Margaret Bondfield: The Life and Times of Britain’s First Female Cabinet Minister by Nan Sloane COMING 19 FEB

Hardback
Bloomsbury Academic
19 February 2026

A groundbreaking biography of Margaret Bondfield, the remarkable political pioneer and working-class woman who rose to become the first female Cabinet Minister in the 1929 Labour government.

Rising from modest semi-rural, semi-industrial origins in the West Country, and years of apprenticeship in shops in Brighton, Bondfield became the first woman to chair the TUC, one of the first female Labour MPs, the first woman to hold government office (1924) and in 1929, the first female Cabinet Minister.

Most of her life was lived in the public eye, but what lay behind her public achievements? In this remarkable book, historian Nan Sloane looks beyond the public façade to reveal Bondfield's hidden personal story, from her complicated personality with a difficult background, a private life which was either secret or non-existent, and a lifelong struggle with imposter syndrome.