Woman's Hour - Beige Flags, Prince Andrew, The Waste Land poem

Episode Date: September 21, 2022

We're all aware of red flags, the indicators that a potential partner may exhibit a lack of respect, or interest in your relationship. But a new flag has emerged on dating apps - the beige flag. These are indicators on dating app profiles which suggest a person has nothing of interest to say, and may well be boring. Emma Barnett is joined by Caitlin MacPhail, who coined the phrase, and comedian Helen Thorn.The period of national mourning following the death of the Queen has ended but will continue for the Royal Family. One senior member of the family who has been the subject of many headlines over the past week is Prince Andrew who stepped down as a working royal in 2019 after a Newsnight interview that addressed his relationship with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. He paid a financial settlement to Virginia Giuffre, who had accused him of sexual assault, a claim he denies. Catherine Mayer, author of Charles: The Heart of a King, joins Emma Barnett to discuss what type of monarch King Charles will be and what the future holds for Prince Andrew. Analysis today by the BBC has found more than half of maternity units in England fail consistently to meet safety standards. Birte Harlev-Lam is Executive Director at the Royal College of Midwives and joins Emma. The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot is considered one of the most important poems of the 20th century. To celebrate its centenary Lyndall Gordon, author of Hyacinth Girl, tells Emma Barnett about the women who weave a vital thread through the poem; from Eliot’s first wife Vivienne to his hidden muse Emily Hale. Presenter: Emma Barnett Producer: Emma Pearce

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. As autumn begins its slow advance and the country has a back-to-school feel about it again, how are you? Bored or invigorated? Today we're going to be, amongst amongst other things talking about beige flags in the context of dating. Indicators which infer a person is boring or rather beige. What are beige flags for you? It could be in terms of dating, it could be about some of the friends you choose to keep or choose to avoid. What are no-no's when it comes to subject areas or how someone presents

themselves? One message we already received on this subject on Instagram gives this example. If somebody writes on their dating profile, hobbies include Netflix. What do you know? Perhaps a beige flag's about yourself. Or perhaps, as another one of our listeners has already been in touch to say, you love and crave a bit of beige in your life, especially at the moment. One message says, I think I'd like a beige flag on dating apps. No drama, no games. Beige sounds great. Text me here on 84844 to get involved with this. Text will be charged your standard message rate.

On social media, we're at BBC Women's Hour, or you can email us via the Women's Hour website or WhatsApp with a voice note if you choose. It's lovely to hear your voice. 03700 100 444. Data charges may apply, so you may wish to use Wi-Fi. Now, the Prime Minister is in New York preparing for her first sit-down meeting with the US President Biden and, of course, just having announced some of those energy changes for businesses. Her team are preparing a mini-budget

to be revealed this Friday and reporters and their aides are primed for any beige or red flags in that particular exchange she's preparing for right now, or perhaps as she awakes, I should say, with the US President. Meanwhile, though, it's being reported that with Britain in a cost-of-living crisis, the new king is planning a less expensive and smaller coronation with plans to modernise the monarchy. Who that will and won't include, namely the question of Prince Andrew, is one Catherine Mayer, a biographer of King Charles, has something to say about after his brief return, Prince Andrew's that is, to public life during the period of national mourning. And we will also hear about the women of T.S. Eliot's Wasteland as the centenary of the poem is marked. So a lot coming up in today's programme. about the women of T.S. Eliot's Wasteland as the centenary of the poem is marked.

So a lot coming up in today's programme. But first, analysis by the BBC has found something worth paying attention to. More than half of maternity units in England fail consistently to meet safety standards. More than half. The health regulator, the Care Quality Commission, has rated 7% of maternity units as posing a high risk of avoidable harm and that 48% of them require improvement.

None were given the top rating of outstanding. That would mean a comprehensive safety system in place. Of course, compare that to schools and if that would be acceptable. Let's have a listen, first of all, to a group of pregnant women attending a yoga class in Romford in Essex. Their local hospital requires improvement for safety. I am just preparing for the day for the worst scenario. I have a very detailed birth plan. I didn't feel that going into a hospital that requires improvement

was a safe place for me to be. I need to feel safe. I honestly don't feel scared like at all. I don't think it reflects on the people who are there day in and day out working so hard to try and give us care and for something that is such a huge part of life like it's a massive job and it should be an area that is well looked after. Well to discuss this I'm joined now by Bertie Harlev-Lam who's Executive Director at the Royal College of Midwives and a practising midwife with over 30 years experience. Good morning. Good morning.

