Woman's Hour - Actor Samantha Morton, Mary Beard, Leap year proposals

Episode Date: February 26, 2024

The twice Oscar-nominated actor Samantha Morton has just received the Bafta Fellowship: a lifetime achievement award which recognises an outstanding contribution to film and television. She grew up in the social care system and began working in film and television at the age of 13. In a moving speech at the Baftas last week, Samantha dedicated the award to every child in care today. 2024 is a leap year and 29 February is the day when traditionally women are "allowed" to propose to their male partner.  We hear your stories and discuss the tradition with wedding speech writer Heidi Ellert-McDermott, and Dr Vera Beckley-Hoelscher, an academic at Royal Holloway, University of London.People in their early 20s are more likely to be out of work because of ill health than those in their early 40s, according to a new report . Lindsay Judge, Research Director at The Resolution Foundation, which carried out the research, explains how young women are particularly affected and are one-and-a-half times more likely to experince poor mental health than young men. And Emma speaks to the world-famous classicist Mary Beard about Legion - the new exhibition at the British Museum, about life in the Roman army. Mary will share stories of some remarkable women who lived in Roman military bases. Presenter: Emma Barnett Producer:Lisa Jenkinson Studio Manager: Emma Harth

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme, peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Emma Barnett and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good morning. It would be ideal, wouldn't it, would it not, to start the week feeling like anything is possible, ignoring the winds and the rain if the elements have already smacked you in the face today already. I've had that joy. My first guest today, the actor Samantha Morton, is certainly the living embodiment of that. Having grown up in the care system, conquered Hollywood, and having just become one of the younger recipients

of the prestigious BAFTA Fellowship Award last week, I'll be talking to her in just a moment. Equally, another formidable woman joins me today, Mary Beard, to paint a picture of women's lives alongside and around the huge force that was the Roman army. And yet, keeping on with the idea that anything is possible, or should certainly seem possible, we hope, we'll be talking about the fact that we are in a leap year, about to hit that elusive 29th of February this week, and the fact that some women still feel they ought to wait for this day to do the proposing. Now, many caveats aside about marriage

rates, different ways to live, heteronormative relationships, why is it still the case that women do not believe it is a woman's role to propose, pop the question, and some of the other stubbornly persisting traditions of marriage? Why do some women think that is the case? And some men, which is, you know, part of this as well. You can adore marriage, what the union represents and do things completely differently, of course. You can loathe it. And if that's the case, probably from around 20 past 10 or thereabouts, you won't be loving that part of the programme. But a significant number of women will not propose, will not keep their names, will not give speeches at their weddings. Some will talk about, it's my choice.

But is it? For others, it's tradition, it's my choice. But is it? For others, it's tradition, it isn't questioned. Perhaps it's questioned way later on in life and you look back at some of those things now and you see it wasn't perhaps a choice, it was expectation. Where are you on this? Where are we? What should we take from the fact that these traditions continue? And certainly in some people's eyes,

keep women in certain positions or maybe not if you had proposed what would your partner have said are you thinking about doing it perhaps you're doing it this week genuinely what is going on 84844 that's the number you need to text me here at women's hour on social media we're at bbc women's hour or email me through the women's our website these are really personal choices there'll be some of you thinking why are you even bothering spending any time on this? But it isn't actually just about marriage, is it? It's about some of these other things

that point to the way women still live and interact with men and vice versa. So that's what we can get into. It's interesting, we had some messages already on this last week. An anonymous one saying here, I proposed on Valentine's Day on a card with a bouquet of red roses.

Corny, I know. This is from a female listener, but no name. It took him six months to respond. Lawyers never rush into anything. It's our 18th wedding anniversary this year. Do not give up if it's something you really want. What did you do in those six months? I was proposed to,

but my now husband did stick with it, having heard me say only a week earlier when we were together at home, do not propose to me because I will not say yes. I don't even think I replied straight away because I was so struck, as someone who does like to ask questions, how short the window was to actually give a response. I did in the end and I did say yes. And, you know, there's romance involved here.

It was an incredibly romantic moment. But there's one here saying, I proposed to my husband over a dinner of beans on toast while we were both in our dressing gowns, not on the 29th of February. I've never paid any attention to this silly quote unquote rule. I think women and think women should not wait for men to propose. And so it goes on. Please keep your messages coming in. Anything you want to contribute as well throughout the programme, I'd love to hear from you. But my first guest has just received the BAFTA Fellowship, this Lifetime Achievement Award,

which recognises an outstanding contribution to film and television. Previous winners include Elizabeth Taylor, Dame Judi Dench, Dame Helen Mirren, and now the actor Samantha Morton. Samantha's been acting since she was 13 in a huge range of roles. Oscar nominated for a Woody Allen film. She starred opposite Tom Cruise in Minority Report. I always think of that. And appeared as an iconic villain in The Walking Dead. More recently, she's played Zelda Perkins, the real life former assistant of disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. And in a moving speech at the awards ceremony last Sunday, which duly went viral,

Samantha, who grew up in the care system, dedicated the award to every child in care today. In 2008, I directed my first film, The Unloved, and it was about faith, my belief in God, and it was hope and forgiveness. But as much as anything, it was what I wanted to tell little Sam. Homeless and cold cold hungry and alone that you'll have a family one day and you'll have a life beyond what the government statistics have laid out for you because you matter so don't give up.

