In 1894 the redoubtable Mildred Ransom set up a 'Copying Bureau' to generate work for herself and other respectable women beyond the usual roles of nurse or governess. Starting with one typewriter in a single room above a chemist's shop, she rapidly expanded into elegant chambers on the Edgware Road and finally a grand house in Cumberland Place.

The Bureau's varied clientele provides an evocative snapshot of the age. From Lords, socialites, authors, scientists and politicians to quacks, spivs and charlatans - all of life poured through its doors. Often working for both sides in scandalous divorces and libel trials, in the 1920s Mildred and her staff were responsible for breaking a Russian spy ring, resulting in a sensational Old Bailey Trial.

Recognising that the City would eventually replace their legion of (male) clerks with in-house typewriters, Mildred attached a secretarial college to the Bureau to ensure her girls would be sought after, well-paid and independent women. And all while steering the Bureau through two world wars, the General Strike, a flu pandemic, poisonous London smogs and violent civil unrest that spilled onto the streets right outside - and sometimes straight through - her windows.

MILDRED RANSOM'S BUREAU is a book about the world - of work, women's lives, and politics - of London and England in the first half of the twentieth century; a world both hauntingly familiar and as distant and strange as an alien planet.