Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Too much girth, not enough remuneration (with Philippa Gregory)

Episode Date: November 20, 2023

The count down is on in this episode (I'm not joking)! As Fi's timer ticks away, they discuss celebrity toilet encounters, upgraded train seats and advent. Plus, they're joined by historical novelist Philippa Gregory discusses her latest non-fiction work 'Normal Women: 900 Years of Women Making History". And if you want to get a taste of Philippa's book, you can also check out her new podcast, also called Normal Women. It's available wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Follow us on Instagram! @janeandfi Assistant Producer: Eve Salusbury Times Radio Producer: Kate Lee Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

VoiceOver describes what's happening on your iPhone screen. VoiceOver on. Settings. So you can navigate it just by listening. Books. Contacts. Calendar. Double tap to open. Breakfast with Anna from 10 to 11. And get on with your day. Accessibility. There's more to iPhone. All right, stopwatch is going on. So when I was in the supermarket at the weekend,

I've never seen such a display of advent calendars. weekend. I've never seen such a display of Advent calendars. I mean, everything now is, you can get little parcels of everything, can't you? You can get a cheese Advent calendar. You can get all of the spirits.

So am I, actually. Oh, no, I don't want the spirits. Lots of coffees now, lots of different teas. It's too much. It's what the baby Jesus would have wanted, though, isn't it? Anyway, I didn't get you one. If you thought that's where the conversation was going.

That little anecdote started really promisingly. It's a couple of weeks before, we start on the 1st of December, yes, that's when Advent is. Now, Fia's got very strict and she's set a stopwatch for this edition of Off Air. So let's see if we can achieve perfection and reach the target she has set.

This is a very erudite edition because we have as our guest, Philippa Gregory, best known as a novelist, but she has just written what I would describe as a genuinely fascinating nonfiction, Great big chunky tome about women's history going back over 900 years from the Battle of Hastings to 1994. That's quite a long time, isn't it? I love 1994. That's quite a specific cut-off, isn't it? I must confess, I don't think we are still... I don't think you'd be. She lived to be normal in

95. Just missed it. Just missed the boat. 1994 notable of course for, well she ends it with the ordination of women by the Church of England. Which of course was utterly unthinkable around the Battle of Hastings. So we have made progress.

Do you ever think that we should just talk about that a little bit more? I think, well, I think what, I mean, did you want to be a lady vicar? No, but I think all of these things, because I think we're still so dedicated to progress and we should be within the feminist movement, sometimes we don't just take a breath and go, wow, the pace of change has been huge. Yes.

And we've done well, sisters. Sometimes the pace has, well, slowed and then stalled. And in fact, things have gone back. Yes. Well, and that's another... She actually talks about that, doesn't she? Yeah, but that's another reason for us slightly marking our own cards all the time, isn't it?

Because you see it slipping away in other parts of the world at the moment in a truly horrific speed. Yes, that's certainly true. Oh dear, you do find us in rather sombre mood here. Yeah, I'm sorry about that too, but it's a reality. It is a reality. It's very quite shying away from that. Okay, so this weekend had many highlights,

not least for me was my first ever trip On the East Midlands Railway Network Now why were you travelling on the East Midlands And not Avanti West? Because I did travel on Avanti West But that was just quick up and down to Liverpool But then I went to see a friend in Leicestershire And in order to do that You have to go on East Midlands Railway

And you know the upgrade What's happened with the upgrade? It's only £12 And it was very busy the train back so and how long's the journey treated myself well engineering work you see so two and a half hours on the way back it's quite a long quite length of time but two and a half hours it's not for 12 quid upgrade yeah and my main ticket was about 30 quid so that's not bad actually well that's not bad but why is rail travel so expensive not bad, but why is rail travel so expensive?

I don't know. Why is rail travel so expensive? Because sometimes, I mean, people will have a view on this, but sometimes those on-the-day prices are just incredible. You know, hundreds of quid. Oh, my God. It's a farce. Yeah.