Samantha Morton joins me now. Good morning. Congratulations, Samantha. Good morning. Thank you very much. Well, lovely to have you with us. It must be strange sometimes hearing those speeches back that you've thought about and then you deliver and it feels, I imagine, like an out-of-body experience in some ways. Yeah, well, it's always strange hearing our own voice. I mean, we're in media, but you know what I mean?

I don't like the sound of my voice. So hearing it back, I'm like, oh, is that what I sound like? Well, that's a whole other thing. I suppose when you when you were told that you were to receive this, where were you? How did you feel about it? It was I was actually going to see my neighbor Toto at the Barbican with my family just before Christmas. And yeah, I got as we do. We're addicted to our phones, a lot of us. So

my family went to get ice cream at the interval and I checked my emails, which is very silly, but I did. And it was there and I thought it was a mistake. I thought they'd made a mistake. And then I emailed back and said, I think this is wrong. And they came back and said, no, this is right. And then I cried. I just had a bit of a like a hoping that people didn't think I was completely nuts or that I'd have terrible news sitting there at the interval sobbing like there weren't many people around me but you know there is that but what was the what was the reason do you think it it struck you in that way well I talked about it in my speech and it's recognition it's that um obviously

recognition for my work felt incredible because as a as a as an actor who has been I think actually my first job when I was 12 it was a talk write and read educational program um and you know I've been working pretty much do you know extra work walk on one. I've done every job imaginable pretty much on a film set. And, you know, there's been times when I've had incredible highs. And then there's been times when I've been unemployable due to people saying I was difficult to work with. Difficult meaning I would say no if somebody wanted me to take my bra off on set because they wanted to see my nipples difficult because I would challenge the way that set was being ran at times when people were were not being treated very well or you know cruise hours were too long and you

know all sorts of things like that so I know we don't have much time but it it's it it just felt incredible to think that if you stick to your guns and you stick to um your beliefs and you know I suppose it it turned out all right you know there were times there when it wasn't okay well we do have time, Samantha. And just on that point, I'm not rushing you at all. Please don't think that. On that point about taking your bra off and not showing your nipples, I presume that was a very real request in a set scenario. Oh, absolutely, yeah, on a set in front of the entire crew.

Also, when I was very young, you know, the lovely, lovely costume and hair and makeup girls would give me corn plasters to put on my breasts when I was doing sex scenes for Band of Gold, because I was so frightened and didn't want to. You know, Kay Mellor, the incredible writer Kay Mellor, would write a scene that says, you know, Tracy is in bed with a punter or a client. I played a young prostitute, a trafficked child, actually, as we would say now, in Band of Gold, a TV show that was in the early 90s on ITV. Very, very successful. And I I hadn't because I didn't go to drama school and because I wasn't from a certain type of family family, if you like. I didn't know how to speak up for myself. I didn't have anyone being an advocate for me other than the other women who would say, listen, if you put these plasters on your nipples, then they can't show your breasts on television.

You know, because everything is down to interpretation. So if the scene is requiring an intimacy, it's down to the director of how they're going to shoot that and what you do. It sounds like you were having to walk a line with not having that background, as you say, and then still trying to get work all the time and figure out how you could still be you in that space. Yeah, and how you navigate relationships on set and when you're playing very vulnerable, raw, intense characters. But also you have to remember that we were working and living in times where it was terrible for women on film sets. And we're not talking about that long ago.

No, no. And I just felt so incredibly privileged to have a job, to be working, to not be living in a homeless hostel, to not be surrounded by dangerous individuals. And I to not be living in a homeless hostel, to not be, you know, surrounded by dangerous individuals. And I felt that I was in a safer environment. Not every set was like that. And I have to really stress that not every set was like that. And I love my community. I love my job. But there were times when it wasn't, I just wasn't welcome because of who I am, because of where I'm from. And that was very evident. So to get the fellowship from BAFTA,

it's other than my children and being in the relationship I'm in is possibly the most incredible thing that's ever happened to me. I want to come back to a couple of themes about your industry, if I can, and being a woman. But I also thought what was striking in your speech is you talked about it and you could have missed it but you did make a point of saying you have faith um you talked about absolutely a belief in God which I think in this country certainly um doesn't always get spoken about uh publicly it's not cool is it it's not cool to talk about you know faith um but if you were to, or any of your viewers,

viewers or listeners were to look at my film, The Unloved, it talks about this character who's making her first Holy Communion and her relationship with God. But also it's quite complex when you are surrounded by abuse and harm. How do you navigate that and not hate somebody else? You know, an eye for an eye. I just, I never felt, I mean, around the age of 14, I felt absolute anger at the authorities

and the people that had harmed me and abused me. But prior to that, I was just kind of in it and just felt that forgiveness was the best way forward. You're talking about abuse within the care system and how you were looked after growing up. Oh, yeah. Absolute neglect beyond from the state, which is still happening today. That's why I support Article 39, the charity, and I support the NSPCC that has got a new campaign

coming out this week, which is called Listen Up, Speak Up, which is a 10 minute online thing you can do where it helps you learn how to, it's a training course to see how you can spot signs of abuse in children. So yeah, I try and do the best I can. But ultimately, back then, when I was very small, and moved from foster home to foster home, children's home to children's home. You know, faith and my belief in something bigger and other than myself and loving other people helped me survive. Is that why you wanted to talk about believing in God publicly?

