The first book to be featured this season on the Sara Cox Radio 2 Book Club is The Scandalous Ladies Football Club by Frances Quinn—a story inspired by real-life Victorian trailblazers, who showed the world that women can do anything they put their minds to, even if the world around them says they can’t.
The book was released on 2 July and Frances’ interview with Sara is on BBC Sounds from Tuesday 4 August.
Read an exclusive extract.
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The Scandalous Ladies Football Club
Welcome to the British Ladies Football Club…
London, 1897. Minnie Newton – twenty-eight-year-old schoolteacher and women’s rights advocate – has a passion for football. But in Victorian society, football is a men’s game. That is, until Minnie decides to take matters into her own hands and place an ad in the newspaper, asking for volunteers to join the first ever women’s football team.
From a motley collection of replies, Minnie puts together a squad. Most of the women have never kicked a ball before – but a little thing like that isn’t about to stop them. And when they take the game public, it isn’t long before they are drawing huge crowds, stirring controversy across the capital and beyond.
But Minnie is hiding an explosive secret. Soon, all the attention the club is getting begins to threaten the life she has built for herself.
Can she walk the line between independence and safety, or will the truth about who she really is finally come out? And is the beautiful game enough to save her freedom?
About the author
Frances Quinn read English at King’s College, Cambridge, and is a journalist and copywriter. She has written for magazines including Prima, Good Housekeeping, She, Woman’s Weekly and Ideal Home. She lives in Brighton with her husband and two Tonkinese cats. She has written four novels, her debut The Smallest Man was published in 2021, followed by That Bonesetter Woman (2023) and The Lost Passenger (2024).
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