West Midlands. Christabel Pankhurst (Smethwick) is probably the best known of them now. But, at the time, Mary Macarthur (Stourbridge), and Margery Corbett Ashby (Ladywood) were equally capable of making headline news... and often did. Ranged against them were all the forces of tradition and rigid conservatism, determined that women candidates should fail. Taking On the Men is a fascinating, superbly researched and thoroughly well-told tale of three women who took on the men and – simply by standing for Parliament – scored a small victory against what would now be known as ‘the patriarchy’. Contains biographies and results for the seventeen women to contest the 1918 General Election. Introduction by Preet Gill MP, the UK's first woman Sikh Member of Parliament. One hundred years of service to Newton One hundred years of service to Newton, the history of Newton Road United Reformed (Allen Memorial) Church 1917-2017, Smethwick, 2018. The Newton Road United Reformed Church closed its doors for the last time on Christmas Day 2017. It had been started exactly one hundred years before, but its history goes back to the 1740s when the early Methodists proselytised in Great Barr. David Hallam tells the story of a small church that had a great impact in its neighbourhood. Available to download here. Eliza Asbury Eliza Asbury, her cottage and her son, Bewdley, 2003. Eliza Asbury lived between Birmingham and the Black Country during the ferment of the vast eighteenth century industrial revolution that was to transform the world. She had a difficult marriage, lost a beloved daughter in infancy and lived in a community at Great Barr where hostility to her Methodist faith was never far from the surface. Nevertheless, for over fifty years her little cottage was a regular place of worship and her only son Frank was to go to America to become Bishop Francis Asbury, the first Protestant Bishop in North America. This book tells the inspiring story through Eliza's eyes, uncoupling many of the myths that have grown up about the Asbury family. Using original sources it charts the frustrating thirty year correspondence between mother and son, when letters sometimes took a year to arrive at the intended destination. Selected online articles The Arts Ballet could be set to capture a big audience in Birmingham Birmingham Mail 13 April 2020, online Birmingham Live 13 April 2020 Political Immigration: a question of colour? Immigration - a question