Yeah, so anyway, but it was, yes, it was rather enjoyable. And hats off to East Midlands Railway for having the cheapest weekend upgrade I've ever come across. Well, to anyone who's still listening, can I just say, do get in touch with your... I'll tell you what, I mean, the clock is ticking, Jane, and that railway anecdote... People who journey through Kettering on a regular basis will completely get what I'm talking about. OK. Hello, Jane and Fee. I've listened to you since you were in your former life.

I love that. I feel sometimes like people must feel when they leave the army. It's definitely... The day we were demobbed. Well, not so much demobbed as just found that our security passes didn't work anymore. Heartbreaking times. Carol says, you mentioned that you don't always enjoy theatre but love pantomime. So that is true of both of us, but actually it's only me who doesn't really like theatre. Jane absolutely loves it. She's fallen back in love with the theatre.

My sister, aged 79, and myself, 74, come to London from South Manchester every year to get some special sister time. We lost our elder sister over 20 years ago. She was only 59 and we miss her terribly. I'm so sorry about that. That's such a, do you know what? You just must have the most terrible kind of tapping on your shoulder all the time if you've lost a sibling. Yeah.

As you know, you almost, it's kind of your life is indulging in old age, isn't it? And somebody can't be on that journey with you. Anyway, although we meet every week for a catch-up, we love our carefree weekend away every year and always wish that there were still three of us doing it. To get back to the theatre, we've made a point of seeing a production

from The Mischief Company when we can. I hated Slapstick as a girl, but now appreciate how clever their timing is. Oh, they're the people who do the play that goes wrong, all those things. Yes. Oh, okay, I bet they are good. Yes, and actually I have seen that with my daughter. And? Well, do you know what, it was at an age where she was

a little bit reluctant to always stay the course at things that we went to see, so I said quite willingly, well we'll always go at half time. You call it the interval, don't you? Yes, go at half time yes those of us who have fallen back in love with theatre you know it is the interval correct uh anyway so i said we can get half time uh if it's not right and you couldn't have prized us out of our seats at the end we

would have just quite happily just stayed and waited for it to start all over again it was so fantastic uh so carol thank you for making that recommendation and i mention it to start all over again. It was so fantastic. So, Carol, thank you for making that recommendation. And I mention it because, actually, I just get the feeling that I've been wrong to be quite so dismissive about theatre. And every time someone writes in, I remember another thing I've been to see and really enjoyed. So I'm sorry about that. Really terrible.

Thanks to everybody who's emailed your thoughts about prison and prison life. But this is just a quick one from Sarah. Chris Atkins slurping his tea really loudly was really minging on... It was loud. Was it loud? It was so loud. OK, because I know I have a bit of form in the old chomping department.

So I'm very sorry about that. He was very interesting, wasn't he? No harm meant to him in any way, says Sarah. I listened to the show with my noise-cancelling headphones while I wait for my three kids to get to sleep so I'm sure this amplified the sound of the slurping a bit. I'm a long-time listener to your podcast. I'm in Northern Ireland and it's the first time I've emailed in.

I'm going to hopefully email something more interesting next time. Yes, work on that one, Sarah, although you have been included. So, you know, we obviously liked it. So please don't worry about it. This one comes in from Joe, who says, imagine my surprise to hear you mention the Falklands whilst on a morning constitutional around, I'm going to get this wrong, but I'll give it a go,