Was that important as part of that message? I think that just kind of came out. You know, that just happened. And it's everybody's personal journey, isn't it? Whatever faith you are connected to, whether you just believe in a higher power, but something other than yourself that is bigger than you, that is about a community, it's about loving other people. And also hate doesn't work. I was very angry when I was 14 with everything and it just didn't get me anywhere. It was the, you know, the wrong way to use anger, I suppose. So being, so loving

other people and believing everybody has a right to be here no matter who you are what you do what you've done um forgiveness certainly meant i was able to survive and move forward and yes well it just helps i i wonder though if now looking at your your journey where you've got to and and where you're from and how your upbringing did shape you and and did you know create certain circumstances for you that sometimes will have been harder and other times upbringing did shape you and did create certain circumstances for you that sometimes would have been harder and other times may have driven you on as well. Do you think someone coming from that sort of background today could make it to the BAFTA Fellowship, could make it to where you are? Have things got better or worse in that respect?

They've got worse. It depends which road we're talking about. So education-wise, we do know that the past 14 years successive governments have decimated um the arts um in regards to schools drama teachers libraries books you know books in school and i was privileged enough to even though i went to state school there were books available all the time a teacher wheeled in a big telly and played as kez the film um i had great drama teachers at school. That's Ken Loach's film. Yes, Ken Loach's film, Kez, yeah. And, you know, it was,

drama was really, really highly regarded at my school, West Bridgeford Comprehensive. So, you know, I was really lucky. I'm not sure that most children, whether you are looked after or just at a state school now, get that opportunity to kind of learn learn about you know drama um but likewise i think the way that children are looked after now by the local authority bearing in mind that it has been pretty much totally

privatized um and the ineptitude and the it is not fit for purpose so So I just think it would be even it would be incredibly hard for a young person to to to achieve that today for many different reasons. It's also striking today I'm talking to you and it's linked in some ways. We're going to come to this a bit later in the programme, but there's a new report out today showing young people are more likely to be out of work in this country because of poor mental health, depression, anxiety than those in their early 40s. People aged 18 to 24 may not have had access to steady education and can end up out of work or in low paid jobs. And we've got some messages about this coming in, this idea about things getting worse, not better. They absolutely are getting worse, but that doesn't mean they can't get better when we have a new government and we have, you know, people willing to take mental health seriously. We've had the pandemic, those young people and even much younger people have been through the

most horrific isolation, you know, times. And also we have this, we're aware of this if you're a parent or even just our own addictions the phone you know social media we are very very aware now of the mental health aspects of young people staring at phones all day or tiktok or instagram social media has amazing positive things it can give but it also you know it's incredibly detrimental to our health it's also just going back to the beginning of our conversation as we start to come towards the end is you talked about how though things have got better in your world in some ways and social media with the Me Too movement will have played a part in that. There's intimacy coordinators on set. There are greater levels of literacy around mental health, even if

the support services, certainly from the state, are incredibly patchy, to say the least, which we have covered and will continue to cover on this programme. I just wanted to come to the fact that you having played Zelda Perkins, who I've interviewed before, actually, and the former assistant to Harvey Weinstein, who's of course, head of Miramax, and one of the many women speaking to the New York Times journalists, you also had an encounter with Weinstein, not of a sexual nature, but of the threat of being blacklisted. What is your view of that now and how do you remember that? It's interesting because at the time I didn't realise I had been, if you like, my name crossed off his list. He was a very, he is still a very powerful, very, very talented producer.

And I really, really wanted to work for Miramax as a young person. I went in and met them and it was all very happy. And then I was offered a particular film that I didn't want to do. And so I turned it down and I was told, you don't say no to Harvey. Then every single time I was either wanted by a director or by anybody else within his company, he would just say no. He would then acquire films that I was part of. And contrary to my contract, he would try and get my name off the cover or move my face out of the, you know, when you have DVDs back in the day, there was all sorts of things that

Miramax did did but I kind of didn't realize it at the time and it was only in hindsight that I went through certainly my relationship with Terry Gilliam and what happened there and which I've spoken about publicly it was written about in a book and then someone pointed it out to me that Terry had tried to cast me in a movie and Harvey basically went above and beyond to make sure I wasn't cast in that movie. To be fair to Harvey, it was his film. He's a producer. And if he doesn't want someone in the role, that's his right.

This is all because you said no to a project. Oh, yeah, yeah. After I did a film called Under the Skin many, many years ago, there was a huge amount of interest in me in America and in Hollywood and I moved to New York and I was doing independent cinema in New York which was amazing and yeah there was a there was a requirement for me to go and do certain parts which I just didn't want to do and back then you you kind of you arrived at a studio and you were kind of part of their stable, if that made sense.

You weren't under a three-picture deal all the time or things like that. But if you impressed them and you did one film for them and that did all right, then you were kind of in there. You were in their stable. But I would look at a role and if I didn't feel that I was challenging enough or if I thought it was misogynistic or it was just a horrible kind of 90s pap, which I'd be like, no, I don't want to do this. But it must be just so, I don't know what the word is for it, but something to look back and realise that now and see all those patterns and have that understanding with the knowledge of what he's then been in court for. Yeah, it wasn't just Harvey.

You've got to remember it's not just Harvey. There was a huge amount of other individuals that behaved atrociously really up until the mid-2000s I was working alongside men who their behavior was absolutely unprofessional and probably wouldn't wouldn't happen today but certainly was still happening right up until the the Harvey Weinstein scandal came out. Many, many individuals. I was fired from one movie because I wouldn't go to dinner with the studio execs wearing a skirt. There you go.

