Sarah Elizabeth Cox
Much like the people she writes about, Sarah Elizabeth Cox leads a double life. It’s not quite as violent and dangerous as ‘bear tamer/pugilist’ - she’s the British Science Association’s PR Manager by day and a historian by night.
Across 2022-23 Sarah worked as a historical consultant on season one and two of Steven Knight's 1880s boxing and crime TV drama A Thousand Blows. She researches biographies of Victorian and Edwardian boxers and wrestlers for her website, Grappling With History, piecing together the lives of those on the margins in the melting pot of London, with a focus on men recently arrived from the US and Caribbean. She has written features for magazines including BBC History, Who Do You Think You Are and the Lewisham Ledger. In 2020 she contributed a chapter to fundraising anthology Women Love Wrestling, and in 2026 will be a co-author on essay collection Amazons of the Arena. She has appeared on podcasts, pub stages and has written articles exploring subjects as diverse as the history of parakeets in Britain; baby loss care reform; and the assassination of the Prime Minister in 1812.
Sarah holds an MA in History from Goldsmiths, University of London and an MA in International Relations and Asia Pacific Studies from the University of East Anglia. She’s the granddaughter of one man who was shot through the neck and survived and another who claimed to be the 1938 Welterweight Champion of Battersea High Street.