Ushuaia, which is at the end of the world in southern Argentina. Well, I would love to hear from people in Argentina right now because of their new president, who strikes me as being an interesting figure. Yeah. Carry on. Joe says, why am I here, you might ask? Well, having arrived after a two-day trip from Brisbane,

although originally from the UK, I'd expected to go on an expedition boat from Ushuaia to South Georgia and then on to the Falklands. However, mechanical failure due to a rough drake passage and now avian flu means that we have a slightly shorter trip just to the Antarctic. So I would love to know what the Falklands are like. Still hopeful, going to have a good night sleeping on the ice, a polar plunge and some kayaking, not to mention seeing all the wildlife. But Joe goes on to say avian flu is having such a devastating impact

in the north and south. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole of Antarctica is off limits for a couple of years. Very sad to see all the birds dying. It's crossing to other species now too. And stuff like that, Jane, we're not taking enough notice of that. Well, I just didn't know anything about it. The whole of Antarctica might be off limits

for a couple of years. I know that's not going to help with your travel fear, is it, and your travel anxiety. No. No. Kettering's one thing, but that's something else. Glyn says, as a footnote to last week's discussion of prison systems around the globe, I do recommend the podcast Ear Hustle, which looks at the realities

of life inside the US prison system from the inmate's perspective. It's brilliant, isn't it? I've heard some of those. Absolutely excellent. Glynn says, do start at the very beginning for reasons which will become clear. And Birgit says, I've worked in a prison in Freiburg near the Black Forest for 14 months. I'm the head teacher of our school. Our adult prisoners there can do apprenticeships, cooking, chefing, carpenter, mechanic, or do their GCSE equivalent or study. There is a special university in Germany offering bachelor's and master's degrees in distance learning. Most of our students try to learn German and get language certificates, though.

We also do literacy and numeracy courses. Prison is hard, but here there is the attempt to punish and to support a reintegration on behalf of the state. And that does make sense, doesn't it? Yes, provide education, help people get back outside and lead useful and productive lives. I thought, I mean, there was some astonishing statistics in Chris Atkins' interview, weren't there?

And one of the most notable ones, I thought, was that 60% of inmates are back inside after a year if they've been on short sentences. So that's just not working with bells on. That's astonishing isn't it? Yeah, not working at all. Celebrity toilets are still going strong. Oh, is this the one from Paul? No, this is Sarah. Hello again.

Still single. Paul's in the queue outside don't be too long. Actually that reminds me. It's the same old story. I was at St Pancras yesterday. She'll never laugh at one of my jokes. No, I won't. What a glittering life I lead. So St Pancras station, which is more laugh at one of my jokes. No, I won't. What a glittering life I lead. So St Pancras Station, which is more like a shopping arcade. It's wonderful, isn't it?

It's both wonderful and it's shimmering, isn't it? It is, but it's got everything. You can get tampons and a macaron just in the same hundred yards. You can actually. I'm sorry, I just don't get macaron. I will never spend money on those brightly coloured but hardly sustaining snacks. I just do not get it. But it's a proper glamour place to arrive, isn't it?

It is. There's that artwork under the beautiful clock that says, I think it says, I want to spend my time with you in beautiful pink letters. Oh, I don't know. Oh, it's right under the... Is it digital art? Yes, it's absolutely gorgeous. It really marks St Pancras out

as being substantially nicer than bloody Euston! Yes, okay. Sorry. Hello again, says Sarah. Still single, but date lined up for the weekend. Everything cross for you, Sarah. I used to work, she says, in one of the large theatres in London in the thousands. I was watching a play

with a friend and at the interval headed up to my office to use the loos. After locking the door, I heard the incredibly familiar voice of the late Una Stubbs asking us to hurry up. I've met a lot of celebrities, but Aunt Sally in the toilets was one of my faves. She was absolutely

brilliant in Wurzel Gummidge. Didn't you like it? Oh, I loved Wurzel. For me, it's the TV equivalent of nails going down a blackboard. I just hated that programme. They gave me the giggles. We have so much in common and yet disagree so profoundly about so many things. That's another one.

Oh, I hated it, hated it, hated it. Paul says this. It's about toilet encounters, and he does admit that this might be an apocryphal story about David Coleman. Do you know it? I don't know it. I have heard it before, but I'm not sure whether it was apocryphal.

