Not So ‘Idle Women’ Part 2: Navigating Greater Waters
In my first guest blog, I wrote about the background to The Idle Women: Recreating the Journey – a waterways tour of a show sharing the stories of the wartime w...
Kate Saffin
Blog: Tracing the route of the not-so ‘Idle Women’ who navigated the waterways in World War II
February 2016. I had completed an MFA in creative writing. My efforts at reworking a play didn’t seem to be making much progress and The Royal Court hadn’t call...
Kate Saffin
Boater, writer, storyteller and actor, Kate Saffin has lived on a narrowboat and told stories of the waterways since 1999. She trained as writer for stage and broadcast media at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. She adapted the waterway’s classic ‘Ramlin Rose; the Boatwoman’s story’ by the late Sheila Stewart and has performed at canal festivals, pub gardens and Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Other plays have retold the apparently true story of a brothel on a boat and a late coming of age for a pensioner who finds herself on holiday on a boat. ‘Isobel’s War’ is based on interviews and existing accounts of the young women who worked on the boats during the second world war to tell Isobel’s story.