Multi-million-selling author Kate Mosse OBE is visiting the Octagon in Yeovil as part of her first ever theatre tour, Warrior Queens & Quiet Revolutionaries: How Women (Also) Built the World, inspired by her book of the same name. James Rampton spoke to her about it.

Q: What inspired you to turn your best-selling book Warrior Queens & Quiet Revolutionaries: How Women (Also) Built the World into your first ever live show?
A: I’m in my 60s now, and I like to have new challenges. You’ve got to be brave, haven’t you? I love being a writer, but you can’t just think, “I’ll keep doing the thing that I’ve always done.” You’ve got to push yourself and keep trying.

Q: What are you hoping to achieve with the show?
A: A really great night out in the theatre. It’s for everybody. It’s for girls and boys, men and women, dads and their daughters, mums and their sons, friends and neighbours.
There will be music, props, a proper set, pictures – and me!
During the course of the show, as well as plenty fun facts and ‘did-you-knows’, I’ll tell the life stories of some of the most interesting, most inspiring, most astonishing women from the book – from Joan of Arc and Mary Seacole to Florence Nightingale and Agatha Christie, from the Mongolian princess Khutlan to Rosa Parks, from the notorious 18th century pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Reid to Beatrix Potter and the legendary English footballer, Lily Parr.

Q: What will the main themes of the show be?
A: The show is a love letter to history – it’s why this is a show for anybody who loves history or is interested in family history – but it also asks the question: what is history? Who makes it? Who gets to decide what matters? Why do some people end up in the history books and others don’t?
Another theme is asking what, if anything, links all of these women? Are there special characteristics that come up time and again, regardless of place or time or the work a woman is doing?
Finally, it’s a celebration. I want people to feel inspired, empowered and delighted to have spent the evening in the company of so many trailblazers from the past.

Q: Can you give us a hint of what sort of props you’ll be using?
A: One of the women in the show is the great British footballer, Preston’s finest, Lily Parr. She is a legend who scored more than 1,000 goals in her time. Her story is really illustrative of how once famous women are deliberately left out of history.
Lily Parr played for Dick Kerr’s Ladies team, and they played in the Boxing Day match in 1920, watched by 48,000 people. It was the biggest ever crowd for a women’s match – until the Lionesses