This is David Coleman, who was... The BBC sports presenter. Yes, I mean, he was Desmond Lynham. Before there was Desmond Lynham. Yes, he was an early Des. He was in the States reporting on a large sporting event, and whilst at the venue, had to make a trip to the Gents. Whilst using the facilities, he noticed a man whom he was sure he knew,

but he just couldn't put a name to the face. When he came out of the toilets, he saw the man speaking to a number of other men in suits and thought he had just introduced himself. He walked over, caught the man's eye and offered his hand. I hope it was washed. Introducing himself as David Coleman, BBC London. The man shook his hand and said, Gerald Ford, President of the United States. Don't care if it's apocryphal.

It's lovely. It's still good. It's lovely, Paul. Thank you. I don't think I'll name this person, but they say, I can't contribute to meeting celebrities in toilets, but I do have quite a few stories about losing them. Well, listen to this for you.

I'm an entertainment producer for a 7pm show where most nights we have a live guest. I don't know whether it is that. What else can it be? Our studio is on a level of the building that's a total maze and it really disorientates visitors. Often a guest will ask to use the bathroom. I don't understand that.

Why do they want a bath? A loo? Fine. But the bath? I never understand that. Anyway, to which I show them. There. To the bathroom. I learned very quickly that loitering outside the facilities is quite creepy, but it was the only way I wouldn't lose my guest. I have now taken to standing one corner turn away from the facility, but it's not a perfect solution. Guests will still sometimes barrel out of the toilets, look left and right, not see me standing down the way, and walk the other direction. When this happens, a strange Tom and Jerry type of game ensues,

whereby we're both circling the floor, me trying to find the guest, them trying to find the green room. The guests never mind when I eventually clock them again and we have a giggle. But gosh, if it weren't so weird to loiter outside bathrooms, I'd save myself and them a lot of time. Yeah, I know what she means there. You can't stand too close to the... I know.

Because you might hear something. And the person inside knows that you might hear. And that's terrible, isn't it? It would be just dreadful. How are we doing for time we're doing fine so i put an 18 minute stopwatch on this and we're at 13 45 it just adds such wonderful jeopardy it does to what is already a scintillating experience well the problem is that we've been topping out at about 51 52 sometimes 59 minutes. This podcast is meant to be 35 minutes long.

Oh my goodness, is it really? Yeah. Okay, so we're in the unusual position of providing extra content. Extra content. Jane, we're not being paid, love. Yeah, you've made me think about that now. Too much girth and not enough remuneration. Shall we bring in our guest?

Yes, please. Okay. Philippa Gregory is a world-renownederation. Shall we bring in our guest? Yes, please. Okay. Philippa Gregory is a world-renowned historian and novelist, but she has a new work of non-fiction out, which I do heartily recommend. If you are studying history, maybe you're at school or you're someone whose child is doing A-level

history, this book is a real it's a must-buy, I would say. It's called Normal Women. It's being called The Culmination of Philippa's Life's Work and it's a must buy, I would say. It's called Normal Women. It's being called the culmination of Philippa's life's work. And it's her attempt to cover 900 years of our history from the female perspective. It is a big chunky tome and a passion project as well. And it takes us from 1066 and the impact of the Battle of Hastings on the lives of women, right up to 1994, and the ordination of female priests by the Church of England. Philippa has always kept women and female characters front and centre in her fiction,

but I asked her if writing this book has always been in the back of her mind. I think the book really came out of the fiction in the sense that people kept saying to me, how do you find these fantastic women? And I kept saying, well, I just looked in the records and then I found them. And I really, it took me, it seems now looking back, a long time to realise that it wasn't that I was just finding one extraordinary woman and then looking again and finding another one. It's that the records are absolutely full of extraordinary women, but they don't make it into the pages of traditional history books. So this is really the start of an attempt at a national history of the women of England,

who are not in the national history of England, usually. What we read as the national history of England is actually the history of white men. And why have we as women allowed that to be the case? I think because we didn't twig it straight away. So if you think that when history was invented as an academic study, it was in an all-male university. So it was researched by men and taught by men and written by men and published and critiqued by men. So it's not really until the 1950s that women start saying, why are there no histories of women? Why don't we know what women were doing in this period? You've got to really, you know, in a sense, you accept what you're given in a way.