So more than half of maternity units in England fail consistently to meet safety standards. Are you surprised by that? Unfortunately, I'm not surprised by that. I'm saddened by it, but I'm not surprised. It's something that we have seen and we have talked about at the Royal College for some time, that we think the government and that there's not enough investment in maternity services. If we look at the data, and I'll come to that investment point and the government's response in just a moment, my colleagues in the health team at the BBC analysed safety ratings for September 2022 for 137 maternity units in England and found that nine were given the lowest possible rating of inadequate for safety, meaning urgent actions required. Sixty-six required improvement to reduce risk to mother and babies and ensure legal requirements on safety are met. 62, we should say, had a good rating for safety. The figures are slightly worse than a

few years ago, despite several attempts to transform maternity care. The Care Quality Commission says the pace of improvement has been disappointing. What would change this picture, in your view? It's always a little bit complex, but I think the key to changing this is around workforce. And we know, of course, as part of the CQC rating that over 180 midwives themselves have come forward to the CQC to whistleblow because they felt that workforce numbers were just not right for them to deliver personalised and safe care. So it sounds simple to say just workforce. It is a little bit more complex than that. The point of having enough workforce isn't just to be able to have enough staff to look after women, which, of course, is important, but it's also having enough staff so that obstetricians and midwives can take time out away from clinical areas to train together, to update together, to review care that they deliver, to make sure that everything they do is up to date and evidence based. And at the moment, what we're seeing is we are just about managing to provide clinical care for all the women that they need. What we don't have is enough

staff to be able to do those extra things that we know are essential for services to be safe. What does that mean though? Because if you're able to provide clinical care, of course, if you're listening to this and you're expecting a baby, or your other half is perhaps, that means you can go in with confidence or not? So yes, I means you can go in with confidence or not? So, yes, I think you can go in with confidence. Maternity services in England are safe. That doesn't take away from those families that have experienced poor outcomes and who have had distressing experiences.

But on the whole, maternity services in England are safe, and we know that from our outcome data compared to other countries, you know, the rest of the Western world. However, we are also aware, and you've already said that we are seeing a downward trend in terms of the number of services which are more challenged than we would like them to be. And I think before we get to a real crisis point, we need the government to step in now. We have asked for many years for investment.

We're 2,000 midwives short, 500 obstetricians short. And we're seeing this downward trend and it needs to stop. We need to step in now and we need to make sure that we buck that trend, that we go the other way, that we start seeing improvements. I don't understand how you can say it's safe now and then say what you've also just said, because it's not about fear mongering. It's about a real picture right now. Those shortages, you know, those numbers, people may even be have heard them so much that they're even aware of them, you know, that they know the numbers by now. And I do have a response from the government. Again, I will get to that.

But how can you say it's safe at the moment? Again, because we have data. So we have outcome data in terms of outcomes from the women that come through the service. 650,000 women give birth in England every year. We also have lots of, in fact, the CQC themselves did a survey of women's experience, which in fact showed that women are having a really good experience with maternity services. But we also do know that what women are telling us and what staff are telling us is that they're really busy. They don't have time to do the little extras. And I think at the moment, services absolutely are safe,

but we have to be watching very closely to make sure that we don't get to a point where actually services are no longer safe. Do you know how far off that point could be? I think we're very close. I think we are at crisis point. We've seen in the last year for the first time a reduction in the number of midwives employed by the NHS that's not something we've seen previously we've always seen an increase so we are absolutely wanting the government to pay attention to people like Donna Ockenden who did the review at Shrewsbury and Telford and very clearly said there was an issue with workforce

previous reports have come out have said there's an issue with not having enough workforce. So we really need to... Is it all workforce though? Because we had her on the programme, we did an entire special after her review that you mentioned of Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital. And she didn't just say it was workforce. She also talked about staff culture playing a part in serious failings in maternity care in that trust. That's also something that people want to be able to talk about honestly without denigrating your colleagues or the work that you do or the efforts that are being made. Absolutely. And culture is key. But it goes back to understanding the complexities of culture and culture, good culture, where we see services that have a really good culture of obstetricians and midwives working well together and working with women. area to train together for example to do their annual updates and make sure that they do that where they can sit and review cases that maybe haven't gone as they would have liked them to

they have time to come away from the clinical area to do that together is your is your but how much do you have to learn to be able to listen to women you absolutely have to listen to women all of the time but that's my point it's thing to say, look at cases where they haven't gone how they should have done, avoidable harm, to use the phrase that is being shared today as part of this report. But some of this, it just comes to the basics, especially when you look at the Ockenden report. What do you say about that?

Absolutely, and the Ockenden report was really clear that women did not feel they were listened to. But when you read on in the report, you also see that staff were not listened to. And actually, so it goes up the line because as a member of staff, if you are not listened to, if you can't escalate the concerns you have about the type of care you're able to deliver, it becomes very difficult to then listen to women. So we have to make sure that we don't, of course we have to listen to women, we also have to listen to staff, and staff are telling us. When you say we though, that's bosses, isn't it? If we talk about accountability, it's one thing to talk about funding in the government,

which we are and we do, and I should say we asked today for a member of the government to join us. We went to the Department of Health. No one was made available. I do have a statement I'll share. But there is also this structure and the way that the NHS is run and if it is prioritising and listening to its patients and in this case, women. So do you think you're being let down as midwives, not just by the government, as you would put it, for underfunding, but by your bosses? I think, yes, I think that is how midwives are feeling, that they feel they are being let down by their bosses,

as well as being let down by government. And absolutely, you are right, half maternity services are challenged and have got CQC ratings which show they need improvement. I mean, we wouldn't accept these ratings for schools, would we? No, we wouldn't. We would want to see improvement there. But when we look at those services that have got good ratings, what we see there is that staff are listened to. Staff actually are able to talk to their superiors.

Women feel listened to. And actually, there is enough staff in those services to be able to change that culture so that we don't just work together in a clinical area. We work together to learn lessons. I think I think I think, though, that's where the slight challenge would come is if more staff always means better culture you can still get individuals members of staff no matter how many there are around them that are just not listening and that's that's that's part of it that's part of the problem and whether that's being addressed adequately again we tried this morning to get bosses of nhs trusts on it's incredibly hard to try and hold people to account in this system when you can't get them to the microphone? It is. And of course, you know, there will be individuals who, regardless of how many staff you have, your right behaviours will not be appropriate. I think, though, if you look at the CQC rating showing how many services are challenged, if it was one or two services, I would say yes, that's probably one

organisation with poor bosses, with maybe poor behaviours in some clinicians. But when you're looking at so many services, it's got to be a system issue. You can't have that many services where staff behaviour is so poor. It's much more than individuals. A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson did give us this statement saying, we want the NHS to be the best place in the world to give birth, have recently invested £127 million to grow the NHS maternity workforce and improve neonatal care. This is on top of £95 million to recruit 1,200 more midwives and 100 more consultant obstetricians. How many did you say that we were lacking in obstetricians?

500. 500, so 100 more, to ensure we have the staff in place to deliver high quality care. We're also working closely with the NHS to equip leaders of maternity services with the skills and knowledge to address poor workplace culture and ensure strong leadership backed by a £500,000 fund. Well, we have invited the new Health Secretary. She could be forgiven for not remembering who that is. There have been lots of change lately at the top of government.

That's Therese Coffey onto the programme. We hope to have her soon. There's a number of issues to go over with, but we do also hope, as I said, to have some of the bosses of the NHS on as well because of how these individual trusts are run and the culture that you talk about. Just to ask one more for you,

if I may, about the faith you have in change coming. There is a new women's health strategy launched by the government. The former presidents of the Royal College of Obstetricians, Dame Lesley Regan, is in charge of that. And we've learned this morning

that contrary to what was going on last week, a women's minister has been appointed. It is a woman, albeit she won't sit in the cabinet as before. Do you have faith in change from this government now headed by Liz Truss? I do have faith. I think we have,

we've got a government who hopefully now will sit up and listen, listen to both what they have looked at themselves in terms of the health security. But also, I think what the CQC has come out and said, what women are saying and what we at the Royal College, not just the Royal College of Midwives, but the Royal College of Obstetricians as well, have said. So, yes, I have faith. I think there are lots of solutions that we have put forward and we hope they will listen to those and that we will see improvement. Bertie, thank you very much. Bertie Harlow-Lam, Executive Director at the Royal College of Midwives and a practicing midwife with over 30 years experience. If you, of course, are affected by this or planning at the moment perhaps to go into hospital and have been thinking about this slightly differently, but also you've heard there about the safety message that it is safe to give birth.

You've got to get that balance. Do get in touch with the programme and let us know anything you want to say on this. You have already been getting in touch about beige flags. What are those warning signs that someone is boring? We're going to talk a bit about it now in terms of dating, but you may also find it in your wider life. And I'm very much in the market for hearing what your beige flags are. And perhaps those people you never see again because of an exchange that you've had and you just couldn't quite hack how boring it was.

Others of you getting in touch this morning talking about how much you love a bit of beige. Well, Caitlin Macphail is credited with coining the term beige flags on TikTok, with her followers promoting her to the chief executive of the beige flag. And in a moment, I'll talk to the writer and comedian Helen Thorne, who as a woman in her 40s has many experience, it seems, of the beige flag, certainly in the dating world. But Caitlin, good morning. Hi. Tell us about beige flags in terms of dating,

what you listed as some of them on apps that you could see as trends. It was just, a lot of it is just stuff that comes up all the time when you're swiping through whichever app that you're on and youasm looking for someone with a strong flirt to roast ratio references to like really mainstream sitcoms um it's all just like very generic i found and pictures with puppies yeah so like using puppies as your personality okay there were some great lines in that i feel i feel like you you're a veteran are you how long have you been on dating apps too long um yeah on and off for the last probably seven years i got back on maybe like a year ago after a hiatus and was just like oh it's exactly the same as when i left and this this video of you explaining what some of these beige

flags are i mean really they're the trends you spotted across these apps. Ran true with a lot of people. It's safe to say it's, I mean, I don't know how many views it's at now, but it's gone viral. You've been appointed, as I say, the CEO of the beige flag. But why did you feel like you wanted to share this? There was like a trend a little while ago of like people sharing what their red flags were on dating apps and I just feel like red flags have kind of been done to death now like we all can really like identify them pretty quickly there's been a lot of discourse about it but I

was like no one is talking about like or calling out everyone for using the same prompt answers or like the same boring photos that don't really say anything about you uh I'd already been kind of whinging about it to my friends before this and then had kind of come up with the term beige flags because like it's red flags but just boring like and yeah it just made me nuts let me bring in Helen I know Caitlin you're in Australia but we've got some of the nods coming here in the UK studio from Helen. Can you relate? Oh, absolutely.

There is no originality on the dating apps anymore. Everything is like looking for my partner in crime and all these sort of things. And the pineapple and pizza thing drives me insane. And also sometimes... People having an opinion. Yeah, they're just like, yeah, change my mind about pineapple on pizza. I love pineapple on pizza.

So do I. I'm not changing your mind about that. Grow up. And what I find is that there's no effort. There's like, I'm here, aren't I? I'm a bloke. You know, here I am with a penis. Take me.

