Hilda Matheson - by Michael Carney & Kate Murph

Hilda Matheson - A Life of Secrets and Broadcasts.
 
Vita Sackville-West was infatuated with her.
Virginia Woolf hated her.
Sir John Reith poached her from Lady Astor for the BBC then engineered her resignation.
 
Having worked for MI6 during WW1,  she became the political secretary to Lady Astor, the first woman MP to take her seat in the House of Commons.   She then became the first Talks Director for the fledgling BBC, before Reith turned against her liberalising energies, and Hilda resigned rather than compromise her principles.
Hilda Matheson was one of the most important women behind the scenes in Britain's public life between the wars and an influential networker between feminist, media and political powers. 
 
'One of the most dazzlingly accomplished women of her generation... I was particularly moved by the openness Hilda shows in her letters to Vita where she celebrates the joy of same-sex love at a time when those relationships rang with the enforced silencers of taboo and shame'  Juliet Nicolson