Mary Harcourt

MH may never have thought of herself as a writer, though she kept a diary during her time serving at Court (as did several others in her position of a privileged behind-the-scenes angle on people in power). Her Anecdotes of the years 1792-5, when she was, as might be said today, embedded with the British army fighting in the Low Countries, constitute a far more unusual, even a unique text, which makes her arguably the first identified British woman war correspondent, as well as the proponent of a strong case against war as such.