Florence Nightingale, By Mark Bostridge

Why another doorstep biography of Florence Nightingale? Do we not already know enough about the mellifluously-named nursing pioneer? Who became a national idol for her work during the Crimean War, a fierce opponent of the War Office and the founder of modern hospital practice? Who looked like a demure Victorian lady but acted like a matron-who-must-be-obeyed? We have known of the idol's feet of clay ever since Lytton Strachey unpicked her reputation in Eminent Victorians. We are hazily aware that her bitter attacks on the imprisonment of young ladies in idle family pursuits are part of feminist history. We cannot be interested in the ramblings by which she, like her contemporaries, strove to reconcile the Christian God with terrible suffering. However, it is a long time since the last full-scale account of the Lady with the... [read full story]