Book tickets quickly for this Leeds event with distinguished guest speaker, to honour Yorkshire’s first woman MP.

An annual public lecture honouring Yorkshire’s first woman MP will be given this year by a renowned scholar.

Professor Mary Beard will speak on Women and Power, for the University of Leeds series that celebrates strong women.

The University of Cambridge Professor of Classics will give the 2020 Alice Bacon Lecture on Friday, March 13. Alice Bacon was elected to Parliament in the post-war Labour landslide.

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An inaugural lecture was delivered in 2018 by Harriet Harman – the House of Commons’ longest continuously-serving female MP. She was followed last year by Baroness Hale of Richmond, the first female President of the Supreme Court and the country’s most senior judge until her retirement in December.

Professor Beard, who is also a Fellow of Newham College, said: “I’m very pleased to be joining what is fast becoming a great tradition of women speakers and do-ers – right back to Alice Bacon.”

Alice Bacon represented Leeds North East from 1945, and retired 25 years later, when she took up a seat in the House of Lords as a Baroness. Leeds did not return another woman to the Commons until the election in 2010 of Leeds West MP Rachel Reeves, who is Baroness Bacon’s biographer.

Tickets for the 6pm lecture, in the Great Hall at the University of Leeds, can be booked at https://2020-alicebaconlecture.eventbrite.co.uk.