And it's only later. I mean, in a way now, like we start saying, like, why doesn't medicine make allowances for women? Why don't we know about women's symptoms and women's illnesses? don't we know about women's symptoms and women's illnesses? I think there's a real, it takes a while. You accept the science or the scholarship that you're given. It takes a while to actually say there's a huge gap here, but nobody's noticed it. Can I just say that my honest reaction to reading this was, yes, it's absolutely fascinating. There are some incredible nuggets of information here. But it's just made me angry, Philippa. Is that the right response? I don't think I would ever tell any reader how to respond to anything because always people read, they read what they're ready for. And that's the same in novels as well. I can write what I like, but I'm amazed at what people read from the thing that I've just

written. So, you know, maybe you're just a kind of angry woman. I mean, I can't help you with that. I suppose I'm angry. I should have explained it really. I'm angry because so little has changed, honestly. That's the terrible truth, that women are still treated exceptionally badly in many, many parts of the world. Certainly in England, we're doing relatively well. But the final chapter lists the number of women killed by men, for example, in 2019. And it's horrific. Just that problem of violence against women has been omnipresent for our entire history. Absolutely. And actually, it was more criminal and more challenged in previous generations. It's extraordinary to me that, you know, the murder of partners or wives is now between two and three a week.

And the, you know, and we know the rape statistics, the number of rapists accused and imprisoned is less now than in medieval times. Can we start then with the way you start the book, which is around the time of the Norman conquest? Is it true that women actually went backwards as a result of the arrival of William the Conqueror? of the arrival of William the Conqueror. Absolutely. And what was really interesting to me was that usually the 1066 invasion of England is expressed in military history very clearly. It's expressed in male history in terms of here's one king beating another king and bringing in a whole new line of kings.

But what we kind of don't see there is that women who were landowners, who were Anglo-Saxon landowners, women who had rights as Anglo-Saxon wives, even to divorce their husbands, to leave their own fortunes, to keep their own fortunes, to leave those fortunes to daughters if they wanted to, who had quite a high level of literacy, who had quite a high level of land ownership. All of those women lose all of their lands immediately, lose all of their rights immediately, and come under feudal law. And if you are the wife of a lord under feudal law, you own nothing in your own right. You quite often run the place because he's off at war. But actually, that's by in how so many women end up running things, by being the best person available for the job, not by right.

And if you're the wife of a serf, the only thing lower than you is one of his animals. He owns you like he owns the ox at Pool the Plough. And there's a pattern here that you establish quite clearly in the book. So with the restoration of the monarchy after the Civil War, patriarchy makes a comeback then as well. And then again, after the Second World War, women who'd played a real part in fighting and winning the war are put very firmly back in their place in the domestic sphere.

It happens time and time again. It's not just war, it's any kind of disruption or chaos or difficulty in society. Women step forward into the absent places, into the places where men are absent or where men are incapable of dealing with the new emergency. They move forward, they get jobs, they get rights, they advance at all levels into education, into opportunities, into all sorts of things. And then when you get the restoration of peace and security, the first thing that happens is that the old boys network works and the government works and women are pushed back out of the opportunities they've moved into. And actually, the former senior civil servant, Helen McNamara, gave her evidence to the COVID inquiry. And guess what? Exactly what you've just said happened during the pandemic as well. I'm sure it's absolutely a consequence that it's what people talk about when they talk about a reserve army, that basically women are there, women are used in our society to be called on when they're needed. And the whole ideology

about women are best in the home and that children really need a mother and that nobody can look after a baby but its mother, all of that comes into play when you want women out of the workplace and back into their homes. I think the book makes such a fantastic point about single women as well, Philippa. And there's a lovely phrase that you use when you're talking about this in Victorian times. They, single women, were increasingly called surplus women. The Victorian political economist W.R. Gregg wrote a standout pompous essay on the surplus woman problem, proposing that if only ladies were more charming and wives less demanding of husbands, women would find that bachelors were willing to marry them. I wonder whether you can just tell us about some of the fantastic normal women

