The spectacle of the horse and cart caravan, which the students affectionately named “Eva”, drew crowds in their hundreds along to open-air meetings.
The women travelled through the Scottish borders, the Lake District, Yorkshire and Derbyshire to Oxford, their final destination. Hundreds gathered on village greens to see the unusual sight of women making speeches in public.
Although their mission had serious intention, the content of the letters is light-hearted and reveals how much the women enjoyed the freedom of the travelling lifestyle, swimming in rivers, picnicking and, in one instance, getting lost on route.
Margolyes said: “It’s quite clear the journey was huge fun. It was a jaunt. I was very touched by it and it reminded me, I have to say, of my own early days at Newnham College, Cambridge because we were political. We thought we were the first political people, the first political women, well we weren’t.
“We’re all so used to emails now, people don’t write letters much anymore, but letters give you a flavour of the soul of a person. Ray Costello is clearly a good egg, she’s got a head on her shoulders, she’s got a sense of fun. She’s very focused, she knows what she wants to do, she’s going to do it and she’s going to have fun doing it.
“I like to think they got what they wanted. It took a long time but it did work – they got the vote.”