I mean, you say hopefully it isn't happening today, but that's the thing. No, I don't think so in the same way. Well, yes, but I suppose sometimes history is being written as we speak, so you sometimes don't know where things are. But Samantha, sorry, were you about to add a final thing there? I just wanted to say that there was also lots of enablers. You know, you've got to remember a lot of agents out there knew what was happening and didn't speak up so that we have spoken up now. Hopefully every single aspect of our industry has had a good hard look at every

aspect of how they do business and moving forward because of people like Zelda Perkins things are changing and with BAFTA who have we have to remember is an arts charity recognizing someone like me I take that honor incredibly seriously and I'm grateful and moving forward that we we will have change we will see positive change. Samantha Morton thank you very much for talking to us today. Thank you. And congratulations again. I mean, Samantha, talking about how things have got worse, some of you will definitely be in agreement with that across the board. Others of you will have very different experiences. And some of you, of course, will be thinking, well, there's been certainly some tough

choices to be made in this country recently, not least because of the pandemic and where investment's gone and a change of government won't be the answer, but we'll have an election to sort that out at some point. And some interesting messages coming in about that report, which I'll get to a bit later in the programme, showing mental health and the young. One headline today, certainly the Daily Mail put it in a slightly different way, called it Generation Sick Note. So certainly, probably in some ways,

a conversation to be had about the real reasons behind that. We will get to that and speak to one of the people behind that report. But Samantha Morton there, giving her take and giving some insights. Many messages coming in about the fact we are in a leap year. Later this week, the elusive 29th of February, the day where traditionally women, quote unquote, are allowed to propose to their male partner is coming. There are various historical women it seems we may owe this tradition to. We've had a look this morning, including St. Bridget in Ireland in the 5th century,

Queen Margaret of Scotland in the 13th century. But why are we still in this situation where it's considered unusual for women to propose? You may argue it's not, but it is still something that is not the norm, it seems. But I'm up for that argument. The wedding speechwriter and founder of Speechy, Heidi Ellert-McDermott's here,

and Dr Vera Beckley-Hirschler, lecturer in marketing at Royal Hollywood. Hollywood? I've just been thinking about Hollywood. Royal Holloway, University of London School of Business and Management, who's one of the co-authors of the interesting-sounding research Women Proposing Gender Equality in Wedding Rituals. Let me come to you first Vera you've had a look at this what what what can we say about where we're up to with women proposing

so what we found first of all it was of course a joint research project I did this research together with Daniela Pirani who's at University of Liverpool and Ratna Kaniju, who is at Goldsmiths, University of London. And what we found is that this is still very much a trope that is alive and well in the 21st century, that women do not propose, that women wait to be asked. What we found, so our research was partly a virtual ethnography, where we looked at a lot of different handles and posts and blogs and comments on them etc but where we also interviewed 21 women who did propose to men within heterosexual relationships so almost all of them were heterosexual relationships

and we did find that it is something that is not often openly celebrated or that when women do propose, there is often a backlash. So there's a backlash online with some nasty comments blaming women on the kind of the downfall of culture when they propose. But also some women had the experience that close members of family or even kind of extended family saw it as quite negative and one of our participants said i was so shocked she said she was so shocked by her mother's reaction who used to be a punk who said why couldn't you just have this fairy tale moment why couldn't you wait for him to ask the good news however was that the vast majority of men were absolutely thrilled to be asked to marry their

significant other within our full data set we could only find two cases where so one where the proposal was rejected and incidentally that was on leave day. And in this case, the woman was very traditional and she felt that this was, you know, that this was kind of the way in which a proposal was to be done by a woman. And her now husband actually said, no, this is not your place get up okay so so a bit a bit of a flavor there of what you found and interesting to hear a lot of men absolutely fine with it as well although some some saying otherwise and there is that backlash Heidi where do you come at this from looking at the wedding industry well I um came into the wedding industry about nine years ago and I was shocked at how traditional and sexist it was. Obviously we write wedding speeches and it was clear that brides were still reluctant to

deliver a wedding speech on the day. You know it's one of those days where we're actually in charge of the lineup and we still weren't going for it. But obviously, over the years, I've spoken to loads and loads of couples and I can name, I can count on my hand the numbers where it's a straight woman that proposed to the man. And generally, what I find is still to this day, a lot of men going that they were pestered jokingly by their fiance or indeed her mother into proposing to her. So he was pestered into it as opposed to the women taking the initiative for their marital status. And it's just something I would have hoped would have developed over the years. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. You can obviously do what you want in many ways, but it hasn't changed very much because I suppose there are also these things to do with tradition.

Let me just bring in a couple of our listeners who've been in touch. Have I got James, I hope, on the phone? Hello, James. Oh, Josh, forgive me. I've got James written down here. Yeah down here yeah you got a josh we'll get james as well later josh um were you proposed to i was yeah on the 29th yeah yeah okay and what happened um well we'd we'd been together the best part of 18 months i think and we'd kind of thought that well we certainly felt we were right for each other and it kind of hummed and hard a little bit about getting married and the 29th was coming up and we went out for dinner and things and I just had an inkling that you know this might be coming I

think I probably made a few helpful remarks about I bet there were a lot of boyfriends running away from their girlfriends today which probably didn't help matters but um but i the evening went on we've been went out for a meal and no proposal and i just there was a kind of tension i think a little bit between us and then um got home and evening went on and got later and later went to bed and i kind of thought if if claire hasn't proposed to me before midnight, I'll wait till a minute past midnight and I'll propose to her instead. And about two minutes to midnight, where we're pretty much asleep, she did.

