Books by Mari Takayanagi
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Necessary Women: the Untold Story of Parliament’s Working Women
By Mari Takayanagi and Elizabeth Hallam Smith
Paperback published February 2025
Hardback published June 2023
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When suffragette Emily Wilding Davison hid overnight in the Houses of Parliament in 1911 to have her name recorded in the census there, she may not have known that there were sixty-seven other women also resident in Parliament that night: housekeepers, kitchen maids, and wives and daughters living in households. This book is their story.
Women have touched just about every aspect of life in Parliament. From ‘Jane’, dispenser of beer, pies and chops in Bellamy’s legendary refreshment rooms; to May Ashworth, Official Typist to Parliament for thirty years through marriage, war and divorce; and Jean Winder, the first female Hansard reporter, who fought for years for equal pay; the lives of these women have been largely unacknowledged – until now.
Drawing on new research from the Parliamentary Archives, government records and family history sources, historians and parliamentary insiders Mari Takayanagi and Elizabeth Hallam Smith bring these unsung heroes to life.
They chart the changing context for working women within and beyond the Palace of Westminster, uncovering women left out of the history books – including Mary Jane Anderson, a previously unknown suffragette.
Women’s Legal Landmarks in the Interwar Years: Not for Want of Trying
Edited by Rosemary Auchmuty, Erika Rackley and Mari Takayanagi
Published by Hart Publishing, 2024
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Listed as one of The Times four ‘pick of legal reads’ for 2025.
This book focuses on the often forgotten legal landmarks that benefited, or aimed to benefit, women in England and Wales between 1918 and 1938.
Bringing together 30 academics and scholars, the book considers the work done by feminist activists in the interwar years, to provoke legal reforms and advances impacting every area of life. These included property, family relationships, access to health care, criminal law, employment opportunities, pay, pensions and political representation.
The book follows campaigns by key women’s organisations, including the Six-Point Group and the Married Women's Association, while assessing the impact of early women lawyers and politicians. While some of the landmarks effected change during this period, others provided the foundation for measures in later decades. Together the landmarks demonstrate that far from being a relatively quiet period of British feminism, the interwar period played a key role in ongoing fights for recognition, representation and justice.
Voice & Vote: Celebrating 100 Years of Votes for Women
Edited by Mari Takayanagi, Melanie Unwin and Paul Seaward
Published by St. James's House, 2018
Voice and Vote book featured on St. James’s House website and YouTube
Voice and Vote book featured on History of Parliament
A century ago, women's struggle for the vote in the United Kingdom finally saw success when the first women were given the right to vote and stand as MPs in 1918, although full equality was still to come. Published to accompany "Voice and Vote: Women's Place in Parliament", Parliament's landmark public exhibition celebrating women in Parliament over the last 200 years, this book charts women's involvement in politics at Westminster and beyond from the 17th century to the present.
Victoria Tower Treasures from the Parliamentary Archives
By Caroline Shenton, David Prior and Mari Takayanagi
Published by the Parliamentary Archives, 2010
To mark the 150th anniversary of the Victoria Tower of the Palace of Westminster, the Parliamentary Archives has selected 150 treasures from among the 3 million historic records of both Houses of Parliament. These treasures illustrate the history of Parliament and the Palace of Westminster since the fifteenth century and include iconic documents such as Charles I's death warrant, the Bill of Rights, the record of the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, the Stamp Act and the Great Reform Act.
They also include less well-known but spectacular items such as a ticket to George IV's coronation banquet, a suffragette banner, a wartime bicycle lamp belonging to the Commons' librarian and a host of other fascinating surprises from the collections.
Written by three experts from the Parliamentary Archives, this book is a must for anyone interested in the history of Parliament and of the nation.