HistFest 2026: Birth, Motherhood & Custody – An Untold History

This event, originally titled ‘Birth, Motherhood & Custody – An Untold History’, took place on 19 April 2026. The information below is correct as of the publication date.

Join Professor Lara Feigel (Custody: The Secret History of Mothers) and Lucy Inglis (Born: The Untold History of Childbirth) for a compelling conversation on motherhood, power and the hidden histories that shape women’s lives. Chaired by bestselling author and academic, Professor Pragya Agarwal (Hysterical: Exploding the Myth of Gendered Emotions).

From how mothers have been judged, controlled, and separated from their children across history to the cultural, medical, and political forces that have shaped childbirth through the centuries. The panel explored how these overlooked histories continue to influence contemporary debates around motherhood, autonomy, and care.

This event took place as part of HistFest 2026.

About HistFest:

HistFest is a dynamic history festival that celebrates the brightest and the best in the world of history over an exciting weekend of talks, discussions, performance and music.

To join more online and in person events visit our website: https://events.bl.uk/

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Speaker Bios:

Lara Feigel is a writer, cultural historian and Professor of English at King’s College London. She is the author of numerous fiction and non-fiction books, including The Bitter Taste of Victory, The Group, Free Woman and, most recently, Custody: The Secret History of Mothers. Lara has been the recipient of a European Research Council Starting Grant and a Philip Leverhulme Prize. She reviews regularly for The Guardian and has judged the Biographers’ Club Tony Lothian Prize, the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize and the Observer/Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Lucy Inglis is a historian and novelist, and occasionally a television and radio presenter. Her first book, Georgian London: Into the Streets, was a finalist for the History Today Longman Prize. Her second novel, Crow Mountain, won the Romantic Novelist Association's Young Adult Book of the Year. Lucy is also the author of the international bestseller Milk of Paradise: A History of Opium, which was Book of the Week for Radio 4 and The Sunday Times.

Dr Pragya Agarwal is a behavioural and data scientist and author of four widely acclaimed nonfiction books. Her books (M)otherhood: On the Choices of Being a Woman (Canongate, 2021) and Hysterical: Exploding the Myth of Gendered Emotions (Canongate, 2022) have been nominated as best books of the year by Waterstones, the Telegraph, the New Statesman and others. Pragya has been a senior academic across universities in the UK and USA. She has also been a Fulbright scholar, a British Library fellow, and a Churchill fellow for her research in reproductive justice, gender and racial inequalities, bias and inclusive education. She has written widely for the Guardian, the Independent, Prospect, New Scientist, Scientific American, Wired, the TLS, and Literary Hub.

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