focused on war and gender studies in German literature and society. Inspired by her mother's silence on the subject of war in German history, Krimmer's work has focused on uncovering the roles and experiences of women in war. Among her works are books exploring women who dressed as men to become soldiers and books which collected women's remembrances as victims and perpetrators of the The Holocaust. She has also written works evaluating women's roles as depicted in film and in leadership positions. She co-wrote with Susanne Kord Contemporary Hollywood Masculinities: Gender, Genre, and Politics, which was selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Titles of the Association of College and Research Libraries in 2012.

Happy Ned or Ned Davies (1831–1887) was the alias of Elizabeth Taylor also known as Harriet Ormiston, a 19th-century British woman who gained notoriety for cross-dressing. She lived as Ned Davies from 1862 to 1878, primarily working as a sailor, dockworker, and farm labourer, dressing in men's clothing. In later life, she became an alcoholic and was arrested numerous times for crimes. She returned to living as a woman in 1879, after a prison sentence for arson. After being charged with arson for a second time, she reformed and lived in Warrington until her death in 1887. Two different ballads, popular in Lancashire during her lifetime, gave versions of her life-story.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phyllis Reeve</span> Librarian, marina operator, literary critic

Phyllis Reeve is a former librarian and marina operator, who has written local histories and serves as a literary critic in British Columbia, Canada. Born in Fiji, she moved to Montreal as a young child and completed her education at the University of British Columbia. She worked in the university library until 1987, when she retired and purchased Page's Resort and Marina on Gabriola Island. She and her husband expanded the business to include an art gallery, book store, and public concert hall, which they operated until retiring in 2007. She has written several local histories, as well as a book drawing on her father's journals about Fiji, and is active as a literary critic.

References

Citations

  1. 1 2 3 4 Sleeman & Neale 2003, p. 574.
  2. ↑ Wheelwright 1989, p. dedication.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 The Globe and Mail 2021.
  4. 1 2 3 Wheelwright 2017, p. 259.
  5. ↑ Hurst 1995, p. 7, Starweek Magazine supplement.
  6. ↑ Wheelwright 2017, p. 258.
  7. 1 2 3 Okanagan Valley Newspaper Group 2019.
  8. ↑ Nanaimo Daily News 1979, p. 37.
  9. ↑ Szuch 1982, p. 11.
  10. ↑ Wheelwright & McCarthy 1983, p. 4.
  11. 1 2 3 The Morning Star 2008, p. 45.
  12. 1 2 McWilliam 2024, p. 216.
  13. ↑ The Morning Star 2008, p. 45; Wheelwright 1996, p. 13C; Wheelwright 2000, p. 7:10; Jackson 2002, p. xii.
  14. ↑ Fenhagen 1989, p. I1.
  15. ↑ Kastner 1989, p. D6.
  16. ↑ The Times 1989.
  17. ↑ Wandor 1989.
  18. ↑ Vicinus 1992, p. 437.
  19. ↑ Druett 2001, pp. 468–469.
  20. ↑ Cronin 1992, p. 8L.
  21. ↑ Proctor 2003, p. 125.
  22. ↑ McElvoy 1992, p. 33.
  23. ↑ Pallister & Hottell 2005, p. 39.
  24. ↑ Couret & Anthony 2010.
  25. ↑ The Vancouver Sun 2001, p. C22.
  26. ↑ Fort McMurray Today 2005, p. D8.
  27. ↑ Seixas & Morton 2013, p. 135.
  28. ↑ Seixas & Morton 2013, p. 138.
  29. ↑ Seixas & Morton 2013, p. 140.
  30. ↑ Seixas & Morton 2013, p. 141.
  31. ↑ Seixas & Morton 2013, p. 143.
  32. ↑ Wheelwright 1995, p. 12.
  33. ↑ Wheelwright 1997a, p. 2, Spectrum; Wheelwright 1997b, p. 15; Wheelwright 1998, p. 4; Spierenburg 2003, p. 127.
  34. ↑ Wheelwright 1998, p. 4.
  35. ↑ BBC 1998.
  36. ↑ Spierenburg 2003, pp. 126–127.
  37. ↑ Spierenburg 2003, p. 127.
  38. ↑ Jackson 2002, p. xii.
  39. ↑ Williamson 2020, p. Contributors.
  40. 1 2 Reeve 2024.
  41. 1 2 Williams 2022, p. 1.
  42. ↑ British Army News 2021.

Bibliography

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.