Cecil Woodham-Smith

Cecil Blanche Woodham-Smith ( Fitzgerald; 29 April 1896 – 16 March 1977) CBE was a British historian and biographer. She wrote four popular history books, each dealing with a different aspect of the Victorian era.

Early life Cecil Woodham-Smith was born in 1896 in Tenby, Wales.

In 1928 she married George Ivon Woodham-Smith, , learning narrative writing skills she later used as a historian.

Career Woodham-Smith's first book as a historian, a biography of Florence Nightingale published in 1950 by Constable, took her straight to the top of her profession. was a study of the Charge of the Light Brigade, a military disaster during the Crimean War and one of the defining events of the Victorian age. It became her most popular book, and afterwards she explained to a television audience how she wrote it: working at a gallop through thirty-six hours non-stop without food or other break until the last gun was fired, when she poured a stiff drink and slept for two days. She became an honorary fellow of St Hilda's College (her alma mater) in 1967.