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The Passion of Florence Nightingale by Hugh Small "A masterly piece of historical detective work" - Daily Telegraph "Sheds new light" Sunday Times "Small's Nightingale is driven, tormented, messianic and interesting" - New York Times "Full of interesting detail" - New York Review of Books "Gripping" - Spectator "Startlingly illuminating" - Scotsman "Genuinely new thesis" - Literary Review "A shattering blow" - Mark Bostridge |
What's new in The Passion of Florence Nightingale?
Hugh Small's biography of Florence Nightingale (the first in 49 years) tore aside the screen of Edwardian sentimentality from one of the most famous women of all time, and revealed ... one of the most important people of all time.
The Passion of Florence Nightingale is a new edition of Hugh
Small’s 1998 book, Florence Nightingale, Avenging Angel, with a lot
of new material added so the book is about 30% different though about the same
length. Additional material includes:
- Details of her previously unknown romantic entanglements during the war, one
of which had a great impact on what followed;
- Details of how she succeeded in her sanitarian campaign, in terms of
saving millions of lives at home in Britain after the war.
The cover blurb:
The Passion of Florence Nightingale is a much revised and expanded
edition of Hugh Small’s Florence Nightingale, Avenging Angel (1998),
the book which first revealed the historic cover-up which had prevented Florence
Nightingale from telling us what really happened in her Crimean War hospitals.
This new edition subverts Nightingale’s emotionally repressed image by
revealing that she had a romantic entanglement during the war which had historic
consequences for her country. Hugh Small’s new research also sheds light on
the source of her power over politicians, which made her a Cabinet Minister for
a whole decade when history says that such a thing was impossible for a woman.
He shows for the first time how her leadership of the public health movement
made a huge contribution to the unprecedented rise in life expectancy in
Britain. Nightingale is one of history’s most enigmatic and controversial
figures, a polymath whose combination of boundless energy and chronic illness
has confounded biographers. Small debunks the latest conventional wisdom –
based on a misreading of technical literature – that a chronic infection
caused her to be depressed. Such theories of mental aberration marginalise
Nightingale and conveniently avoid controversial analysis of her greatest
achievements, which go completely against the grain of history as it is taught.
See The Passion of Florence Nightingale at Amazon
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