Rona Munro’s 1991 play Bold Girls is a tale of four Belfast women during the Troubles, exploring personal and communal history, and what it means when aspects of a community – ideologies, relationships, and spaces, for example – are threatened. Despite being set in a very specific time and place, the themes are universal: how societies are warped by male violence, dominance, and social privilege, and female subservience to that behaviour. Bold Girls is a case-study of the victims – rather than the perpetrators – of conflict: an unsentimental portrait of women’s lives under psychological siege.

Gillian Sargent’s Scotnote Study Guide provides a comprehensive overview to the characters and themes of Munro’s play, as well as its artistic and cultural influences, and is an excellent guide for senior school pupils and teachers alike.