Are you enjoying ‘Gentleman Jack’ the story of Anne Lister a nineteenth century woman who dared to be different? The BBC1 Sunday evening drama written by Sally Wainwright and starring Suranne Jones is based on the diaries of Anne Lister, an extraordinary Yorkshire woman born in 1791. Anne Lister left an account of her life in a journal numbering more than twenty volumes and some four million words, most of it written in code. For more than thirty years Helena Whitbread has been decoding, researching and writing about the woman who took control of her life and broke social conventions, sometimes at threat to her personal safety. Finding the diary of one of the Swindon women I have researched is the stuff of my dreams, but unfortunately ordinary, nineteenth century, working class women didn't tend to leave an account of their life. The closest I have come to such a find is a collection of letters held at the Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre in Chippenham, wr...