And I just think that the effort is so little. And it might be that there is this culture of it. It's very much deliveroo dating. When we're're talking about this are you talking about how men present themselves yeah absolutely do you think women are more dynamic oh absolutely when i've had dates especially with some kind of forward-thinking younger men i'm like can i have a look what it's like to be on the other side and women put in lovely clothes they've made an effort they show a variety of photos but most of the men you know it's when they've like a photo of them at the football stadium holding a beer. I'm like, who are you trying to attract here? Are you trying to get a buddy? Or do you want to have an exciting

date with a woman? And what I find is what you were saying about puppies versus personality. When people say my interests are cycling, I said, no, that's a mode of transport. That's not an interest. And just like five photos of them in Lycra bibs, I'm like, goodbye, Gary. Yeah, so it's just so underwhelming, the level of effort on these dating apps. And I mean, you know, it is Fifty Shades of Beige. Maybe that's the book you should write, Caitlin. But yeah, it's so, so exhausting. And also then the chat.

So the first, your shop window, of course, is your photos. And then there's the chat and the descriptions. And it takes a lot of effort just to sort of find. I did a sort of a survey last night. About 100, about one in 100, you go, yeah, he might be interesting. Is this just a failure of marketing, though? Because that's what apps are. They are having to put yourself in a shop window.

Caitlin, to come back to you, you know, for instance, there's a message here. Absolutely nothing wrong with being or being perceived as boring. Calling people boring, it sounds too much like you're at school to you two here. Everyone is interesting if you take the time to get to know them. I'm not entirely sure that's true. It's not nice to call people boring, especially people you barely know. Is it that people are just bad at marketing themselves, which is what you've got to be able to do in this? Because one of the other beige flags that came up from one of our listeners was, I think this is about, well, there's two.

When men talk about their height in their biog and also if they talk about liking drinking Stella, other beer brands are available. But maybe you're just bad at selling yourself, Caitlin. Yeah, I definitely think in a lot of cases that is actually what's going on uh and also i think it's also a bit embarrassing to just like fully put yourself out there online these days like to people you essentially don't know uh so you just end up with a lot of people kind of playing it really safe and like also playing to like the biggest target market but they're not necessarily like you're not going to attract people that are actually compatible with you by doing that you're just trying to attract like a quantity of matches because it's all generic things that like so many people like so like if you refer to friends like so many people watch friends the tv show whereas you know like you're

just so much more likely to find someone that's a bit more of a match for you if you're putting what you're actually like out there. But I think, yeah, it's just a marketing skill is what I usually see it as. And I will say I have not just seen it in men because I review profiles now. Your new line. All over, yeah. And no one is safe. No gender, age, sexuality is safe. There will be some women who will also,

I mean, some of what you're saying, it's trying to get away from the generic and there will be women who also go for the generic in there. But for you now, Helen, at this particular stage you are with dating, you're not looking for what you were looking for necessarily when you were younger as well. Yeah, absolutely. I'm a woman in my 40s. I own my own house. I've got my own children. I'm successful. I've had excellent friends. And you have to be exceptional if you're going to

take my time away from all those other people. And I don't have time. I have two nights a week where I've got a free night where I'm not looking after my kids, I'm not going to spend time getting to know somebody or hoping that they get more interesting. I used to have a two gin and tonic rule that if they got any more interesting after two gin and tonics, then it was probably worth my while. But most of the time, no. And I think it's good to know who you are. And I must admit, when I started out, I was really vulnerable. I'd come out of a tricky divorce and I was like, oh my God, likes me oh wow uh he was nice to me and and now I've realized that's just not enough no you want some game profile amazing are there anything you know can you give us an insight what does it say what about what do I say yeah how are you not

beige on this because you don't come across beige in the way that we're talking about how do you sell yourself no I I I'm kind of playful I talk about being silly you know I like you know um I like dancing in the kitchen I like eating pizza in bed you know I don't care if people fart like I mean I I just want to be that's on your profile you don't care if people no that'll be in the chat I don't I don't okay I'm trying to help her if people are listening thinking I need to de-beige yeah I think I think I think you know, I'm a big fan of being silly, you know, make me a good carbonara, you know, like, you know, I don't know, I think you just have to say who you are.

I'm great at parties, I bring the party, things like that, and I'm confident and I will not accept any Tories. I might be suspicious if someone says I bring the party. Can I just say that? But anyway, Caitlin, it's about how you sell yourself. We've got a message here saying we have a male friend who loves that all the female dating photos are the same. Jumping up with your arms in the air. Does that sound familiar? Change the photo, share it with millions. What do you make of that? Is that a trend? Women jumping around looking happy there's definitely a lot of like selfies and like just before you go out with your friends kind of thing I don't know I'm in my 20s so it might be a little bit different depending on age but like it's really a lot of just like for women and men just very selfies going like with your friends before you go out or like with your dog there's a lot of like those

kind of ones uh and I usually go on no no go on I usually yeah I usually um the advice I give to people is to try and like keep your photos a really good mix of like all the different aspects of your life like try and tell a visual story of what you're about through your photos it may require a little bit more effort than a lot of people are currently willing to put in, but I think it pays off by giving off a better idea visually of what you're like. Caitlin, well, you've got this new line. Good luck with it. I think it's going to be incredibly lucrative at some point. Caitlin McPhail, thank you very much for that. Helen, I've got a couple of messages I really wanted to read to you before our conversation on this. It's not over because I feel it's going to carry on, but there's two here.

