Sylvia and Christabel Pankhurst

Dutiful daughters, dissident sisters, they grew up determined to fight for women's right to vote, but were at odds over tactics. From the start, Christabel was the more forceful of the two and her mother's favourite. Together they founded the Women's Social and Political Union with the single-minded aim of winning women the vote 'at any cost'. Sylvia was the artistic one, striving throughout her life to fuse her love of painting with her passion for politics. The political rift between the sisters increased as Sylvia resented Christabel's increasingly militant and autocratic leadership. But it was the 1914-18 war that brought about Sylvia's definitive break with her patriotic mother and sister. Profoundly opposed to the war, Sylvia developed her own philosophy of struggle.