who aren't and haven't in the past been recorded by history. Some of those beautiful, wonderful, clever, funny surplus women. Well, even earlier than that, there's some wonderful women who are artists and poets at the Elizabethan and the Stuart courts that we hardly ever hear about. There's women who were enslaved that we know very, very little about, but we quite often come across them in adverts, which describes them quite accurately physically because the owners are hiring slave takers to recapture them. We you know, there's all sorts of women. There's women explorers, of course, as a lot of women spies, especially in during the Civil War. You have a big cohort of women spying on both sides and you have women she soldiers in the civil wars there's a belief that there are entire regiments officered and staffed by women uh fighting for both sides charles i didn't like having women in his army and he said that it

was against god and that he didn't want them actually, a lot of towns, the whole siege was held by women. And of course, what we do know about occasionally is some of the heroic ladies who held their castles and houses against siege. There's one wonderful woman, I think Latham House, and she spends a siege embroidering a bed hanging and says that she'll die rather than leave. And she actually doesn't die. She goes out with a troop and attacks the besiegers and breaks the siege herself. There's a lot in the book about religion and about the influence of the church. And it actually strikes me that you'd have had to be mad as a woman not to want to enter a convent

for large parts of English history, because you were much better off in one, weren't you, as a female? It was. I mean, one of the things that, you know, when we talk about the Reformation, one of the things I have almost never read anywhere is that at the Reformation, about 1,200 women are thrown out of their homes and out of work. And although men could transfer from the Roman Catholic Church, now reformed and abolished,

into the Church of England, because there was no female priesthood, nuns and women who had been in the abbeys had nothing to do. They just had to try and make a life for themselves in the outside world. And interestingly, most of them did not even in that emergency decide to marry. They found ways to live. Some of them actually went and moved into houses in a group of six or seven of them and tried to live. Obviously, it looks very much like they were trying to live as if the convent was still supporting them. I mean, and of course, when the convents and the abbeys and the nunneries were running, it was a women-only massive institution with its own power structure and its own career structure, its own education, its own wealth and its own ambitions. So if you were a senior abbess, you were on the same level as a bishop, you were a prince of the church. voiceover describes what's happening on your iphone screen voiceover on settings so you can

navigate it just by listening books contacts calendar double tap to open breakfast with anna from 10 to 11 and get on with your day accessibility there's more to iPhone. Now we're in conversation with the historian Philippa Gregory about her new book, non-fiction this time, it's called Normal Women. Now throughout the narrative, Philippa makes reference to same-sex relationships and I put it to her that it was really interesting that actually for large parts of our history they were mostly uncontroversial. I think what's been really interesting to me is to see how little women loving women appear in the traditional historical record that we have. And actually, they have been specifically sort of explored and discovered by women wanting to write, you know, what's now known as queer history,

the history of people outside the heterosexual normality. Yeah, there's a lot of women who prefer the company of women and prefer to live with other women. There's a tremendous number in the 18th century of female husbands, so much so that that's a phrase that you would use without explanation in a newspaper or in conversation, in which women are marrying each other in church and the priest is officiating and the clerk is entering it into

the parish register. I mean, it's incredible to me now to think how taboo that topic grew, particularly, I suppose, between the First and the Second World War, when people became more and more anxious about uncontrolled female sexuality. But earlier in the medieval period where everybody accepted that women were sexual and that that wasn't a particular problem, it was fine then. And then later, when women assumed when everyone was assumed or ladies were assumed to be pretty well frigid or asexual, lesbianism was almost completely concealed then because people assumed that if a woman was living with another woman, it was a sentimental friendship, it was not a sexual relationship. So there was no condemnation of it at all.