And I said, yes, immediately, of course. Just like a, I'm sorry, just asleep, you know, just across the pillow. Yeah, pretty much, yeah. I like that, last minute. I mean, as a journalist, I fully approve of that, keeping it there. Last minute. I mean, as a journalist, I fully approve of that. Did you, you know, on a serious note, did you mind that it was that way around?

Of course not. And I wouldn't have minded if it had been any other day of the year, frankly. I mean, anyone less bound by tradition than my wife is hard to imagine. She was a drummer in a punk all-female band when I first met her. So, you know, she's not someone who feels obliged to do the traditional thing by any means. OK, well, there you go. There'll be perhaps some men primed for a two minutes to 12 proposal when it comes to later on this week on the 29th. I think we've got Lara on the line.

Hello, Lara. Hi there. Yes, I proposed to my husband on the 29th of February in 2016, and he was really poorly in hospital. So he has cystic fibrosis. I had actually met him a year before. I had breast cancer at 31, and I wrote a blog about my experience. A friend passed it on.

He read it and contacted me over Facebook and we fell in love. We had a mutual, a mutual interest in death. We kind of joked who was going to die first. And I had been given the all clear and I'd, you know, I'd met, he was the most wonderful man. And I thought, oh my goodness, it's taken me all this time. I'd had so many awful past relationships. and I thought oh my goodness it's it's taken me all this time I'd had so many awful past relationships and I thought it was it was weird actually I I've just heard on the radio the week before they were like oh it's elite day next week and I just thought oh it's too much of a coincidence so I drove the hour and a half to Southampton Hospital where he was being treated surprised him with a cake that said I love you Mikey marry me and he was kind of like oh my goodness and he said yes and we got married

a few months later that same year and then he was listed for a double lung transplant and had a successful double lung transplant in August 2018. And he's now thriving and we're still very happily married. And I kept my surname and he kept his. Well, there you go. I mean, having had a competition about who was going to die first, I mean, you've got to have some kind of sense of humour, I suppose, in these scenarios.

It's brilliant to hear that you're thriving on both levels and did that. And, you know, there may be somebody listening right now, Lara who doesn't haven't clocked it was a leap year and yes may not feel they need that reason i don't know if you felt like you needed that to to do the proposing but may now go and do something uh on on later on this week on the 29th um along the lines that you're talking about did you feel you needed the leap year no not at all well i i probably wouldn't have proposed to him it was weird it was kind of like it it was almost like things came together you should it just happened and I was like oh my goodness yes because if I propose to him then he'll know that I'm

not gonna do a runner when things get really tough throughout all his hospital stays and and it definitely feels like we are a real unit we can't get rid of each other now we're there to stay there you go there well there are many messages coming in and there's one from claire thank you so much lara good to talk to you josh uh claire says i proposed 36 years ago he said yes i vomited it was after tequila slammers next day we didn't speak about it until later that day he announced to his mum we were getting married. We're still married. It's going well so far. 36 years on. I'll always go towards a message that's got the word vomit and tequila in it.

Another one here. I sent a congratulations on your engagement card. 29th of February 1988 to Jeff. We had sort of discussed marriage. He said nothing on the day, so I thought I'd blown it. Next day, I received 12 red roses to the company I was working for with a card saying the answer is yes. We've been very happily married for nearly 35 years. Go for it, ladies. Another one here. Esme says, after 20 years, I got fed up with waiting,

so I went ahead and booked the wedding. I asked my brother-in-law to make sure he got his brother there. I've been married now for eight. It's one of the best things we've done. And Laura with a slightly different take on this, listening in East Sussex, good morning. When a man asks a woman to marry him, he's actually putting the power in the woman's hands. She's the one who gets to say yes or no. There are many, many talk about how nerve

wracking it is, not to mention the fact that by proposing the man demonstrates how much value and worth he places on his partner. Let's not add marriage proposals to the list of things women are expected to do. Laura, not looking for another job there. I mean, perhaps that's a way of looking at it. Coming back to you, Heidi, here in the studio. Oh, gosh, I don't think it's another job. I think it's an opportunity to, on a serious note, take control of what you want to do and not be pestering.

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, if it's a fear of rejection, let it be and let that play out. You don't want to be with someone who doesn't want the same things as you. But on a more fun note, it's romantic. And I mean, talking from personal experience, my husband's proposal was rubbish. And I like I just would have done it much better. So are you allowed to say it was just whispered in a restaurant? You know, there was no down on one knee.

There was nothing exciting about it. Would you have gone down on one knee? I'm only asking because Anna says, I propose to my soon wife to be the traditional way, down on one knee with a ring in my hand. I honestly don't think I'd have known how to propose without that script to follow. So if I'd wanted to marry a man,

my main issue wouldn't have been women don't propose, but men don't wear engagement rings. That's from Anna. Oh, I wouldn't have wasted money on engagement ring, but I would have done something fun, you know. As well as leap year, there's loads of different days that can maybe be more suitable to your own relationship, you know. Well, I suppose also you can make of that what you will. I just wanted with the time we have left to get to the idea from what you've seen within the wedding industry. What do you think it is with women, perhaps where they're not either proposing or giving speeches to me, are brides allowed to give speeches? And I think there's just a reluctance of there being one extra thing to do with many brides,

but also just people haven't considered it properly and what fun it can be. But with the proposals, I think, you know, I didn't propose. So, you know, I am also to blame in this. It's not a blame thing, I suppose. It might be who gets there first. Yeah, well... In my case. I think I was worried that I would look like a desperate woman

that wanted to get married. And I should not have bought into that trope of seeing that sort of sexist view of women wanting to get married and men not wanting to get married. And I should have just gone for it earlier. Well, there is that, I suppose. And people look back on these things. I think with speeches, you know, my experience with what I do for a living, I am told most of the time talking publicly is one of the least favourite things up there for men and women. So there are lots of men who wouldn't want to give a speech anyway. Yes, so equal opportunities to claim fear of it.

