Blue Badge Tourist Guides are used to standing in front of statues and telling their groups about the people portrayed in them. The subjects of these statues are far more likely to be men, with only about ten percent portraying women – and most of those are of royalty, such as Queen Victoria. Britain has produced a large number of successful female writers but there are very few monuments to commemorate them.

In February, an announcement was made by Historic England that it is to give a grant of £37,160 to help preserve the remains of Bradgate House, the childhood home of Lady Jane Grey. Archaeologists from the University of Leicester have been carrying out digs to find out more about the history of the house and what it would have looked like in Jane’s day. The ruins are in Bradgate Park, a beauty spot dominated by a 212-metre hill. At the top is an eighteenth-century folly called Old John, a tower with an arch which can be seen for miles around.