Inherited Touch

by Judith A. Green

There is a risk in telling another's story especially when passed down through the family and there are many layers to a life that each person may only glimpse part of. It was with trepidation that Judith took on the task of peeling back the layers - smells, memories, photographs, family tales, official records - to trace the stories of her ordinary, imperfect female forebears. Partly to give them voice, when women's stories are often forgotten or ignored, but for a greater part she admired their resilience, their ability to maintain their balance when life's challenges left them teetering on the brink of an emotional abyss. She wanted to demonstrate how resilience can be nurtured within a spirit of community connectedness, through a sense of belonging.

As Judith gathered the women and their stories to her she realised she was being gathered in as much as she was gathering. Her story weaving through the stories she was recording. Facing her own emotional abyss, she experienced the nurturing of a community of women who understood

the journey.

When I look at the two grainy photos of my mum feeding a lamb and a jealous dog it isn't just what I see, I can smell the pungent odour of chook manure and lamb manure. These smells never disgust me, they are part of farm life, just as the grit of summer dust and the tang of rain on dry earth are imprinted on my memory.

194 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 4, 2020

About the author

Judith Green is an English medieval historian, who is Emerita Professor of Medieval History at the University of Edinburgh. A graduate of King's College, London and Somerville College, Oxford, she held a research fellowship and then a lectureship at the University of St Andrews before transferring to a lectureship at Queen's University, Belfast. There she became a Reader and, eventually, Professor. In 2005, she took the professorship at Edinburgh, retiring in 2011.

Specialising in Anglo-Norman England, her notable works include:

The Government of England Under Henry I, (Cambridge, 1986)
The Aristocracy of Norman England, (Cambridge, 1997)
Henry I, King of England and Duke of Normandy, (Cambridge, 2006)