Woman's Hour - Bat for Lashes, Women and D-Day, Author Saima Mir, Sextortion

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

The singer-songwriter Natasha Khan, known by her stage name Bat for Lashes, joins Anita to talk about her new album, The Dream of Delphi. Named after her daughter Delphi, her new music explores motherhood through lush orchestral sounds. She discusses having a baby during the Covid lockdown and how the experience informed her song-writing. Vengeance is award-winning journalist and writer Saima Mir’s second novel, and the sequel to her crime thriller debut The Khan. The book continues the story of Jia Khan as she’s fighting to keep her position at the head of a crime syndicate her father created, and as the mysterious corpses of men begin to appear around the city. Saima joins Anita in the studio to discuss writing a British Asian crime family, creating the characters she wants to read, and why sisterhood is at the heart of her new novel.The mother of a 16 year-old-boy who ended his life after becoming the victim of a sextortion gang says the tech giant Meta has taken too long to hand over data which might help the investigation into his death. Joe Tidy, the BBC’s first Cyber Correspondent, explains how he’s been investigating Sextortion – a type of online blackmail which involves threatening to share intimate pictures of the victim. Today marks the 80th anniversary of D-Day, when thousands of Allied troops landed on beaches across Normandy, marking the start of the campaign to liberate Nazi-occupied northern Europe. What’s often forgotten is the important role that women played in organising this huge military project and making the D-Day happen. Anita Rani speaks to historian, teacher and writer Shalina Patel, who has told some of these women’s stories in her book The History Lessons, which celebrates stories and people beyond the usual narratives.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Olivia Skinner

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good morning and welcome to Woman's Hour. Today is the 80th anniversary of D-Day, when tens of thousands of troops landed on beaches across Normandy, marking the start of the Allied campaign to liberate Nazi-occupied Northern Europe. 4,400 men were killed, 5,000 were wounded in the hours of D-Day. Now yesterday, I had the privilege of presenting the BBC One broadcast from South Sea Common in

Portsmouth, where an emotional, poignant and also joyful event was held telling the story of D-Day. In attendance were His Majesty the King, the Queen and His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales along with the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and the leader of the opposition, Sir Keir Starmer. But the most important people there were the 20 veterans. It was a very moving commemoration to be part of and what stood out for me was a letter written by Captain Jack Lee that was read out by the actor Johnny Weldon. It was to his wife, who he knew would be reading it in the event of his death.

He was telling her how much he loved her and what he would want for his young children, the important things in life. He was killed during D-Day. What made the reading of this letter remarkable, though, was in the audience was Captain Jack Lee's granddaughter, who'd travelled from Australia to witness his words being brought to life. The captain's wife, after his death, remarried and moved to Australia, and his children grew up knowing very little about him. They had to do their own investigation and eventually discovered that he had written this letter, so we can only imagine how it must have felt for his granddaughter in that moment.

A name and a life not forgotten. And you can watch that along with all of the BBC's D-Day coverage on BBC iPlayer. But this morning, I'd like to know how the war is or isn't discussed in your families. Are your grandchildren aware of what happened? Did your parents or your grandparents ever talk to you about what they lived through? Are you preserving your own family history before the war generation is with us no more?

And if there was a veteran in your family, let's speak their name on the programme today. Of course, I want to hear about what your mothers and grandmothers did, as well as the men. Get in touch with me in the usual way. The text number is 84844. You can email me via our website or WhatsApp me or voice note me on 03700 100 444. You will be hearing about some of the remarkable women who contributed to D-Day today, though. Historian

Shalina Patel is here to enlighten us. Good morning, Shalina. Also on the programme, I'm very excited because they're all sitting in front of me, Natasha Khan, known by her stage name, is here to enlighten us. Good morning, Shalina. Good morning. Also on the programme, I'm very excited because they're all sitting in front of me, Natasha Khan, known by her stage name, Alter Ego, Bat for Lashes, is here. Morning, Natasha. She's here to tell us all about her new album, The Dream of Delphi, and it really is dreamy.

And author Saima Mir has popped along to tell us about her new book, Vengeance. It's a sequel to her best-selling debut crime thriller, The Khan. We're going to be finding out from you, Saima, how much fun you had writing about a female crime boss. That's going to be really interesting. I had a really great time. We look forward to hearing about that. Also on the programme today, the National Crime Agency has warned teachers about a rise in sextortion. The BBC's cyber correspondent Joe Tidy will be telling me what he's uncovered on the issue.

But first, eight years ago today, tens of thousands of young men were landing on the beaches of France, stepping into the unknown, all in the name of fighting for freedom, their sacrifice never to be forgotten. But there are still hidden stories about the important role that women played to organise this huge effort and make the D-Day happen. In Britain, by 1943, there were 7 million women working across all types of services, supporting the war effort, stepping out from behind the kitchen sink to keep the country functioning. With me, as I've mentioned, is Shalina Patel, who has written a book handily called The History Lessons, which celebrates people beyond the usual narratives. Welcome to Women's Hour, Shalina. Why did you want to write this book?

