Born by Lucy Inglis is an all-encompassing book. It delves into the beginning of humanity and then swans through into different eras like the Babylonian and Anglo-Saxon, the Witch trials and transatlantic slave trade, and then finally, modern day. Lucy Inglis makes it clear in the beginning of the book of how society and culture effect childbirth, and so we read heavily into big side steps like eugenics, scripture and religion, slavery, and so on. It's a very interesting read, but it deals with a lot. A little too much, at times. I vastly enjoyed the first half. This side of the book is a lot more streamlined. We learn about rituals and superstitions, of texts and bones. Of how history has or hasn't valued a woman's labour and how different people have changed how it is perceived and monitored. Myths and cave art, letters written in cuneiform and burials; it really showcases commonalities of humanity that have persisted throughout time. It keeps mostly to the topic at hand, and when it did dawdle away at this stage, I found it added needed context. We learn of how Palaeolithic women were accompanied by domesticated wolf-type dogs, (the dog buried with the bone of a mammoth in its mouth? The child and dog prints? So special to read about). We learn of home burials and a mummified foetus. Alongside this female physicians come into play and the idea and lasting damages of the "wondering womb". It was such a interesting read learning about history's relationship towards childbirth, babies, miscarriage, and abortion. They all entail the same world. But I feel like the book could've been a little more centred. Especially the latter half, when famous names come into play, we focus heavily on the off shoots. We lose sense of the common person and focus on the infamous. Galton, Sanger, and the Nazi's - the eugenics side of the book focused heavily on the government’s desire to control who should and should not give birth. We learn of forced sterilisation, the advent of birth control, and abortion. A slight part of me missed the focus on childbirth itself, and the healthcare side of pregnancy. I didn't mind straying out, but sometimes we focus too much on these off shoots. It became biographical at times, concentrating on the lives of pioneers and instigators a little too much instread of the ideas as a whole. All in all, I give the book five stars. And although it did peter out near the end for me. the book as a whole was worth the read and I learnt a lot.

I loved Lucy Inglis’s last book Georgian London so leapt at the chance to read her newest non fiction Born - an expansive history of childbirth from 29,000 years ago to the present day. Inglis makes use of fascinating material sources for pre and ancient history which I found genuinely thrilling to read about. I studied Tudor childbirth and infant care as part of my masters but that was a drop in the ocean compared to Inglis’s hugely informative and comprehensive history. I was also surprised about the extent childbirth was controlled by the state in more recent times - as a staunch feminist I know about the most recent history, but I was shocked at the horrendous slide into eugenics through the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, culminating in some of the awful, evil practices and ideologies that defined the Second World War. Enthusiasts of social history will find lots here to interest them - well worth adding to your collection.

In a thorough and urgent narrative, Inglis takes us on a millennia-long journey, right from the myths and religious roles of childbirth and more broadly women‘s bodies and their health, via history and women’s hidden voices, from the nascent sciences of childbirth to the present day and the worrying erosion of women’s autonomy over their bodies in the States. Never not telling the reader something new, Inglis’s book does so much with both economy and awareness of how to hook the reader, especially the glaring absence of women at times when the very subject is women’s health. Thought-provoking for the armchair historian yet written for the general reader, Inglis opens doors to a history and a world that has ramifications for anyone and everyone.