Saoirse Ronan’s new movie, Ammonite, is about Mary Anning, a shy young woman who was a pioneering fossil-hunter. Her achievements were never credited in her lifetime by male academics, but the value of her work has been rediscovered. The film also introduces an apparently fictional theme in Mary Anning’s life — a same-sex relationship, which is said to be hot stuff, when Kate Winslet as Mary falls for Saoirse’s character, Charlotte.
Relations of Anning, a Victorian spinster who died in 1847, have asked why her story has to be made “sensational”. Barbara Anning says there’s no evidence that Mary had any sexual relationships.