Hooked on heroines

Womens' Editor Sarah Foster speaks to author Jessica Ruston and finds out who we really rate.

WHEN Jessica Ruston called up Google and entered 'heroines' as her search, she was perturbed by the result. She was researching for her book on all the women we admire and thought she'd find a wealth of names. Instead she found a gentle prompt: "Did you mean to search for heroes?" She felt her hackles start to rise.

"I thought 'oh God, that says it all really'," Jessica recalls. "I looked up (the medieval scholar) Heloise, who's famous partly for her association with Abelard, in a biographical dictionary and her only entry says 'see Abelard'. When I started looking for couples they were all listed with the man first - Romeo and Juliet, Anthony and Cleopatra. Bonnie and Clyde were the exception."

So what she'd thought would be straightforward turned into quite a complex task. She says she started with the internet, which opened doors to other things.

"The bulk of the book was researched using the internet and that led me on to biographical sources like dictionaries," says Jessica. "Also people were very kind and generous with information. There was one very kind person who sent me a huge amount of information on May Moar and Betty Mouat, who lived on the Shetland Isles in the 19th century. Betty Mouat survived this awful shipwreck - there was a storm and she survived for eight days on a packet of biscuits and a bottle of milk - and she ended up in Norway and was rescued by fishermen. May Moar lowered herself over a cliff to rescue stranded fishermen off the Shetland Isles."

The project started when Susan Hill, of Long Barn Books, for which Jessica works part-time, saw there was room for something based on female icons. It struck a chord with her at once.

"I thought 'ooh, that's really interesting', and the more I thought about it I thought 'there's a lot here'," says Jessica, who's 29 and lives in London. "There are so many women who don't fall very neatly into the category of heroines, so I've included women who aren't necessarily obvious like Florence Nightingale. When I started talking to people, some of their choices were very surprising. One of my friends had Louise Michelle, who was a French anarchist from the Paris commune. I found out about all these people who had never occurred to me."

She had great fun with her research, demanding names from all her friends. She ended up with far too many to include. "I had a list of hundreds and I had to try to narrow it down a bit," says Jessica. "I was really then thinking 'how are they going to be organised? What have they got in common?' I knew from the start that I didn't want to do a chronological timeline.

"Some of the categories just jumped out. One was 'high fliers', like Amelia Earhart, and I included some of the high flying businesswomen. Then there was 'not so dumb blondes' and 'crime and punishment'. 'Spies and secret agents' was quite a fun one. There are women from the Second World War then people like Stella Rimington from MI5."

As Jessica makes clear, her range of heroines is wide. There are some bad girls in the mix. "When I talked to people, some said Bonnie Parker, as in Bonnie and Clyde, and that was interesting because it started me along the lines that heroines aren't always good," she says.

To give her book an extra spark she asked what famous people thought. She found this harder than she'd planned. "I wrote to all these celebrities and notable women of various sorts trying to get their heroines, which was actually quite a job," says Jessica. "It was probably the bit that took the longest because finding out agents and contact details wasn't easy. I wrote about 200 letters and ended up with about a dozen who contributed."

Among the stars who did agree to be involved were those with strange or quirky tastes. "A couple of people said their mothers, which was quite interesting," says Jessica. "Fern Britton's list was quite royal - she chose the Queen, Princess Diana and Camilla. She put Camilla there for weakness and courage. She's also got Fiona Bruce, Jane Russell, Lauren Bacall and her mum. Tara Palmer-Tompkinson gave me Vivienne Westwood, Audrey Hepburn and Jessica Rabbit."

One name that came up several times, which always seemed imbued with warmth, was that of Dame and York-born actress Judi Dench. She wrote the foreword for the book and was a wonderful support. "She's incredibly generous with her time and this is something that I think makes her so popular," says Jessica. "I went to talk with her at a theatre where she was performing and she was so gracious. She's so friendly and warm and she's got no airs or graces about her at all, and that's why so many people named her as their heroine. It's not just to do with her talent - she's got that rare ability when you are talking to her to give you her complete attention. She makes you feel special."

According to Jessica, such things define what heroines are. Yet one of hers - the model Jordan - could not be further from this type. She claims the girl with mammoth breasts is no less worthy for this fact. "Everyone loves to hate her but what I love about her is she's the one making the money," she says. "She's laughing all the way to the bank. She's made a serious brand out of herself and she's a strong person. That's what I admire about women like her."

* Heroines: The Bold, The Bad and The Beautiful by Jessica Ruston, illustrated by Matthew Rice (Long Barn Books, £9.99)