It was actually regarded rather well as a way of mopping up the surplus women which you described earlier. Who really stays with you, Philippa? My big favourite is Agnes Hotot, who is a medieval woman in about the 1400s, whose father was having to undertake a joust to prove his ownership of some land against a man who was claiming the land. And her father was taken ill just before he was due to joust. So she put on her own armour,

she had her armour already, and she got on her own horse. So she was an experienced jouster, which we simply don't think of in the sort of medieval chivalric stories. And she went out and she spanked him. And she knocked him off this horse and he was down onric stories. And she went out and she spanked him and she knocked him off this horse and he was down on the ground. And whilst he was lying on the ground, she dismounted from her horse. She took off her helmet. I imagine her shaking out her hair

in the traditional gesture of female beauty. And then she took off the breastplate of her armour so everybody could see her breasts and know that a woman had defeated this man who was challenging her family for their land. And she married into the Dudley family and they admired her so much that they created a crest of a woman bare breasted with a helmet on. She's just a great, you know, symbol of women who were perfectly normal for their time, though celebrated. who were perfectly normal for their time, though celebrated,

but that we can hardly imagine now. You've literally, you know, when I came across The Crest, first of all, I had no idea what I was seeing. I must be absolutely honest. When I said I was angry about the book, Philippa, there were parts of it, there were parts of women's behaviour in the book that annoyed me. And you do say that it was mostly women who bore the scrutiny and censure from other women. And that, I'm afraid, is still the case in the 21st century, isn't it?

We allow ourselves to be, I think, to fall into this trap of letting us judge other women all the time. We just don't stop. I agree. It is really a problem. And I think the difficulty is accepting at the very beginning, the idea that women are supposed to have a certain nature and that nature is, of course, not natural at all. That nature is invented by men. And then when we, in a sense, pick up on it, we'd say now internalize it, we then hold ourselves to a standard, which no mortal being could ever reach. And then we try and hold other women to that standard as well, because that's how we think we're going to get along in the world. If we try and try and try reach these absurd standards of chastity and good behavior sobriety modesty ambition you know but not being bossy hard working but not trying to be top

you know working extraordinary vocational work not not aiming for money not being greedy all of these things are part of the sort of aspirational female behaviour, which has been literally sold to us. And I think the difficulty of that is that not only do you judge yourself, which we all know is such a painful process, but you also judge other women. And it comes from the from accepting at the very beginning this idea that women have a nature which is defined by men, not which has been genuinely researched to see if we genuinely have it. So do you want your book to be on the school syllabus? Because I did history A-level.

I wish I'd done history at university, but I didn't. But I do know that at university you can choose, as an option, I think, women's history. I mean, does that beyond irritate you? Or do you just accept that as something we'll have to live with for the time being? I think what would be nice is if we understood that all of the history that isn't labelled women's history is actually men's history. I mean, I think that would be helpful. So we stop going like, men are the normal, it's men's story, it's his story. And anything else is a sort of additional, you know, sidebar study. But, you know, I think, I mean, really, the main thing is that women,

all women, not just women in education, but all women get some understanding that we are where we are today because of the struggles and triumphant victories of the women who went before us, who insisted upon some of the things we now take as for granted. And also we're here we are today because not all of those battles have been won. So I believe that the violence that women experience in the streets and in the home today has a long history of coming and going of violence against women being permitted, sometimes more, sometimes less. But equally, the fact that we have a vote today is because women campaigned for that and against, one has to say, women who campaigned

that women should not have a vote. Yes. And we never hear about them either. So I think, you know, really what we need to understand is that we are heirs of a heritage of women's history and women's achievements and women's failures. And if we got an idea of that, then we'd know a lot better what we should be doing in the future. The word history, is it true across all languages that it is simply his story? No, it's not. Okay. But wife does mean, in some languages, does mean second person.

