Main description:

This is a much revised and expanded edition of Hugh Small's Florence Nightingale, Avenging Angel (1998), the book that first revealed the historic cover-up that had prevented Florence Nightingale from telling us what really happened in her Crimean War hospitals. This new edition subverts Nightingale's emotionally repressed image by revealing that she had a romantic entanglement during the war, which had historic consequences for her country. Hugh Small's new research also sheds light on the source of her power over politicians, which made her a Cabinet Minister for a whole decade when history says that such a thing was impossible for a woman. He shows for the first time how her leadership of the public health movement made a huge contribution to the unprecedented rise in life expectancy in Britain. Nightingale is one of history's most enigmatic and controversial figures, a polymath whose combination of boundless energy and chronic illness has confounded biographers. Small debunks the latest conventional wisdom - based on a misreading of technical literature - that a chronic infection caused her to be depressed. Such theories of mental aberration marginalise Nightingale and conveniently avoid controversial analysis of her greatest achievements, which go completely against the grain of history as it is taught.