A SALISBURY singer and songwriter is to release her new album ahead of a 22-date UK tour this autumn.

Louise Jordan’s No Petticoats Here will tell the stories of women in the Great War through the sound of music.

The launch concert will take place at Godolphin School where Louise was a pupil, and where she has previously recorded songs in 2016 with students and staff.

The singer was inspired by the story of Dorothy Lawrence, a 17-year-old orphan who lived in the Cathedral Close.

The teenager dressed as a soldier and visited the Western Front in order to pursue her journalistic ambitions.

The album has taken twelve months of research in which Louise has visited a number of battlefields across Flanders and countless museums and research centres.

With a little help from relatives of Dorothy Lawrence and biographers of similar heroes, Louise has been able to add great depth and detail to her research.

It was in August 2015 that Salisbury Arts Centre commissioned Louise to write and perform songs about women No Petticoats Here - the new album from Louise Jordan MUSIC from the First World War, alongside running song writing workshops as part of their music inclusion project.

Louise has used all her experience to develop this album and is passionate about the history behind the words.

She said: “The First World War too often remembers women as the mourners of the fallen, yet many women took active roles during the Great War and refused to sit by while the fighting took its course.

“This prescribed passivity undermines the reality of women’s First World War experiences.

“Through No Petticoats Here I remember some of the stories of the many women whose stories do not fit conveniently into boxes and whose experiences are both astonishing and relatable one hundred years on.”

Tickets for Louise’s launch concert are £10 on the door and £9 if booked in advance from wegottickets.com/ event/369144.

The performance will begin at 7.30pm.

For more information call 07980 374971.