In the early years of the 20th century British women were still prevented from voting or standing for parliament. The determined and sometimes violent campaign by the women of the Suffragette movement began the long road to eventual equality.

Margaret Haig Thomas was a classic Suffragette. She was educated, outspoken and refused to be treated as a second-class citizen because of her gender. She noted early on that while ambition was regarded as a virtue in young men, it was seen as vice in young women.

Margaret joined Emmeline Pankhurst’s Women’s Social and Political Union and

organised their first meeting at Newport, much to the disapproval of her fox-hunting husband, Humphrey Mackworth.

In 1908 Margaret was arrested and imprisoned for attempting to blow up a letter box with a home-made bomb. Refusing to be bailed out by Humphrey, she went on hunger-strike and was eventually released after five days without food.

During the First World War, she accompanied her father, the Liberal MP David Alfred Thomas - later Viscount Rhondda, to the United States to oversee the purchase of munitions. On their return they were aboard the Lusitania when it was torpedoed off the coast of Ireland and were lucky to escape with their lives.

In 1917 Margaret accepted the post of Director of the Women’s Department at the Department of National Service. She was instrumental in reforming the Women’s Royal Air Force.

The following year, on the death of her father, she attempted by legal action to inherit his seat in the House of Lords. Though unsuccessful, her efforts prompted George Bernard Shaw to remark that the result would have been: “such a show-up of the general business ignorance and imbecility of the male sex as never was before."

She later founded the magazine Time and Tide which, although never profitable, provided an outlet for major writers such as George Orwell, Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence.