Model rebel

Book review of SYLVIA PANKHURST: Natural Born Rebel

On January 5, 1921, Sylvia Pankhurst stood in the witness stand at London’s Guildhall and reminded the court that, as her biographer Rachel Holmes puts it, she had “faced death many times for her beliefs.” Arrested at the offices of the newspaper she ran, on suspicion of inciting sedition, Pankhurst, then 38, appeared with a red carnation in her buttonhole, and held the court’s attention for 90 minutes as she told the story of her life — a tale spanning her upbringing in Manchester as the daughter of feminist reformists whose social circle encompassed American abolitionists, Hindu nationalists and founding