I wanted to write this book because I know that I always get people saying to me, I wish you'd been my history teacher. And I'm really aware that what I teach my students in the classroom, there's a disconnect between what I teach my students and what people learnt at school. So I'm really aware that adults have got blind spots, right? They've got historical blind spots, particularly when it comes to the empire, particularly when it comes to actually women as well. You know, outside of the suffragettes, did we learn much about other women in school? So I really wanted to get my history lessons from the classroom out there for adults. So I use what you already know as a foundation,

and then I add those extra stories on top to give you a real broader sense of history. Wonderful. So you can be everyone's history teacher today. We are very lucky to have you here. So let's paint a picture. Give us an overview of D-Day because not everybody knows. Yeah, absolutely. So the war starts in 1939 and it goes really, really well for the Nazis. So by 1940, we have this saying that Britain was standing alone, because, you know, the Nazis had taken over huge swathes of Europe. And by 1944, things have changed slightly. So the Americans are in the war now, the USSR is fighting on the Allied side as well. So the decision is made, right, we need to invade France, we need to liberate all of those

areas of Europe from the Nazis. And so they decide that they're going to have a secret invasion. Now, of course, this invasion, in order to keep it a secret, requires a huge, huge amount of work. Men and women behind the scenes doing a massive amount. And as you've already mentioned, women did a huge amount to organise it because, as you said at the top of the show, there's 160,000 troops land at those five beaches on D-Day. But in order for them to be in the right place at the right time, it had to be organised. So you've got the Wrens,

for example, you know, we've all heard of the Wrens, you know, they're working for the women's role, naval service, they're doing everything, you know, they're looking at the maps, they're checking the men are where they need to be, they're organising the ships. Crucially, they're intercepting messages from the Germans as well, because of course, the secrecy of D-Day is so important. And the secrecy of D-Day is underlined by this program, which I love the name of it, the double cross system. You know, we all know what it means if you double cross somebody, right? And that's essentially what the Allies were doing to the Germans, they were double crossing them. So they were infiltrating the Nazis from within, and they were sending messages trying to basically send them in the wrong direction.

So they wanted the Nazis to think, oh, is it Norm it normandy is it calais is it the south of france is it norway is it somewhere else and that is where my first woman that i'm going to talk about today comes in oh she's good isn't she teed it up um well let's go there who's the first one you'd like to talk to us so i'm gonna say the to say the name Elvira Shadwar. Anyone heard of Elvira? Never heard of her. OK, you are going to fall in love with Elvira, I promise you. OK, so I need to give you a bit of background about her. So she's born in Paris.

Her father is a Peruvian diplomat. So she's an heiress. OK, she's a socialite. People see her as being quite vapid. She's a party girl as well. She loves to gamble and all this kind of stuff. So she's in France when the Nazis invade. She skips over to England straight away.

And she actually, interestingly, I've read some sources that she tried to get a job at the BBC as a translator. But she doesn't hold the job down because she's partying too much. So she's at the Ritz constantly. She's gambling. And considering how much Elvira gambles, she's not very good at it either. So she's terrible. So she's at the Ritz constantly. She's gambling. And considering how much Elvira gambles, she's not very good at it either. So she's terrible. So she's in debt. And you can just imagine the kind of person that she is, right?

So, and what I love about Elvira is I think we've all got that friend where you just think, how do these things always happen to you? And that is Elvira. Okay. So she's complaining. She's in a club. She's complaining that she's bored, which is ridiculous when the war is on. And an RAF officer overhears her. And of course, because it's Elvira, the RAF officer's

boss works for MI6. So he goes to his boss and says, I've met this interesting girl. And Agent Z, the guy's boss, thinks, okay, let me put her under surveillance for a couple of weeks. Let's see, because actually, if she comes across in this kind of socialite, heiress, airhead kind of way, she'd be a really good spy potentially. I see, the ultimate deception. Exactly. So it's almost like a double cross within the double cross. Exactly. So he puts her under surveillance for a couple of weeks, and actually figures out very quickly that even though she might come across in a certain way, she's really well educated. She speaks loads of languages. And really importantly, she's got a diplomatic passport. So what this means is she can travel

freely to France and no one's going to question her. She's a gift. So how did they recruit her? So well, they recruit her because she's in debt. So essentially, what they say to her is, listen, Elvira, we'll give you some money. And she's like, brilliant. Give me some money. All you've got to do pop over to France and do what you do, which is basically attract attention. So she's like, OK, great. So what happened when she got to France? So she goes to Cannes, of course, and obviously within not very long, she's being wined and dined by German intelligence officers because it's Elvira.

And that is just how how life rolls for her. Right. They say to her, listen, how about you back to england and let us know when this invasion is happening so the plan works she's a double agent officially okay so everything's just falling into place so as we know from you know various things agents always have a code name right so have any of you ever been to a bar and ordered a bron? No, but that's a good name for a cocktail. That's a great name for a cocktail. What have we been missing out on? You've been missing out. So I love that MI5 call Elvira Agent Bronx

because it's her favourite cocktail. It's a gin martini with orange, which you can make with wartime rations, which I love. And I think it's really interesting that they call her that because I feel like it's kind of a wink to the fact that she's a bit of a gamble. Yeah.

But they kind of believe in her. So Agent Bronx is now safely in England and she's doing what she's meant to do. So despite her name she's working really hard. And one of the ways

that she definitely saves lives before D-Day is that she sends messages back to the Germans in Invisible Inc. FYI. Of course. Of course.

She sends them a message basically saying, listen, I'm in England and they're really prepared for a gas attack. And what we think happens is that means that the Nazis don't follow through with their poisoned gas warfare that they were actually going to launch on Britain. Because they thought Britain was ready for it. Absolutely. So Elvira, we're pretty sure, saved lives in that kind of, in that way. Incredibly important. What happens after the war?

So after that, so after the war, she actually runs a gift shop in France and lives till the age of age of 96. And in terms of D-Day, what she does is she essentially sends a letter to the, she sends a telegram to the Nazis saying, I need 50 pounds for an emergency dentist appointment. And what that means is they know that an emergency dentist appointment means an attack is going to happen imminently. And she's asked for 50 pounds, which means it's happening in the south of France. So the Nazis, therefore, on D-Day, before D-Day, they send two panzer divisions to the south of France because Alvera has said they're going to be attacking the south of France. So on D-Day, there are less German defences than there should have been because Elvira and her mad cocktails and her gambling means that you know she's a very very convincing spy. Incredible story and the amount of courage and bravery it would have taken to do that.

Right and that's the thing I think I love that Elvira is just you know the unexpected isn't she because actually you look at her and think this this person is never going to be a good spot. And also she didn't have obviously she got some money, but she didn't have to go into France. She was safe in England. She went on her own accord, really back into Nazi occupied France. If she had been caught by the Gestapo, it would have been awful. Absolutely. Natasha, Simon, can we agree that we all want Shalina to be our history teacher

yes okay excellent are we ready for another are we ready for another name yes um may we discuss uh Noor Inayat Khan because it's all about we've got another Khan there's a lot of them it was meant to be so Noor Inayat Khan is my favorite spy I get quite emotional when I talk about her because I feel like I'm really everyone who knows me knows that I'm obsessed with remembrance. And I feel like sometimes people like, I love that I can say this, people who look like us in this room right now can sometimes feel like remembrance is not for us. But it really is. We have four South Asian women sitting around the Women's Hour table this morning. Yeah. So Nour Eniak Khan is incredible.

So she was part of the SOE, the Special Operations Executive. And essentially they were formed by Churchill. They're called Churchill's Secret Army. They're formed in 1940 because, as I already said, the war's going terribly. So what they decide is we need to sabotage the Nazis from within, very similar to the double-cross system. And this is incredibly dangerous work because the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police, are really, really on the case when it comes to these spies.

So they spot Noor because she works in the auxiliary air force and they talent spot her because she's a brilliant wireless operator. And that is essentially somebody who's going to get messages back and forth from resistance networks and things like that. So they train her up and she actually is sent before her training's finished because they're so desperate for her to be there. So she gets sent in again into Nazi occupied France. And it's worth saying as well that Noor-e-Nayat Khan from her name, she's got an Indian father and an American mother. She's Muslim as well. And she's in Nazi occupied France by 1943. So she has a connection with D-Day as well because we think that the messages that she was intercepting,

the messages that she was getting back, were really important in helping the Allies to plan D-Day. But tell us a bit more about her. Who was she? How did she become a spy? Yeah, she's incredible. So actually, when I teach about her to my students, I give them a CV of her, and her CV is incredible. So she speaks loads of languages. She was a children's writer. She was a psychologist as well. She'd done all kinds of things. And she's, you know, she's one of those she's one of those people where she was just all about perseverance, because actually, the the the notes that we have from her training show us that the officers were not that impressed by her. And they weren't sure whether she'd be any good in the field.

And actually, yeah, we're all kind of thinking... An overachieving... Yes, interesting that we've got someone questioning the ability of a South Asian woman who actually ended up being an incredibly brave and strong individual. So she's got, again, and again, she's got no... She's not being blackmailed to do this. She's got no reason to go and do this, but she's putting herself in danger for this country.

And I think that's incredibly important. So because, as I said, the Nazis are really, really keen to get hold of these spies. The average life expectancy of an agent at this point in the war is six weeks. But she evades the Gestapo for four months which just shows us her resilience is off off the wall um unfortunately though she is caught um by the Gestapo but she doesn't go without a fight she tries to escape out of a roof at one point um they put her in solitary confinement they put her under this special decree because they deem her to be a dangerous prisoner so she's fighting for her life.

But I think it's fascinating that they don't kill her immediately. And I think that's interesting because we know they would have tortured her. They would have wanted information from her. But she obviously didn't give any of that information away when she was in prison. She ends up in Dachau and she is executed by the Nazis. And her last words were liberté, which is the French word for freedom. And we know that from a German officer who wrote it. And she's just, she is really incredible. There is a bust of her in Bloomsbury, which I visit every year.

And I always put a wreath down on behalf of my students. And it's the first bust or statue to a Muslim or Asian woman in this country. And there's also a blue plaque for her now as well. And I think that she's, as I said, she's somebody I think of on Remembrance Day. We will all be thinking of her now. Yeah, absolutely. Because she is somebody that relayed that vital information back, helped out on D-Day. But she gave her life for the ideals and values

that the Allies were standing for. And very quickly, let's just mention Martha Gellhorn as well. Yes. Some might know her as the second wife of Ernest Hemingway. Yes, and actually he comes into this story. So Martha Gellhorn's the only female journalist on the beaches of Normandy, but she wasn't meant to be there. So she says, she's in England during the war,

she says, can I go to D-Day? Can I report? They say, absolutely not. You're a woman, not your place. So she says, OK, fine. So she stows away on a ship, of course. She's questioned by a police officer when she gets there. And I love the fact that she basically starts spitting him this story that, oh, I'm there for the woman's angle of the war.

Basically, she's trying to broadcast Woman's Hour, essentially, on the beach normally. And he just doesn't care and just walks away. She gets paranoid, though. So she locks herself in a bathroom for two days because she's like, I can't risk someone else asking me questions. She's then there on the beaches at Normandy. And it's chaos. You know, if we've seen any, you know, Saving Private Ryan, etc., you know, it's absolute chaos there. She gets stuck in.

She doesn't act like a reporter watching on the sidelines. She gets involved. She's stretchering wounded soldiers. She's basically acting like a nurse. And she ends up writing reports for the American newspapers, which is published. But interestingly, we think it's not only because she was a woman that she wasn't allowed to go. We think her husband, Ernest Hemingway, wanted the scoop for himself. So he actually blocked her from being able to go, but she did it anyway. Good for her. Fascinating stuff, Shalina. Stay right there. I mean, isn't it interesting to hear these stories, Natasha and Saima? You know, people think that a woman's power in this sort of situation might be the fact that she can lure men and hypnotize them. It's actually probably because we're overlooked and underestimated. Fascinating. Did you enjoy that necessarily i did i love hearing stories about that um and it and it's really interesting that you say there's south asian

women or muslim women working in these when you think of those days it's just white men and soldiers you know and i do i yeah i just i find all these sort of hidden stories i'd love to read your book thank you and i think the power of people's sort of hearts and compassion and bravery and empathy is like such a high-risk time crazy. Do you know another industry where we very rarely see South Asian women named Khan, where we think of it as being predominantly white men

and lots of women, white women, is the music industry. So I'm going to bring on to you the singer-songwriter and musician, Natasha Kahn, a.k.a. Bat for Lashes. She's earned numerous plaudits, including three Mercury Prize nominations and two Ivor Novello Awards. After four years away, she's back with a new album, Dream of Delphi.

Named after your daughter who was born in the lockdown summer of 2020. Your most personal work to date. Delphi, your daughter, your muse. We did a whole programme dedicated to muses. The Oracle at the Temple. The Oracle at the Temple. Tell me about the sound and some of the tracks. Well, I decided to write The Dream of Delphi um in the middle of lockdown so i had delphi at

home in august of 2020 in la in la i was living there i've been i was there for six years and um it was obviously a very surreal time um so i was pregnant it was just me and my partner and our dog we nobody was really seeing anybody and um I started doing these sort of channel drawings so um I was doing a lot of illustration all these drawings of female archetypes are sort of pouring through me I didn't really know where they were coming from but that ended up being a 40 card oracle deck um with a guidebook that I wrote and and then I was also writing a book of letters to my unborn baby we didn't know whether she was a boy or girl at that point but just writing about the state of

the world and how it felt and so I'd already sort of been in quite creative space but when Delphi was born the impetus to try to express this huge epiphany that was sort of occurring emotionally for me became very strong and I started to steal away my mask to the studio and write music. And a lot of it was improvised on the spot. So I'd do three hours in the morning, piano, vocal, maybe a bass line, breastfeed, nap, come come back maybe add an organ some beats and harmonies or something like that and and so eventually I started to build up this palette of of songs and some of the titles of things like the midwives have left or her first morning or letter to my daughter which was inspired by Maya Angelou's book of the same name. But what I started to realise is it was a very sort of personal album,

but it had these very sort of big overarching themes of matriarchy, maternal, the maternal balm, I like to call it, the female power of nurturance, the generative life force. And I felt my the power I felt as a woman was like was reaching great heights and I wanted to share that you can hear it through the music it's almost like you had an awakening and the lyrics you celebrate your daughter but you also consider your own place as a daughter too how's becoming a mother made you view your own relationship with your mom in a different way a lot of people have asked me this um talking about remembrance and kind of um you know thinking and remembering and maybe seeing things in a different light I think having Delphi I really had a lot of um

quite mystical experiences and dreams around my grandmother actually and um I've ended up writing a little small novel about her and me and Delphi and our sort of matriarchal lineage, sort of like a Russian doll concept to me that, you know, Delphi was in my mother's body in some way, how the eggs are sort of, you know, this whole sort of like roll down through the generations and I think what travels down is partly generational trauma, you know, the patterns of pain and things that we need to become conscious of and resolve and try to heal so that we're not passing those down. So a lot of, yeah, just kind of pain and trauma came up, actually, if I'm really honest about it and I think a lot of women don't necessarily talk about this rage that can come up um when you have a child but it's partnered

in equal measure with empathy and um huge love and compassion and sort of respect for what our mothers and grandmothers and everything have gone through to to um to sort of i mean in order to survive and grow up into a human being that can be an individual and walk out into the world and do something like i've done have a creative career and be on women's hour you know it's like there's a devotional um there's a devotional consistent love that you need to provide a human so they can even just stand on two feet. And I think that's something we underestimate is that day in, day out devotion and love that our parents have given us. What do you want Delphi to take away from this album when she's older? Gosh, just I suppose it's an album about how much I love her and also sort of a reassurance of her place in the universe. There's some lyrics on the album that say, you're a gift, you're from me, but you're not mine.

You're a gift that I'll come to give away in time and I felt like and on letter to my daughter it's all about her being part of this sort of a spiral an echo of the past an echo of the future this sort of cosmos this intelligence this vast intelligence that you know that sort of holds everything and and the interconnectedness and so I feel that if I'm never if at some point I'm not around that she'd feel some sense of um comfort from my sort of philosophical idea of of what I felt when she came through what I felt to be true and was that she's part of this universe and profound Natasha yeah now throughout your career and your music has featured alter egos and archetypes and on this one it's the mother witch. Tell us

about mother witch, I like the sound of mother witch. Mother witch well she came through in the oracle deck, there's a lot of there's a lot of witches spirits, channelers musicians, artists queens

you know there's all sorts of powerful women in this deck and um and the mother which to me was sort of this overarching matriarchal force that that has encompassed this whole sort of body of work that's come out of this time and um to me i think think she embodies this feminism that is sort of powerful through, just through like holding space and honouring intuition, emotion, cycles, passion and sensitivity and love, really, unconditional love. So she's sort of an the the um an archetype i would say but i i use her as a way to take this very raw intimate workout into the world and perform it how are you feeling about getting back on the road you've described so beautifully

this experience that you've had and how intimate it sounds actually creating this album in that time but now you have to take it to us to the masses we're ready for it your first uk tour for five years starting on the 12th of june uh you're going to be performing at the barbeque on the 24th how are you feeling about it i'm excited i've got two amazing women in the band with me charlotte hatherley and laura groves so charlotte hatherley played guitar for Ash for years and she was in my band before. Yes. And Laura Groves is this incredible musician in her own right. But the trilogy of women, I find that very powerful. We're hitting drums, we're bass, guitar, piano, synth, singing. And I feel like together we're sort of this feminine force. So it's really nice to step on stage with those women flanking me.

And I actually, I made a short film that goes with the album and there's two women in that film as well, that dark dancers that sort of represent the midwives or the sort of the witches or, you know. So I think there's a very powerful thing in the number three. It's the magic number. It's the magic number. But I do feel that it is quite raw intimate material and um and but there's a power in vulnerability and I think being being really raw and vulnerable and open is my power and um

seeing people cry or feel emotions or find a cathartic experience is why I'm, that's my service I'm providing. So, yeah, I'm not frightened. I just feel that it's all about tapping into that authenticity and just being really present with people can be transformative. Oh, you just said I'm not frightened. Is that new? Have you never had fear? I have. I've definitely had fear. I'm nervous. There's a difference, I think, between being nervous and frightened. I think now that I'm 44 and also probably having gone through Covid and childbirth, I'm just like nothing can faze me now.

You know, and I feel this sort of maturation of my work. And I know where I stand and what lane I'm in. And I think that with sort of experience comes power. And yeah, I'm just not quite so insecure anymore. I feel quite grounded in what I do and why I do it. I've got to ask a curveball question. You come from a very prominent squash playing Pakistani family how are your squash skills and has Delphi picked up a racket yet and does she have them in is it innate because there is everybody you're the Khan dynasty you really are from the Khan you are the Khan dynasty of Pakistan like you're like

I'm in I'm in YouTube videos as a at delphi's age um while my my cousin jahangi who is the number one world champion is running down um what do they call it where planes take off you know in the runway in his tracksuit doing the rocky like punching the air thing so it's hysterical started with your grandfather great grandfather how far back is my great grandfather uh but yeah there's photographs black and white old photographs of all the the men in the family um play yeah were you expected to play as a child i know i was i it was all sort of um on the men's side you know mostly sort of um the men of the family but i was allowed to go into um training and uh practices and so i did spend a lot of time on the squash court in Wembley,

where I grew up. Delphi is actually remarkably good at ping pong. The three years old, I throw her in. Nature or nurture? She just gets it every time. I'm like, wow, it skipped a generation. I'm not so great. Simon, I know you talk a lot about

your children and your experienced kids any sort of natural skills that you're spotting in them straight away journalistic skills journalistic definitely more music so i'm interested to speak to natasha about that well you're self-taught aren't you natasha i am i did some lessons as a child but i found it really hard to read music and um my piano teacher quickly recognized that and helped me with improvisation so I was writing from a from maybe nine or ten um very good and it's served you well it's served me well yeah goodness for music um we're getting some really nice messages in from people listening to us this morning about um uh d-day and uh talking to us about their family members so jenny says my late father herbert west served on the mine layer the plover

and was at dunkirk rescuing our men my late mother felma marley nursed with the red cross and neither of them shared their experience until my own sons arrived isn't that interesting my father told us uh silly stories when my asked, did you get injured in the war? He said, yes, I caught my finger in the naffy door once. Now I am proud to say my sons continue this tradition of service and courage as one as an army officer and one as a naval officer. Oh, and I was a nurse for 43 years. We display their wartime photos and medals and honor their contribution to our liberty uh daphne has been in touch to say my father arnold leon bland

was a soldier in the second world war we have photos of him i have photos of his battalion he was badly injured and was in a spinal unit in december 1944 sadly his mother and brother were killed in july 1944 by a V2 bomb that was a direct hit on their family home. The D-Day commemorations are vital to acknowledge and pay respect to all those who fought for our country. I'm going to read another couple out because there's so many beautiful messages and tributes coming in. My uncle was a radio operator in a tank on D-Day. He would never watch a war film of any sort because it glorified war and it was a terrible thing. He had a childhood friend that said to him he would never go in a tank. It was a death trap. He was a paratrooper who died on D-Day. And that's from Colin and one more here

from Adam. Please do keep them coming in. 84844 is the number. Adam says, my mother Rosemary Newman was on a train in England traveling to see my grandfather with my grandmother when it was strapped and bombed several passengers were killed and my grandmother was injured by shrapnel and walked with a cane until her death at 92 my mother's 18th birthday was VE day she told me it was the best birthday present present she had ever received. There we go. Connection of motherhood there. Thank you, Natasha. Stay there. 84844 is the number to text.

Please do keep your memories and stories of D-Day coming through. Now, the mother of a 16-year-old boy who ended his life after becoming the victim of a sextortion gang says the tech giant Meta has taken too long to hand over data which might help the investigation into his death. Murray Dowie from Dunblane was 16 when he died.

Meta say they have handed over the data relating to Murray's case to the relevant authorities, including Police Scotland. In April, the National Crime Agency sent an unprecedented alert to teachers asking them to warn pupils against the dangers of sextortion, a type of blackmail which involves threatening messages that intimate pictures of the victim will be shared. Well, I'm joined by Joe Tidy, the BBC's first cyber correspondent who covers cybersecurity, hacking, AI, crypto and internet culture. Morning, Joe. Morning.

So sextortion, can you talk us through what the term actually means? How does it work? Well, the way that it works is that children, normally boys and young men, are targeted through Instagram or Snapchat, usually, and they'll be messaged by a stranger. They'll be friended by, usually, the pictures of a pretty girl. And over time, they will become friends and they'll send some explicit pictures to the boy and try and coax them into sending some back. And at that point, it's usually the time when the scammers say,

actually, I'm not who you think I am. Pay me some money or I'll send all these pictures around to your network. Now, you covered the story of teenager Jordan DeMay who ended his own life in 2022, six hours after being targeted by a sex-sorting gang. Actually, we can hear from Jordan's mother, Jen, now, who's been campaigning on the issue since her son died. I get messages all the time from parents reaching out, asking what to do because it happened to their child or just reaching out to tell me this did happen to my child. And thank you, because they remembered Jordan's story and they came to me for help.

He was only 17, Jordan, when he ended his life. Who is being targeted in these cases? Is it mostly younger men? Yeah, this type of attack relies on the fear factor. So that, in a sense, means the target's always young boys or young men because, of course, they are perhaps more susceptible to that kind of attack. The idea being that as soon as you threaten them to release all these pictures to their network, they'll be so scared that they will send you money. And Jordan did send some money.

Jordan sent $300, but it wasn't enough. And the scammers actually, if you look at the chats on Instagram, the direct messages, he said, look, I've given you as much money as I can. I haven't got any more. If you release the pictures, I will probably kill myself. And the scammers replied saying, good, do that now or we'll make you do it. So they are very, very callous, these individuals, and they're going after people who are already vulnerable the national crime agencies say that male victims 14 to 18 like a large proportion of the cases 91 percent of the cases are dealt with by the internet watch foundation they say were male victims how much do we know about who's behind this the perpetrators of sextortion well for the last

couple of years a lot of fingers have been pointing in one direction, West Africa, particularly Nigeria, where we know that there's a whole culture of young men who are making money through cybercrime. There's even a term for it, Yahoo Boys, which comes from a wave of crime that was conducted by that region of the world in the early 2000s with the Yahoo email service they used to send out. I don't know if you remember the Nigerian Prince email scams. So that's where this term come from. And they've been involved in various waves of cybercrime in the last 10, 15 years. And this latest one, it seems to be they've embraced the sextortion scams. The reason being because these aren't the type of cyber attacks where you need to be a mastermind criminal hacker. You just have to be very good at knowing how to talk like a young person, knowing how to pretend to be someone else in a different part of the country,

in a different part of the world. And also, some research came out early in January from a cybersecurity company that said that there are already manuals and scripts and tips being shared around the Nigerian networks of Snapchat and Scribd and Instagram and TikTok, telling people how to carry out these attacks. And because of that, a lot of people have said this is where a lot of the attackers are coming from. There are other parts of the world, no doubt, Southeast Asia, for example,

where some of these criminals might be. But Nigeria has a serious problem with sextortion, no doubt. Do we know how widespread it is? We know that there are victims all over the world. We know currently there are cases in the US, Canada, Australia, and of course in Scotland and the UK, where children have killed themselves because of this. It's very hard to get accurate numbers because there's a real shame factor to this. It's a lot of underreporting. But we know that in the US alone, 26,000 cases were reported last year.

That's double the previous year. And we know that there are 27 confirmed people who have killed themselves in the last two years. Now, Roz Dowie, the mother of Murray Dowie, says that Meta have now handed over the data relating to Murray's death. So what kind of data are we talking about and how can it help authorities and how easy is it for people to get hold of the data? The data is everything in a case like this. Without the data, all you have is one side of the conversation or one, you might even be able to get into your son's phone, for example, if there's a password protection, for example. So a lot of these criminal cases go back to Meta and it involves them sending us everything you've got. And the most important bits of data are the IP address, the Internet Protocol, where it tells you where the people are who are sending in the messages and having the conversation.

You can fake that to make it look like you're in a different place. But it seems that in a lot of the cases that are going through the courts right now, that isn't happening. And then it's, of course, it's the chat logs as well. So Instagram, like many social networks, it's not end to end encrypted, which means that Meta, if they want to, if they need to, can read all the messages that you're sending on direct message. So when a request comes in like this, they can supply a lot of the real vital evidence in a criminal case. And I think the issue that we have, it's an issue of scale. Because if you look at the surface area of something like Instagram with hundreds of millions of users, there are many, many criminal requests for data going in all the time from police forces around the world to Meta. And in this case, they've taken a long time to come back with the data for the case.

But I think you have to bear in mind, of course, that they are handling a lot of these cases around the world. The tragic thing, of course, in this situation is that if they'd have caught the people that have done this sooner, they wouldn't have gone on to harm other children. We've got a statement from Meta. A spokesperson told us, our thoughts are with the Dowie family during this difficult time. We fully cooperated with law enforcement in this investigation, including responding to any data requests. What are social media sites like Meta obliged to do in criminal investigations? Well, they have to hand over the data, of course, if they have the data.

Something like WhatsApp doesn't have the data because it's end-to-end encrypted, which means that even WhatsApp can't read the messages. And that's one of the problems with sextortion, is that if the criminals can convince the victims to come off instagram or snapchat onto something like whatsapp or signal or telegram then it makes it a lot harder in fact it makes it impossible there's no chat logs uh so but but if if meta gets a request for data like they have in this instance and with the jordan demay case they have

to hand over in the same way that you have a warrant and you go to a business and say give me that information now parents listening to this understandably might be incredibly worried so what can we do to try and protect children online what can they do well a lot of the advice is being aimed at children themselves because you know it's really hard for parents to be reading what what your child is doing on apps and things so a lot of the the advice is for children to first of all don't accept phone requests from strangers yeah don't engage in those conversations don't let them take you off platform um like i say to other other apps that are harder to trace and then it's also don't pay block the person as soon as this happens and speak this is the hardest part yeah from speaking to Jen, her son Jordan

although he was a really confident, popular, athletic boy, he just couldn't bring himself to speak to his parents about it but the advice is please talk to a trusted adult because they can help you get through this Thank you very much Joe for coming in to talk to us

about that, that's Joe Tidy who is the BBC's first cyber correspondent who covers cybersecurity, hacking, AI, crypto and the internet culture. Thank you, Jo. And importantly, if you've been affected by any of what we've been talking about, you can find information and support links on the Women's Hour website and BBC Action Line. And if you do want to get in touch with us about anything you hear on the programme, feel free to email us via our website. Lots of you still getting in touch. Thank you, Jo, about your stories of D-Day and the Second World War that you've heard within your own family. Another message here saying,

my father, Ronald, was taken prisoner at Dunkirk and was a prisoner of war throughout the war. He became a forger of papers and helped many to escape. He would have honoured those involved in D-Day. Shalini, you're nodding. Yeah, absolutely. I think we sometimes forget about the prisoners of war, actually, and the fact that there were so many prisoners that were taken in absolutely awful conditions. I think it's really important that we remember all of the different types of men and women that contributed during that time. Absolutely. Right. Well, I'm going to bring in my third guest. Very excited to welcome Saima Mir to the Woman's Hour studio, not just because she's a fellow Bradfordian,

but it's quite a major reason. It's also because today marks the publication of your second book. Congratulations. Her first novel, The Khan, was a Times bestseller, a Guardian best crime and thriller book and a Waterstones thriller of the month. It followed Gia Khan, a woman who broke from her family's criminal roots to become a successful lawyer in London. But after her father is murdered, she takes his place at the head of a local organised crime syndicate.