One on Twitter says, yes, beige is fine when shopping, perhaps at John Lewis. Again, other stores available. But dating should be like entering an exotic bazaar with all kinds of shiny and fascinating trinkets. And another one. Oh, Lordy, where do you start? Men, I find, are useless on dating apps. Men holding big fish, big flipping deal. Men who write, ask me anything in their biog, flipping lazy.

Men who look like they should be on Crimewatch, they're the ones who want a supermodel girlfriend and so many more. Best wishes, Lynn. Excellent. Absolutely. She absolutely nails it. One guy once said, what was it? I want an older woman who's rich with a heart condition. I mean, yeah, swoon. Thanks, Casanova. So yeah, I think, yeah, up your game, lads. That would be my message to the men out there on Dating Games. Contrary to you, Helen does quite like it when cycling is involved

because it's an interest and they're not sat around playing computer games and hopefully fit and not overweight. Important to me. Thank you very much. Are you dating tonight? Have you got one of the two nights sorted? No, tomorrow night. Tomorrow night? Yeah, yeah. They look good? Yeah, they're all right.

Yeah, I hope so. Yeah, he's a young chap. He should have stamina. Good luck, Helen. Thanks. I hope it goes well. Helen Thorne there, giving us some of her no-no's

when it comes to beige flags and many messages coming in, letting us know yours. Do keep them coming on 84844. Now, we read this morning that the King is reportedly planning a less expensive coronation ceremony than his mother's and a slimmed-down working monarchy as an acknowledgement of Britain's cost-of-living crisis. It's according to sources briefing some of the royal journalists today.

Prince Andrew is one of those who is not expected to resume royal duties under the new king. The Duke of York, as he's also known, stepped down as a working royal in 2019 after a Newsnight interview that addressed his relationship with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In January, he was stripped of his military patronages and the use of the HRH title, and in March, he paid a financial settlement

to Virginia Dufresne, who had accused him of sexual assault, a claim he denies. The Duke has largely been absent from public view in recent years, but following his return during the period of national mourning, lawyers representing victims of the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and friend of the Duke's said it was beyond shameful to see Prince Andrew at the centre of proceedings. The Queen was said to be a big support to her son with the Prince believing a comeback may have been possible. That's according to reports in the Telegraph

newspaper but what approach is the new King likely to take on this matter? Joining me now Catherine Mayer the author of Charles the Heart of a King which came out in paperback last month and I should also say because we'll talk about those broader issues around some of those lawyers. Catherine is also the co-founder and was the co-founder of the Women's Equality Party. Good morning. Good morning. If we begin with the slimmed down monarchy, which is on some of the front pages this morning, and also what some had been saying about the sight of Prince Andrew, of course, a grieving son at the same time, the sight of him as part of the national mourning and the processions that we've seen over the last few days. What role could there be for him under the new king?

No role. There should be absolutely zero role for him. The idea of the slimmed down monarchy is old news, in fact, but it's acquired a new urgency. So I actually wrote about the plans, Charles's plans for a slimmed down monarchy back in 2015. And this is something that, you know, the monarchy only survives by adapting and mirroring people's expectations of it. And it was always going to be something that required change that required slimming down if it is to survive. And I, unlike many commentators over the past week would question that altogether. And one of the reasons for that was in fact seeing Andrew in those ceremonies, seeing his prominent role. It was very painful for victims, but it also underlined the institutional problem that the monarchy had had in dealing with the Andrew problem, which was hardly a new problem.

There was always a question of finding something for him to do. Royals typically can't do paid jobs because that seemed to come into conflict with the royal role. So they go into the military. And then after they come out of the military, what do you do with them? There's only so much ribbon cutting, only so many patronages, only so much that looks meaningful. And if the monarchy looks bloated, that's never going to be popular. But that is then particularly difficult at a time, as you say, of a cost of living crisis. But you add to that then the scandals and also the fracturing of the family in the past years. And the issue around Andrew, it's not just that Andrew associated with Jeffrey Epstein and with

Ghislaine Maxwell. It's that the institution of monarchy gave him cover to continue to perform his royal role well after those scandals were known. And so there's this sense of impunity, a kind of culture of impunity that doesn't go down well. Yes, I mean, we talked about the fact he paid a settlement to Virginia Dufresne, ending in that civil case against him early this year. He also said he never intended to malign Ms. Dufresne's character. He's always denied allegations that he sexually abused her. And he also said he recognised that she had suffered both as an established victim of abuse and as a result of unfair public attacks. And the Duke also pledged to demonstrate his regret for association with the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Are those things, I mean, have they happened? Are those things in place to try to come back to life, public life? Or do you think that that's completely done?

And when we reflect, as it now seems to be more people perhaps feel they can, some of the discomfort there was in seeing him again, despite those statements and those clarifications. Do you think that there is there's anything to be to be learned from that or how it will be under Charles? I think if there had been any genuine contrition on Andrew's part he would have expressed it in his famous car crash interview with Emily Maitlis where she even gave him a last chance is there anything he hadn't said and he didn't express that but I think also there is this this point that there are already too many working royals but among the ranks of adult royals who connected with royal fold would hardly help any of that. So you have to look at what royalty actually does and what Charles hopes to do with his reign in order to see this clearly. The promotion of Beatrice to councillor of state, Andrew's daughter, may have been a kind of sop to some of the moves that are coming.

But Andrew had in fact been suggesting that Beatrice and his other daughter, Eugenie, could in some way fill this gap for working royals. And that's really quite a funny idea because they seem like very pleasant women, but they do not have the kind of popular appeal that Harry and Meghan have. And so you're really looking at who there is. The eldest of the children of of of uh William and Catherine is George is nine so there is there's quite a big demographic gap there yes and I mean of course the the role of the queen consort we know we don't have a queen anymore but is is a hugely important role um in terms of women and how prince, King Charles, excuse me, will be defined in his reign and what he will show that he cares about. One of the things that's been interesting

about the past week is, of course, it was a week that introduced Charles as king to people, even though they knew him as prince. It introduced Camilla in this new role of queen consort, which of course is a silent role. And Charles himself is saying he's going to be more silent, but both of them have been activists. That's much better known about Charles than it is about Camilla. But I've had a lot of dealings with Camilla, not as, I mean, as a royal biographer, but also through feminism. One of the things that's really not very well known about her is that she engages with the much or has engaged with the much grittier areas of feminism. So she is a president of the WOW Foundation.

She has spoken... The women of of the world in case people don't know. Yeah. And has spoken out on things such as female genital mutilation and on violence against women and girls. In September sorry October 2021 I heard her give

really the grittiest speech I've ever heard a royal make which was to the launch of an affiliated festival to WOW, the Shameless Festival, where she talked, it was in the wake of Sarah Everard's murder, and she talked about women being raped and murdered, and she talked about this as a problem of structural violence. This is not something you expect to hear people in the

monarchy articulating. It was very welcome. But I also remember standing there thinking about, you know, it was during the Epstein scandal, and thinking also, you know, it's one of the weird contradictions of the monarchy is that for many people, it irretrievably stands for inequality. And yet both Charles and Camilla in their own way, have worked for equality. For many people, that can never be meaningful. But nevertheless, they have this body of work behind them. So it's an interesting contradiction there. Well, coming away from your role as a royal biographer, you also shed light during this period of mourning. We've been going through, of course, it's been national now,

it moves to the private stage with the royal family. You've pointed the attention to the National Covid Memorial Wall, which is in London, on the route, which did make up the famous queue to see the Queen lying in state. It's a wall of hearts, if people don't know it, representing those who lost their lives to Covid. Why did you want to talk about this specifically? The funny thing is I didn't mean to talk about it.

I was on television commentating over live footage coming in and I was punched in the solar plexus because I had not known that the queue would be starting at the memorial wall. And my husband, Andy, was one of the first people to die of COVID in this country, and his heart is on that memorial wall. And what I saw from the live footage was that the cameras were facing not towards the wall, not taking in the 220,000 hearts on the wall, each one inscribed with somebody lost to COVID, but they were pointing away towards Westminster,

which felt that wall is sacred to the COVID bereaved. And many of the COVID bereaved have felt where the Queen did such a good job of articulating our grief and acknowledging our grief and our loss in a way that government certainly never did, felt erased during the memorials, the memorialisation, the celebrations for the Queen in ways that shouldn't have happened. Because the thing about public grief is public grief was for the Queen. A lot of us felt very sad. I mean, I knew her, but lots of people who didn't know her felt very sad about it. But it also reflects and amplifies your own loss and your own loss feeds back into it. And the COVID bereaved are always overlooked. And, you know,

people are always telling us it's time it's time to move on uh i think that's a decision for the grieving don't you what would you say because i know you've looked at grief you've written a book about that as well what would you say needs to happen that hasn't happened there i'm not trying to dictate but you know what what could be done well the covid wall was a was a perfect example of this in the sense that, I mean, I had a wonderful gold bracelet that gave me access to all of these areas during the week of mourning for the Queen. But the Covid bereaved were themselves being turned away by guards. When I did use my press access to go down there I discovered that um are you talking about during the queue time to during the wall okay yeah and I discovered that press were actually leaning their

equipment against the wall leaning themselves against the wall and when I said to them they should be turning their cameras towards the wall they said but this is nothing to do with the queen and that's my point is if you have a period of national mourning, yes, it was for the Queen. But the Queen's death came in this period of huge national loss. Not just the COVID bereaved, but you know, all the turbulences that there have been, this has not been an easy news cycle. And people lose people close to them every single day. There were funerals cancelled because of the Queen's death. So all of that, it is a function of public mourning to take those things in and acknowledge them and embrace those people grieving, not to lean against their wall as if it's not there.

Catherine Mayer, thank you very much for talking to us about a range of issues then. I'm sure some of you will be getting in touch to relate to that. Catherine Mayer. Now, the MP for Leicester East has said that violence seen over the weekend in her constituency could spread to other areas of the UK.

According to Leicestershire Police, 27 people were arrested and 25 police officers injured as large groups of men protested through the city, leading to women reporting feeling unsafe. It's understood that protests and violence broke out over religious tension between Hindu and Muslim communities. The Times is reporting today that the violence was caused in part by false claims of an attempted kidnap of a teenage girl on social media.

Let's speak now to the BBC's Monica Plaha, who's here to put women in the picture. Monica, good morning. Good morning, Emma. This story about false claims of an attempted... Hello. So, yeah, in terms of... Go for it. Yeah, of course. So just to give you a bit of an overview of how it all happened so these tensions reportedly kicked off on the 28th of august and it was after a cricket match between

india and pakistan the match was played in the uae but as usual in leicester cricket celebrations they always take place in the belgrave area of the city. But there were clashes and tensions flared between some Hindu groups and some Muslim men in Leicester. And to celebrate India's victory, some members of the Hindu community gathered on Belgrave Road. But tensions built up and Indian nationalist and anti-Pakistan slogans were allegedly being chanted, leading to escalation on both sides on social media. This is a massive escalation on social media with disinformation and fake news being shared. And then came the disorder in the city over the weekend on Saturday, where a large-scale disorder broke out

and people were calling for calm. But on both sides of the picture here, you have people alleging this happened and also that happened, leading to a massive row on this happened and also that's happened leading to a massive row on social media and also unrest what have you heard from women in the city yeah of course so i went i studied in leicester um i've been there for five years i live in i've lived in leicester have family and friends in leicester and just in terms of the women there so although the

protest is happening mostly amongst men a lot of women have reached out to me in terms of how it's impacting them um so I spoke to someone called Asha she's from the Muslim community in Leicester she has two young children and says her daily habits have essentially had to change for the past week or so she told me she was scared to leave her house, even to go to the supermarket in case that violence erupts. And she's fearful for herself, her mum, her grandma and her children. And South Asian families, they tend to have these intergenerational households. And it's not just one woman she says that she needs to look after, it's a group of them.

Nisha, she's a young Hindu university student. She came back from an evening out on Saturday after the protest took place. She got off the train station, saw groups of men with covered faces heading into the station. And she said to me, she goes, will young women now be used as targets in this tension? Because she did not feel safe walking in the dark at all. And it's freshers week from next week. And she says, unless tensions calm down, she doesn't feel safe going on a night out and then you've got that's the younger um community but we've also got the elderly population in leicester as well and that there are fears that places of worship will be targeted with the elderly

stuck inside these buildings there's a lot of south asian women elderly women in leicester who rely on these places of worship during the day. It's where they gather, they talk to one another, they pay their respects to religious leaders, gods, but this week it's all changed. And when it comes to how they view these tensions, women are angry. Young women, they're angry at how this is being escalated on social media. The university student Nisha is angry that she's made not to feel safe in her city. the elderly generation as I've noticed they tend to not want to get involved they take a step back and they aren't really talking about this issue they're almost just conforming to what they're being told. I mean do the women have any role in stopping this? Essentially this is in these attentions that are taking place on social media.

And predominantly, these groups on social media are between men. Posts are being shared on social media amongst men. And there's also big WhatsApp groups with hundreds of people. And it's predominantly men. In terms of the women involvement, it's quite minimal. And we've seen in terms of the protests that we're seeing on social media and also some of my colleagues on the ground, it is men. And whilst women, they're telling me how they're feeling,

they're just not really getting involved. One woman messaged me late last night and she just texted me saying, I'm terrified with what I'm seeing on social media and that fear that it could spread from Birmingham and from you know Leicester to Birmingham to various places in in London as well and I think just in terms of social media so it's just played a huge role in escalating this religious hatred and there's fake news and disinformation being very quickly spread and that's particularly amongst the youth people they're getting triggered by posts being spread and it's causing them to get angry and upset and they're getting riled up for action and these

posts they're very quickly going viral and getting attention one religious leader in Leicester said that young people and it tends to be young, predominantly men, they're making up stories. They're almost posting it for clout on social media for those more likes and follows. Monica Plaha, thank you very much. The BBC's Monica Plaha there with the latest and the role and certainly what she's been hearing from some of the women who've been in touch with her in Leicester. Now, The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot is considered one of the most important poems of the 20th century. The poem is about brokenness and loss and reveals Eliot's horror at post-war civilisation after World War I. But within the 434 lines, it is the women who stand out.

Maybe you hadn't thought about this before, but let's bring to your attention a rootless German princess, a neurotic high society lady, a vulgar fortune teller, a bored typist, three violated daughters of the Thames. We'll try and understand what that means in a moment to name but a few, but all of whom have unfulfilling lives. The relationships lack intimacy and deeper meaning. Elliot drew from his own personal experiences to write the poem and as the poem celebrates its centenary I'm joined by Lyndall Gordon, author of Hyacinth Girl, a biography of T.S. Eliot's hidden muse Emily Hale. Lyndall, good morning. Good morning. At the women of the wasteland, mostly having a terrible time it seems but could you tell us a bit about some of them? Yes. Well, most of them are degraded in some way or another, degraded by monotonous lives like

Marie Marie, the high society woman who reads much of the night and goes south in the winter. There's just a monotonous life there that is an unlived life. There is the typist, as you mentioned, in part three of the poem, who receives visits from a pimply clerk, who in the manuscript pauses to urinate and spit after they've had sex. And you can't call it lovemaking. It's just a kind of coupling. And the typist simply accepts the abuse. She puts a record on the gramophone and thinks to herself, well, I'm glad it's over. And then there are the equally degraded Thames daughters.

