Alice Longstaff BIPP (1907 - 1992) was a pioneer photographer from Hebden Bridge. Rare for her time, she was a craftswoman and an independent proprietor who forged a firm path through the man’s worlds of the early twentieth century. And in an era when simply everyone had their photographs taken - which were often displayed ‘in t’ winder’ - Alice and her husband John became cherished fixtures of the town over many decades, keeping their studio as something of a social ‘salon’.

‘An Owl in the Desert’ by Anna Carlisle

The feisty and glorious Lady Anne Clifford, Jacobean heroine of the North, who – with her entourage and enemies – comes to life before your eyes within the courtyards, corners and crannies of historic Skipton Castle and Brougham Castle, the inspiring ‘homes’ of Lady Anne and the illustrious Clifford dynasty.

Lady Anne Clifford, was born in Skipton in 1590 and died at Brougham Castle in 167 6. She struggled with her husband and her king to inh erit her rightful estates: one hundred miles of them form Skipton to Carlisle. Succeeding finally at 59, she devoted the rest of her long life to rebuilding this heritage of lands, schools, hospitals, churches and chapels – overseen in her famous journeys across the hills on nothing more than a horse-litter but with an entourage of hundreds, in all weathers and at all decades of her later life, across Brough and Brougham and Appleby and Pendragon and the chases of Mallerstang and Whinfell – guardian and landlord to estates older than the Conqueror.

Margaret Fell (1614- 1702) of Swarthmoor Hall in Furness, Cumbria came young in her married life to another ‘marriage’ - with early Quakerism, as expounded by the charismatic George Fox. Whilst her own husband Thomas Fell supported her almost from the outset, she struggled to persuade the authorities - and, most dismayingly, her own son - of the goodness of her new faith and, for her pains, she was twice imprisoned for long spells and she made endless petitions - to whichever new king would hear her - for the release from prisons of Quaker friends and for the freedom to worship in their own homes.

‘An Eclipse of the Sun’ by Anna Carlisle

Lady Anne Neville, daughter to Richard Earl of Warwick – the ‘kingmaker’ – lived at Middleham Castle alongside her cousin Richard Duke of Gloucester, whom, after a decade of ill fortune and degradation, married to Edward’ Prince of Wales’s, son of Henry V1 and Margaret of Anjou, she was to marry. Widowed and bereft by the age of 16, she was rescued by Richard from penury in London and brought back to Middleham to a decade or so of blissful married existence. The couple’s assumption of the throne of England, the death of her 10-year-old son Edward, the implications of her husband in treasonous machinations and her own ill health saw her dead at Middleham by the age of 28, a tragically short and cheated young life.