During the strange days of the Covid lockdown, I disappeared down a rabbit hole into the first half of the twentieth century. Political differences had divided families and communities, a new Prime Minister had brutally punished internal dissent in his party, and – in the words of a song from 1939 – ‘there’s no place like home, but we see too much of it now.’ Amid the instability of 2020, I found solace and unexpected similarities in the turmoil of the late 1930s.

The woman whose life took me there was someone I felt I should have known more about. I had occasionally seen the Duchess of Atholl listed among early women MPs, but not looked beyond the title. And then a friend mentioned that the Duchess had been anti-suffrage before she was elected Scotland’s first woman MP and appointed the first Conservative woman minister. That, I thought, is an interesting journey.

With libraries closed, I spent far too much money on secondhand books trying to learn more. When I picked up a book I would turn immediately to the index. Always Astor, seldom Atholl, usually Attlee. In that gap between Britain’s first woman MP to take her seat and Britain’s transforming post-war Prime Minister, my duchess often disappeared. I set out to understand how her – fascinating, moving, unexpected – story had been so forgotten. How was it that even her own political party had no space to remember Atholl alongside Nancy Astor and Margaret Thatcher?

Almost without realising it, I had started to research the book I wanted to read about this forgotten pioneer. Once the world opened up, I buried myself in archives in Blair Atholl, Perth, Edinburgh, Cambridge and London. I met people who fondly remember Kitty, as she was known to her family and friends, and visited the places where she lived. I hope the book I have written does justice to her extraordinary life and that you enjoy reading it.