These are London women who accept the overtures of the heirs of city directors who are simply using them. And the awful thing about that scene is that they expect nothing. They think about their parents as humble people who are not going to protest. Why should we think about the women of the wasteland? I mean, maybe you're listening to this, you've never read it, you haven't engaged with it. But what lens does it offer? What learning does it give? Well, the women represent the face of a fallen world, of a degraded society. It is a post-war poem.

Millions of young men have lost their lives. But the poem seems to suggest that most of us are leading routine, uninspired lives. But my view of The Wasteland is that it has to be read for its non-Wasteland moments. And the most riveting of these is about a memory and desire. That phrase opens the poem. a hyacinth girl, a remembered love, which has given the speak of the wasteland the most elevated feelings that almost push beyond love of the object into a kind of flashing glimpse of light. And the source of that was a real woman, as was Marie, the high society woman. Eliot often used real people, real memories. And Emily Hale was the love of Eliot's life until very late in his life when he had a second marriage. Yes, although we didn't know that for quite some time until it was revealed. But your point to me, you read the way to the not for the

bits that are, the really difficult bits about loss and a fallen world. I don't know if that's how people would think to come to it. Quite counterintuitive. Well, I think the way Eliot's poetry works is there's often a transcendent moment, what he calls in his correspondence with Emily Hale, he wrote her over a thousand letters, he calls it a flash. And it's a transcendent moment. And then the problem is it's evanescent. He would like to move through that transcendent moment towards what we might call divine love. This is a man who had a momentous conversion in the middle of his career

and became a religious poet, and that's always coming on. And Emily Hale, the model for the Heisend girl, is crucial to him. He's almost obsessed with her, fixated on her in their correspondence, where he remembers their past together because she was the medium the conduit for such moments of elevation the problem is that and he registers this in his poetry the moment passes and then life looks dull and empty and you feel the people who feel the waste of the wasteland um are not the commuters who are are jostling their way across london bridge um at the on the dead sound of the stroke of nine to be at work um they're not the workaday crowd that the people who feel the people

who feel the wasteland are those who feel the come down from moments that could escape the wasteland. And Eliot was all his life looking to such moments. And I think one of the problems for him was that he wasn't a natural visionary. If we think of someone like Emily Bronte, she was a true visionary or the American poet Emily Dickinson. Eliot was not greatly gifted as a visionary and so it pained him greatly that these sort of glimpses of immortality, of timelessness, just slipped away. I haven't read it

and I'm now feeling that in some ways I should and in some ways I shouldn't. Well, no, I think that one reads it for the sense of the extremes in this poem. It plunges you into what you don't normally experience, which is the heights of bliss, of transcendent bliss, as with the hyacinth girl. And then the counter to that is the horror the horror you mentioned the horror the original epigraph of the poem which really mattered to Elliot was the horror the horror which he took from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and he was upset when Ezra Pound cut

that epigraph is it I mean I'm just thinking about the fact it was also, is that right? It was edited by his first wife, Vivienne, by a woman in part? In part by Vivienne, who was really, although they were unhappily married, she was part of Eliot's poetry workshop. And she's a very significant figure in his life because she saw, before anyone else, apart from his friend Ezra Pound, another poet, Vivienne Haywood saw Eliot's genius immediately and she defended him to his family, saying he's going to be a great poet. I don't know if you heard the beginning of the programme,

we were talking about beige flags and how people date today and the way you've described love and in the time of the way Elliot was trying to think about it, it's extremely different to some of the messages we're getting in and how people think about these things today. I mean, it's something I suppose to say about the women feeling the loss and the way that we can come to it through that. And I'll think about that as I'm going to try it. I'm going to use this as my opportunity for homework. I think it's important

to be honest about these things. But fascinating to hear some of those stories, perhaps if you are familiar with it, that maybe you didn't know. Lyndall Gordon, author of Hyacinth Girl, which is a biography of T.S. Eliot's hidden muse, Emily Hale. But I should say there's a BBC Two documentary out coming up next month, the 20th of October, called T.S. Eliot, Into the Wasteland. And from Eliot's prose to yours, a message here going back to beige flags and what has been used to describe what you do and don't like when dating.

My partner's profile picture, talking about dating apps, was of him stood behind an ironing board, ironing his shirt. I thought that showed wisdom. And I was right. We had lots of interests in common. And we're still together 20 years later, exploring the world together now, 73 and 74. Henry's written in to say, it's not just men with these beige flags.

I used to be on a countryside theme dating app and lost count of the number of women who posted more pictures of their horse than of themselves. I was there to find a girlfriend, not a horse. It was a real turn off. Another one here, Caitlin says, what you find boring is subjective. Putting pressure on people to be a certain way to fit what you think is exciting as is unhelpful and mean. Also, she seems to quite like cyclists, it seems. A bit of that's asterisked out. As a London online dating veteran, thankfully now off it, beige flags 100% go both ways.

I cannot remember the amount of times I have seen I hate coriander. Or I'll fall for you if you trip me up. All pictures in front of pink neon sights. This is Stuart in Wimbledon. A lot of our male listeners mounting a fight back, it seems here. Thank you very much for your messages

and contributions and thoughts as ever this morning and for your company. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Thank you so much for your time. Join us again for the next one. I'm Sarah Treleaven, 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.