ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hello.

I created this website early in 2019 to present research into the weird and wonderful wrestling and boxing fraternity in East and South East London during the 1880s. We started with Jack Wannop, moved on to Hezekiah Moscow and Alec Munroe, and then kept on going. You will now find dozens of short biographies here of male and female pugilists, most having been previously long-forgotten, plus various other articles. We sometimes venture outside London and go either side of the 1880s too.

By day I am the PR and Communications Manager for the British Science Association. I used to manage press relations for Tommy’s, a charity funding research into miscarriage, stillbirth and premature birth. For more than five years I worked at Goldsmiths, University of London as a press officer: my new-build New Cross office stood in exactly the same spot that Jack Wannop’s house had been on in the 1880s. It was meant to be, right?

I’ve worked in press and media since 2010 for various higher education institutions, including Queen Mary, Brunel, Trinity Laban and Gresham College. In 2018 I realised I’d spent more than enough time promoting other people’s research and decided to work on my own too.

Across 2022-23 I was employed as an advisor on the Steven Knight drama A Thousand Blows, which aired on Disney+UK and internationally in February 2025. It’s part-inspired by the stories of boxers Hezekiah Moscow, Alec Munroe and Sugar Goodson and you can read more about it, and my role, here. Season II streams in January 2026.

In 2010 I graduated from the University of East Anglia with a BA Politics and an MA International Relations and Asia-Pacific Studies, completing a dissertation on the failure of UN Resolution 1325 to protect women and children from sexual violence in war-zones. In December 2020 I finished an MA in History at Goldsmiths, taking classes in modern European genocides, the history of violence, historiography and research skills, with a dissertation on Jack Wannop and his boxing and wrestling gymnasiums.

My research into men punching each other to a bloody pulp began as a bit of light-hearted fun in between all the genocide stuff.

My first book, The Devil’s Dance Floor, will be published by Duckworth in February 2027.

Sometimes I do podcasts or write articles for magazines, and you will find me every year at the brilliant HistFest festival at the British Library helping with event production and guest management.

After nearly a decade living in London I’m now based on the beach in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex (really), with two cats, my partner and our baby son, Jack. Yep, I did name him after Wannop.

Before the pandemic I had a midlife crisis and spent two years in pro-wrestling training at EVE Academy and London School of Lucha Libre, Bethnal Green. I was never any good but did look pretty cool dressed up as a scary, masked, leather-clad, purple-haired, 6ft vigilante bat woman…

I am an Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

My literary agent is Eli Keren at Curious Minds.

Find me on:

Bluesky @oispooky.bsky.social

Instagram @oi.spooky

Contact me on: grapplingwithhistory@gmail.com

Apologies, but due to time and financial pressures, I can not always help with requests for information or research support.

I always welcome emails from descendants of my research subjects!

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Acknowledgements

Enormous thanks to: Geoffrey Thurley and the Friends of Brockley and Ladywell Cemeteries for helping me find Jack; everyone (previously) at Goldsmiths who either encouraged my project or provided inspiration for it, including Professor Tim Crook, Professor Les Back and Dr John Price; Dr Alice Jones Bartoli and Dr Ben Swift for their thoughtful and generous help; Tony, Danielle and Theresa of Wannop family fame, for your time and interest and the incredible photographs which made me cry; and my colleagues, friends, and family for putting up with having to share me with a lot of dead men.