It's been described as a British-Asian version of the Godfather. Saima's new novel, Vengeance, picks up the story of Jia Khan as she navigates how to run her criminal empire. Saima, congratulations. Thank you so much. Give us a bit of an intro to the novel's central character, Jia Khan. So I feel like I sit at the intersection of all of your guests today. Yes, you do.

I write a character who's overlooked because of who she is, because she's a British Asian woman. She's British Pakistani. She's called Jia Khan. So we have that connection. Also, she's quite heavily involved in cybercrime. So I'm like the perfect connection between all of you. So Jia Khan is, as you said, she's a London barrister. She grew up in the north of England. She's second generation. So that comes with all the burdens and privileges that we have and that we share. And when her father is killed and her brother's kidnapped, she ends up back in the north running this criminal empire. Vengeance is the second book. When I wrote The Khan, one of the things I thought when I read it again was, there's a woman at the centre of this, but there aren't

enough women in it. And I really wanted to look at justice from the perspective of women. And as Natasha, as you've said, from motherhood, how much that changes us and how we navigate that. And that is the story of Jihan. Because she's a mother as well. She is a mother. So at the end of the first book, we left her with a small baby. So in this one, she's got a teenage son who she's navigating. And she's also got a young child.

So she's got all the issues of going to sleepless nights, going to meet these like henchmen with her small child, all of that kind of stuff. The ultimate multitasker. It's a key, motherhood, a key part of the novel and the perceptions or assumptions that people have about mothers. Does that echo with your own experience of motherhood? Absolutely. So maternal rage is something I've written about as well, Natasha. And also just being invisible. So when you're British Asian, people overlook you, they don't, you know, they see us through their own lens, don't they? It doesn't matter what we've achieved or what we've done. It's what that lens someone brings

to us. And when you become a mother, what I found was, I was suddenly even more invisible. It was almost as if behind that buggy, I couldn be seen. And my brain had sort of fallen out of my vagina when I'd given birth to this child. And then not only did I have one child, I had three. Well done. Yeah, thank you. And also I was all about smashing the patriarchy and then I had sons. So then I had to rethink the way I was talking about smashing the patriarchy and looking at it from the perspective of boys

to not damage them further so that they don't then go on to do the things that were done to us. How are you doing that? How am I doing that? By being a role model, by looking at patriarchy through the lens of boys. So the fact that they need to be able to be emotionally vulnerable, talk about things. We don't talk about male stereotypes so much in our house. Although, I've got to be honest, that does come out. A lot of the conversations in our house are no fighting and no farting.

With boys, that's hard. And I say that, but I'm also nervous about saying that because is it hard with boys or is it hard with children? And we're in this weird intermediate section, aren't we we of life where we're trying to undo what was done and so I never know if this is genetics nature nurture or if it's environment it's a lot of conversation it's good it's good we're talking about it's the most important thing I think just having discussions at least yeah even if it is partly nature Yeah, we do a lot of talking. Yeah.

There's a lot of, but then my son said to me the other day, I was telling him something and he said, is that about patriarchy again, mummy? And then I had visions of him completely going in the other way. That's his natural inquisitive mind, like his mother's maybe. Yeah. Because you've done your time, 25 years as a local journalist at the great Telegraph Anargus in Bradford. And you talk about, and you were the only Asian woman at the time? I was the only Asian woman in that newsroom when I started.

Yeah. And you know what Bradford's like. It's such a mixed place. Correct, yeah. So when I walked in, there was no one else who looked like me. It was really an interesting place to be and in a way that probably gave you an advantage did it because when you're talking to people covering stories were they more open definitely so absolutely because I'd grown up there yeah and I knew that place and as you've said it was the place where my grandfather taught me to read headlines and I knew the city intimately.

And I could go into places and I could multitask and I could speak languages. I could speak Urdu. I can speak Punjabi. I can speak Hindi. And so people trusted me more. And I got to hear some really, really great stuff, which is kind of where the Khan came from. So I was sent to cover the shooting of a policewoman called Sharon Beshanivsky, which was around the Alhambra.

I know you know the area well. And I was the journalist who was sent out on that story. It was November. It was quite late. It was dark. And I turned up. When you go to one of these stories

that are national, the world's media is there. You get to know them. So you know who works for what paper. You know who works for the BBC. You know who works for the BBC. You know who's at the Daily Mail. And they can tell that you're a local paper just because those are the things we pick up as journalists.

So I saw the Daily Mail reporter following me. And so I looked around. All the shops were closed. And the only place that was open was this place called, I think it was called the Lahore Cafe or Lahore Kitchen. And I walked in and it was full of like really young British Pakistanis really hip, cool

and there was like 70s Amitabh Bachchan on the wall and there was like great tracks playing there was like chai and paratha and school dinner puddings, it was this really weird intermixed thing and I thought I love this I love it.

It's like everything, this melting pot. And the guy had followed me in and I saw the manager behind the counter. And I said to him, I switched languages and I said to him in Urdu, do you speak Urdu? And he said, yes. And I said, well, this guy's followed me in. I don't want him to know what I'm doing,

but what I want is a number for the travel agents across the road. Do you have it? And he said, yeah, I do. I'll give it to you. Five minutes later, he messaged me that number. So I got this great story. I got this insight into something all by using MyHeritage, which was the first time I think I got to do that.