To claim fear. There we go. We'll put it at that. Heidi Ellick-McDermott, who is the founder of Speechy. Thank you, Dr Vera Beckley-Helsher, who did some of this research. Thank you to you and thank you for these messages still coming in. Jan says, on the subject of wanting and waiting to be proposed to, I've been with my partner for 36 years. I think that's another 36 year here. Two children, several

mortgages, lots of life changes, all led by me. I just want my partner I wonder if many of you could relate to this or at least some of you, to make one life decision and therefore refuse to be the one who proposes marriage or even civil partnership. Believe me, he is well aware of this. And yet we remain unmarried. Jan does not want to take

one more decision. I do meet a lot of you. And certainly when you start talking to me in the street, which by the way, I do by and large love because you come up to me and you start mid sentence and you will tell me the fatigue that you have about making a lot of the decisions and not just that, making things happen. But let me tell you about somebody who's just walked in to the studio and a treat for you. Have you ever wanted one of the top specialists to go around an exhibition with or for you

and point out those stories and things you may be missing? I can deliver that service to you now. There is a new exhibition at the British Museum in London called Legion. It's about life in the Roman army, which was at the peak of ancient Rome, about protecting and policing a quarter of the world's population. It had bases and family accommodation from the east shores to the Middle East. It's very easy to imagine it was all about men, armour and weapons, but there were women there too.

Of course, they needed the next generation, not least anything else, shaping life of the army in their own unique ways. Who better to guide us than the classicist lecturer and author specialising in ancient Rome, Mary Beard. Good morning. Hello. I won't get on to proposals in ancient Rome. We can maybe get there. But tell us what we're not seeing.

What should we pay attention to in this world? In the world of Rome? And the army. Well, I think that a lot of people would think that an exhibition on the Roman army wasn't exactly the place to go to find stuff about Roman women. We've got this kind of asterisk, the Gaul image of the Roman army, haven't we, with loads of squaddies and hardware, and they're all a bit dim, but they're all blokes. I think what the British Museum exhibition does is just say, just hang on a minute.

The Roman army doesn't have women soldiers. But you can't look at the army without thinking about the women who were also there, the women who were married to these guys, who had their kids, who looked after stuff. I mean, I think the real memorable standout objects for me in this show are things that are connected with the women. I think that I took away most vividly the little case full of knit combs. Yes, I went yesterday and took that in as well. Felt quite itchy while looking. But tell us more.

Well, I thought, who used those knit combs? Well, it could have been the soldiers on their own, but I thought there was lots of women around here and they were getting rid of the knits out of their blokes' hair. And that just spoke to me. Yes, and women included in the exhibition, Julia Domner, tell us more. Yeah, there are some truly, truly standout women.

And the one you come across quite early in the show is an empress, Julia Domner, from the end of the second century, beginning of the third century, the wife of the emperor Septimius Severus. Now, Julia Domler is someone who I think, well, she doesn't have great name recognition. I mean, we've all been, or many of us have been brought up on I Claudius, or at least the telly series of I Claudius. And we sort of know about the scheming Livia, Sian Phillips, who was the wife of Augustus. And we know about Agrippina Nero's mum.

I'm learning fast as well here. Good. Remember the names. They're in the beginning of the first century C. And they're the archetype of roman empresses we kind of then sort of lose interest in the roman empire after them and actually if you go to the end of the second the beginning of the third century c 150 years later you find some extraordinary women and perhaps best of all, the Empress Julia Donner, who she earns her place in this show because she follows, goes with her husband Septimius Severus around the empire. She goes on campaign. She gets given the title the mother of the army camps. And she sort of spends her life partly, well, under canvas. I

mean, I guess it was glamping rather than camping in Julia Donner's case. But she was known, a public figure, and she associated herself with the army. She had a lot of other things. You know, she did a lot of correspondence. She had a lot of influence. She was friends of philosophers, a whole range of things. But in this show, we learn about her army role. And I think when you're going around the show, you know, you take in how large this force was, how you had to earn your freedom through it, 25 years, I believe, to be able to

be free on the other side. But you had to survive that. And I suppose the untold side of that, who's providing the soldiers to create that army and childbirth and going through that side of things. And then also perhaps being a woman who is just a temporary woman for one of the soldiers passing through. Yeah, I mean, I think one has to avoid being too cosy about this. I'm not sure that we're really thinking about sort of nice bungalows on army bases. We're thinking for the ordinary soldier of women who were partly temporary, partly sometimes bought, let's face it, and partly being part of a kind of a shifting community, but a community that we just get wrong if we think of it as all men. I think one of the other things that really strikes you in the show, excavated actually in Roman Britain, are the little shoes from the fort

at Vindolanda near Hadrian's Wall. And there you see, from inside the fort, you see some kids' shoes, you see what a clean, you know, unless the squaddies had very small feet. You see some delicate female shoes. And you see a world in which, well, it is not that kind of absolutely rigorously male military hardware world that we often think of it as. The show's got quite a lot of really extraordinary military hardware in it. But it's the things that I thought really appealed to me was the evidence of the women.