Okay. Last of importance in some languages. But other languages are actually much more gender equal. Having said that, I'm not a linguist. I mean, you're taking me right outside my knowledge. Yes, no, no. Listen, I don't have a comfort zone of my own, but it'd be interesting to find out if there is a language

where the word for history doesn't actually literally mean the story of men. Anyway. Are you ever able to get a breakdown of the demographic that buys your books philippa and do you know how many men are interested enough to read about women in history uh it's early days for that at the moment i'm just absolutely going like let's sell it to everybody i mean anyone with the pulse i'd be trying to sell it to at home. But I do hope to... I'm producing a children's edition suitable for children, much shorter, much...

Not the bit about the clitoris, possibly, which actually had its heyday in 1559, I noted. Oh, I missed it. You're not the only one who missed it, honey. Born too late. But in answer to your question, I am producing a children's edition, much shorter, clearer, and with more pictures, so much more attractive to a younger reader.

And I'm also producing an edition specifically for schools to fit into the national curriculum. So I do think it's important that young people, very much boys and girls, get some idea of the achievements of women throughout our history. Philippa Gregory, Normal Women, is out now. And if you want to hear more about it in audio form, you can check out her new podcast, Cunningly.

It is also called Normal Women, and it's available wherever you get your podcast. This podcast, so much good stuff in this book, including some of those, just some of those nonsenses that were just blamed on women. And everyone agreed, certainly back in the 15th century, that promiscuous women were largely to blame for any illness. Plague outbreaks had been blamed on sexually active women as God's punishment for fornication. Oh, my word.

Yes, I mean, that will be it, won't it? Syphilis. Yes, the syphilis one, you mentioned it on the programme today. Bring this to the audience, Jane, please. Well, no, syphilis was just thought to only be in women. It was thought to spontaneously generate in the bodies of free-loving ladies and they would instantly give it to healthy men. Just innocent, innocent fellas going about their own little bits of fornication

and these minxy, minxy ladies would give them syphilis because they'd grown it in their bodies. People believed this crap. Of course they did. Every country in Europe named it after their enemy. So the Russians called it the Polish disease. In Shrewsbury in 1493, a chronicler gloomily recorded a dose of the French pox.

And actually the French call periods les Anglais, don't they? Do they? Yes. The English? Yeah, they do. Why? I mean, we've kind of made up with the French. Well, made up, sometimes we fall out.

Centuries go by, we get on quite well. Entente, cordial, and all the rest of it. But yes, absolutely, they did. But why? Just because they were having a particularly bad time with us in the Hundred Years' War? Yeah. French women were never that keen on periods. I don't know why they were so bothered by them. I always

loved them myself. So do you think a man made up the story that they'd been brought over by English women and kind of infected French women with their periods? It's possible. Perhaps we'll have historians listening who may be able to add more to what passes for this debate.

But time is running out for you. Yeah, we've only got 20 seconds left. I wanted to say a very big hello to Sarah, or maybe it's Sarah, who has sent two fantastic pictures of mittens. This is cats in boxes, which is the theme that replaces dogs in jumpers. And Sarah thought that we might like to see a picture of Mittens,

not in a Christmas jumper, but supervising a clear out of my son's Lego from boxes and drawers. And they do like that, don't they, the cats? They do like to leap into a drawer to help. I just want to mention one other thing that Sarah says in a very nice email detailing her visit to Armony Prison in Leeds as well. She says, I'm a long-time listener of both your current and former podcasts. This is the second email to you.

Fingers crossed it's read out as I'm now in competition with my sister Antonia who recently had an email read out on an Archers podcast. Oh. And I would very much like to start something of a competition where we're very happy to read out your emails if you'd like to beat somebody else who you know because that always goes down an absolute treat, doesn't it?

If you get to be heard on this because somebody has been heard on Alistair and Rory's. Unfortunately we don't have time for this. Has Fee's appearance on The Weakest Link been televised yet? We don't have time. Good night everybody. Good night. That's from Maureen. Good night. God bless. See you tomorrow. You did it. Elite listener

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