And then it also made me think there's this massive second, third generation underground scene going on that no one's writing about, that no one's talking about we're being maligned and we're being talked about for problematic things but actually it's a really interesting, fantastic place to be. And we're not being reflected in

any art. No. Until you write wonderful people like you write Gia Khan. Actually can we can you read a bit of it i can we would love um give us a dramatic flavor of the book i shall read something from the start of the books let me get page so this is um from the first chapter and i should tell you before i start that zan is gia khan's brother we We met him in the first book and her father in this book. He's passed away.

Seated at the kitchen table, she watched the ghosts of those she loved brush past. Her brother Zan grabbing a slice of toast, her father picking up his keys and offering to drive her to school. What she wouldn't give to head back to those teenage summers of ease and innocence. There were so many things she wished she could speak to them about. Gia looked out of the window at the manicured lawn, the hibernating flower beds, the trees naked without their leaves, standing sentry. Something wasn't right.

She wasn't sure what, but the small hairs on the back of her neck had lifted. Her father's favourite swing chair was missing its cover, she noticed, and there was something in the chair, something bulky, a sight that drained her complexion. There was a man in the chair, and he was facing her. Oh, you can't stop there. I'm ready for the audiobook. I'm ready for the audio book. I'm read out by you. Absolutely.

Gia Khan didn't start life as a woman, though. No, Gia Khan started life as a man. So one of the things is you can't do what you can't see. And I'd never seen a woman written like this in a book. And so I wrote a screenplay of her as a man. And I wrote her as kind of like a Michael Corleone figure because one of the things I really thought about The Godfather was it's just a big family, right?

It's just a big, flat, British-Asian family. Absolutely. Food and trauma, intergenerational trauma, we've touched on that. How much of it do we have? But I couldn't get her to live. I couldn't get her to sing to me and talk to me. And then someone suggested, maybe try to write her as a woman and the minute I did that she just she came alive and I knew her and I knew her really intimately and it just added texture to what

she was doing she's incredibly complicated she's flawed at a time not very likable how much of her would you like to be and how much of you is in her I I think there's probably a lot of me in her yeah which I I think people don't realize because um the when they meet me you know when they meet us we put on not we don't put on a kind of a pretense of who we are but we're different in every room right correct because that's what we have to do as women. Whenever we walk into a room, we navigate it differently. We're doing the mental maths of what's happening. Anita, you make this look really easy.

And I can tell you're extraordinarily intelligent. And I know that. But you come across as- Fooled the world. You know, you come across as really easy to get along with. But obviously, you've got an incredibly sharp intellect. and not everyone realises that when they meet us. And so that was kind of when I wrote her, I wrote her like that. All of the kind of complications that I had to navigate and who I was.

The thing that struck me was people didn't like her. They thought she was really cold. I was like, how can you not like her? Oh, she's absolutely great. I need to talk about where it's set. Some people might call this Northern Noir. Do you like that? Do you know, I don't not like it.

I just want people to read my stories. I just want to read a story, write a story. It feels definitely like it's Bradford's, but you never mentioned Bradford's. Why did you not name the place? So the reason I didn't mention Bradford is when I first wrote the book I couldn't sell it and you know how it is coming from that city yeah people think they know it and they don't know it often people have never set foot in it yes yes they've never set foot in it they don't know it they come with their assumptions about it so I went to an event where Mohsin Hamid was speaking

about his books and he said he never names a place. So I went home, took every reference to the word Bradford out, just took it out. And the story still worked. And then the other thing I did was I'm just tired of that place being maligned. You know, I feel like Bradford is like my mother. I can say what I like, but nobody else can say that about her. She's the city that raised me and made me. And she's so beautiful to me, the architecture, the people, the culture. And I didn't want to add to that because I do write gangland fiction. I do write a crime queen pin.

So I wanted to take that out. And you do it so well. It's out now. It's out today. It's Vengeance. If you haven't read the first book, read that as well. And, you know, just on Bradford, 10th anniversary of the Literature Festival and City of Culture 2025 next year. It's been a joy having all three of you here. I'm going to read out a few more of these messages, if I may, because I think it's really important because so many of you have been getting in touch. My mother was, my mother, we like this, my mother was posted to the Air Ministry and in 1944 helped to prepare the weather forecast for D-Day,

which was crucial because it delayed it by a day, didn't it? Yes. She worked on wind speeds. She had tried to join the Wrens but failed the medical due to being very short-sighted. I've only just discovered that the map of the weather is now displayed in the Meteorological office archive in Exeter. And Sue says, I was intentionally conceived just as my dad was leaving for D-Day.

He didn't want children. He couldn't cope with the terrible things he'd seen happening to children in the countries he'd served in. My mother felt that this time he may not return and eventually convinced him. I was born nine months after D-Day. He carried my photo and newborn mitten in his left hand battle dress pocket until the war ended. And one more, my lovely late dad, Jeff Aaron, was one of seven brothers from Yorkshire who served in the war. We still have the tear-stained letter he received in Burma from his elder sister, informing him that his younger brother Herbert had been killed in

Normandy, aged 19. We will never forget their sacrifice. Do join me tomorrow for more Woman's Hour. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. Do you know Powys? I did a bit of hiking there a few years ago. A village called Bly, it's not on the tourist trail. The Specialist by Matthew Broughton The local GP has died unexpectedly. We need someone to fill the gap while we find a replacement. We brought it on ourselves. Us devils love blind. A new Limelight series for Radio 4.

Help me, Doctor. Why did he choose me for this? Or they'll be deep down in there. There's so many. They're still coming. We don't have the resources. Good luck! Mr. Dartington's a demon! Are you scared? Little girl.

From the award-winning writer of Treks and Broken Colours. They were on to him. Mystery meat. Deranged blood. Bank him. Mystery meet. Deranged blood bank transfers. An investigation. This is dark. Hello? Get out!

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