A surviving letter from one woman near Hadrian's Wall, the wife of an officer, are writing to a woman on a neighbouring base saying 11th of September is my birthday, you know, do come along and celebrate, let's have a party on my birthday and love to the husband and my little boy sends his best to you. A really, really familiar bit of domestic writing from a woman who was spending most of her life on, well, actually rather tough barracks on Hadrian's Wall. Yes. And there's also a slave who became a freed woman, married a Roman soldier. Her tombstone is displayed.

I mean, if Julia Domna's my favourite upmarket woman in this show, then this woman called Regina Queenie has to be my favourite at the other end of the social spectrum. We know about her only from her tombstone. And there's a rather splendid portrait of her on her tombstone, sitting on a chair with her woolworking equipment. But there's about three or so lines of Latin, which encapsulate in this kind of extraordinary way, a really, really diverse and dramatic career because the husband puts up the tombstone to his wife Regina. But he tells us in this very skeletal CV, he tells us that he had bought her, basically. She was his slave originally.

She was born near St Albans. Quite how she became a slave, we don't know. Maybe perhaps mum and dad sold her. He buys this woman. He then frees her and marries her. He's a Syrian. He's from Palmyra, he tells us, and there's a she died. And he's probably in some way connected with the army. We're not absolutely certain about that. But I think it's just, you know, this really packed life story, but still full of so many questions and problems. I mean, it's quite easy to go along and look at this tombstone and to be a bit romantic about it and say, you know, he had a slave and he fell in love with her and he freed her and they got married. Wasn't that happy ever after? And that might have been what happened.

But you also see, I think, or you can detect possibly some of the tougher side of being a woman in the Roman Empire in this. You know, we don't have Regina's side of the story. And you know, we might want to tell it as falling in love with your slave. We might want to tell it as a story of exploitation and

trafficking. And a forced marriage rather than a wonderfully twinkly in the eye romance. And she could have been bought and then freed in order to be his forced bride. But it's again, it's just opening up the possibility of seeing the women there rather than just closing our eyes to them. And I think it's a really good lesson for the whole of ancient history that when you, people often say, look, there aren't, you know, there aren't women in all this world.

There are women, just we've chosen not to notice them. And what this show does, I think, is say, open your eyes and the Roman army is partly female. Yes, and the brutality, I suppose, of their lives, the men and the women, and, you know, not just women surviving or trying to survive childbirth, but what happened to unwanted babies, for instance. I mean, if there's any kind of part of me

that ever thinks things haven't come on, you know, women are still having a rough time. Well, women still are having a rough time in some respects. But goodness, you know, you look at what happened 2000 years ago. And what did happen? Well, women died in childbirth, you know, by the hundreds of thousands. But I think the thing that really causes me to sort of slightly jolt is what happens to unwanted babies. Well, there is very dangerously, there is a form of abortion.

Women have always used some form of ending pregnancy, often a huge risk to their own health. I think the thing that's most chilling about Rome is that one form of contraception, as Roman law, doesn't count as a person until it's been properly recognised by its father. And that means you can do anything you like with it. And so unwanted babies, unwanted for whatever reason, were, as we believe, regularly, and this is to put it brutally, but I think correctly, were just thrown away. They were either killed or they put out on the rubbish dump. We know from all kinds of very clear evidence that some of the slaves in the Roman Empire were actually those babies who'd been picked up off the rubbish dump and turned into someone else's slave. But the idea of giving birth and then having often your husband saying, we don't want that one. Now, one way of covering

that up is to say, well, there were so many babies and so much pregnancy in the ancient world that the woman perhaps would have accepted that they wouldn't have bonded with this baby. Let's hope that's the case but my reckoning is that these women went through agonies when they had to just throw away the babies they'd born. It is a

brutal time, it's a different time and trying to find those stories that aren't always that obvious is one of the things you were kindly tasked with for us today and what an insight. The classicist Mary Beard, thank you very much that obvious, is one of the things you were kindly tasked with for us today. And what an insight. The classicist Mary Beard, thank you very much indeed.

The exhibition, just if you missed it at the beginning, it's called Legion. It's open at the British Museum until the 23rd of June. And I can also say, having taken a five-year-old boy, the helmets that you can put on are really heavy and nothing's been spared in terms of that reality as well. And the shields are very, very good as well. i did have to try and have a play around um let me tell you though about this report i mentioned at the beginning when i was talking to samantha morton people in their early 20s are more likely to be out of work because of ill health than those in their early 40s a new

report from the resolution foundation and the think tank has said younger people with mental health problems can have chances of a good education blighted and end up out of work or going into low-paid jobs. Young women are particularly affected and are one and a half times more likely to experience poor mental health as young men. Lindsay Judge is on the line, Research Director at the Resolution Foundation.

What is the reason for these rising levels, do you think, and this disparity between those in the 18 to 24 group and those in their early 40s? Well, it's a really critical question and one that we speculate about in the report. We're economists, we're not health professionals. But I mean, I think there's a number of things that studies point to. For example, obviously, the rise of social media. Young people today have to face that. Young people of my generation, for example, weren't subject to cyberbullying. There's an awful lot of pressure, of course, on young people today to perform at school and then in the workplace. But there's also potentially a positive reason, of course, which is we've seen a very welcome decline in stigma around mental health over the last few years, last couple of decades. And of course, young people perhaps are more likely to come forward and report mental health conditions today. However, regardless of

why we see this rise in health conditions, the really important thing is it's having real world impacts in terms of people's economic prospects. And I suppose, you know, there's a message here that talks about, you know, they're not just snowflakes, essentially, if I was to give this message a headline from Claire. The reason, she says, the future is bleak. Climate breakdown, war, political chaos, jobs, housing, NHS, on it goes. The reality is young people, every one of them carries it with them, regardless of education, social class and race. Some are managing it better than others.

Many are struggling, my son being one. He's frequently paralysed by despair. As a result is not able to earn as much as he should and move along with his life, and he's on benefits. He's not a snowflake, he fights that every day. The young need to see our leaders, in quotation marks, really leading and taking huge necessary steps needed to avert further breakdown, misery, and currently we are racing towards disaster on so many fronts. That's a perspective from one of our listeners.

Well, I mean, it's absolutely true that young people today haven't seen the kind of advances in incomes, in support from the state that perhaps a generation ago young people did. So I can understand your listeners' comment on that, that the future does look bleak for many people. And of course, climate change is another important thing that causes existential angst all around. But again, it's definitely not a question of snowflakes. I mean, for example, in the report, we point to the fact that half a million young people today are in receipt of antidepressants significantly more than in the past. So they've obviously been diagnosed by a doctor. And the other point we highlight is that talking about benefits, when we look at personal independence payment,

which is the benefit awarded to those in ill health who are struggling with work, again, we can see the numbers of young people who are in receipt of that going up significantly in recent years. Although there are concerns about whether, you know, antidepressants being given to those, although being given by a doctor, is the right course, and if that is a correct barometer in itself. Well, absolutely. And one of the things we mentioned in the report very much is that this is first and foremost a health crisis. And so you'd expect the health service to be responding. But it's also an economic crisis. And we need to look for ways that people with mental health conditions can still thrive in the workplace and in education. So we point to example for the need for more mental health support teams and more sort of sensitive teaching in schools

and critically in further education colleges where a lot of young people with mental health conditions will end up. And also we need employers to kind of step up. And in particular, we need them to step up in the world, in the sectors where lots of young people work, for example, in retail and hospitality. But is there not also this much bigger thing, I don't know if this comes up, this bigger picture, which is what can work get you if you're a young person? You know, where are you able to fit in?

Are you able to buy your own home? Are you able to even to rent securely? There's some of those issues about what you can even get for working hard. Yeah, and I think the really critical finding in the report is that young people with mental health conditions who have a degree are much more likely to be in work and flourishing than young people who don't have a degree. And I think that's really important that we mustn't overlook the fact that there are a group of people in society, young people in society with mental health conditions whose maybe education has been blighted by their health and who really have very few options.

Those who have a university track have a kind of, you know, an easier kind of ride into early adulthood. But those who aren't in that kind of position are really disadvantaged. Well, thank you for that. I suppose we'll get some, and I imagine we will get some more messages coming in. Lindsay Judge, Research Director at the Resolution Foundation. We've continued to get messages throughout the programme about the idea and what it really says around a leap year being here. It's an excuse to perhaps look at traditions that are not moving on and why they may not be when it comes to women proposing,

the roles that women play within relationships, and certainly, as some of you are pointing out, heteronormative settings. But one here that says, as a 32-year-old woman, I'm seeing many of my friends getting married in the past few years. I found it very confusing that so many friends have been so fervently determined to follow traditional approaches to marriage. Almost all of my female friends have been proposed to with a diamond ring, then got married in a traditional wedding. Almost all have taken their partner's names, this is from a 32-year-old listener, with almost no brides giving speeches. I had assumed that when we were at university, given we are professional women who have gone on to have impressive careers, our generation

wouldn't do everything related to marriage so traditionally. I've been quite surprised that I'm one of a few, of my friends at least, that seem to feel this way about marriage. I can't think of anything worse than being proposed to with an engagement ring and regularly tell my boyfriend that's the case. Well, maybe something around the corner. You'll have to make a decision in a moment. But it's fascinating to get that picture. Barbara says, I gave my husband a playing gold ring on the 14th of February 1968,

told him he could give it back to me sometime. The following evening he asked, what are you doing on Monday at 12 noon? We were married on the 19th of February. Five days later, we're still in love. Another one here. I'm also 36 married this year. Wow, another 36. This is a real moment. I proposed on Valentine's Day with a message on a rose delivered by the florist. Husband-to-be forgot about Valentine's, went out to play squash with a friend. When he finally read the note, he said, maybe. I'll be back with you tomorrow at 10. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Thank you so much for your time. Join us again for the next one.

Hello, it's Amol Rajan here. And it's Nick Robinson. And we want to tell you about the Today podcast from BBC Radio 4. Yes, this is where we go deeper into the sort of journalism that you hear on today, exploring one big story with more space for insight and context. We hear from a key voice each week, a leader in their field, be they a spy chief, a historian, a judge, a politician, all with something unique to say, and we make sure they've got the time and space to say it. The WhatsApps show the character of the men who were running our country at that point. Trump is probably going to beat Joe Biden because he is a force of nature. If the next scan says nothing's working, I might buzz off to Zurich. We give you our take as well and lift the lid

just a little bit on how the Today program actually works. That is the Today podcast. Listen now on BBC Sounds and subscribe. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth.

How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.