Woman's Hour - Footballer Steph Houghton, Susie Wiles, Actor Kate Phillips, Writer Ece Temelkuran

Episode Date: November 8, 2024

Former England and Manchester City captain Steph Houghton was one of the first big names in women's football. In her new book, Leading From The Back, she details her experience of fighting to take the women's game from niche to mainstream. She also talks to Kylie Pentelow about her husband, former footballer Stephen Darby, who was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease in 2018.In one of his first moves since his victory in the US election, President-elect Donald Trump has named his 2024 campaign manager, Susie Wiles, as his chief of staff in the White House. She will make history as the first woman to hold the title. But what do we know about the woman Trump referred to as the "ice maiden"? Kylie is joined by Anne McElvoy, Executive Editor at POLITICO and host of the Power Play podcast to discuss.Award-winning Turkish writer and political thinker Ece Temelkuran speaks to Anita Rani about a new play based on her novel, Women Who Blow on Knots. It's set against the backdrop of the Arab Spring in 2012, and four women embark on a road trip starting from Tunisia through Libya and Egypt to Lebanon, and is currently at the Arcola Theatre in East London.This Sunday, Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light starts on BBC One. The much anticipated second series of the TV adaption of Hilary Mantel’s novels starts when Anne Boleyn is executed, and Henry VIII marries his third queen, Jane Seymour. Jane is played by Peaky Blinders actress Kate Phillips – she joins Kylie to talk more about the iconic role.

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.

Hello, this is Kylie Pentelow and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello and welcome to Woman's Hour. Today she is credited with changing the course of professional football for women, taking it from something that for most could only be a hobby because the pay was so terrible to an actual career. I'll be speaking to former England and Manchester City player Steph Horton about the changes that she's made on and off the pitch, the pain of not getting picked and exactly how she fought for better pay. Something that she didn't find easy. So we want to hear from you on this.

Have you had to have those difficult conversations about money at work? How did you handle it and how did it make you feel? Maybe you have tips for others who may want to ask for a pay rise but don't know how. Well, get in touch with us. You can text the programme. The number is 84844. On social media, we're at BBC Woman's Hour or you can send a WhatsApp message or voice note

using the number 03700 100 444. Also coming up, Wolf Hall is back on our screens this weekend. We speak to the actor who plays one of Henry VIII's six wives. Kate Phillips plays Jane Seymour. We'll be finding out what it was like coming back to the role after almost a decade and what it's like being one of the divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survive. Remember that from our school days? But first, in one of his first moves since his victory in the US election, President-elect Donald Trump has named his 2024 campaign manager, Susie Wiles, as his chief of staff in the White House.

Now, she will make history, as you've probably just been hearing in the news, as the first woman to hold the title. in the White House. Now, she will make history, as you've probably just been hearing in the news, as the first woman to hold the title. But what do we know about the woman that Trump referred to as the Ice Maiden? I'm joined now by Anne McElvoy, executive editor at Politico and host of the Power Play podcast to tell us more. Anne, thanks very much for your time here on Woman's Hour. So some say that Susie Wiles is about to be the most powerful woman in Washington. Can you tell us more about who she is? What do we know about her?

Certainly. She's really a veteran of Florida politics, and she comes from that world around Donald Trump in Mar-a-Lago in Florida. I mean, obviously, she's going to become very powerful indeed in Washington, but that will be quite a transition. Donald Trump, even now, even after this election result, he tends to stay there. That is really his kind of castle and his keep, that world around him. And it's very tightly run and very tightly controlled not least by her she has really been the person who has brought order to the chaos of the donald

trump campaign and that's really why she's now been given this role i think he's very convinced that she's the person he can better have around you know he's a very difficult man to work for he ran through about four chiefs of staff, I think, the last time he was in office. But she does seem to be able to manage him very well. And she is credited with running this very disciplined campaign, hitting all of those points.

You know, this is not in any way a point approving of Donald Trump or the way that Donald Trump conducts his politics. But I think every professional campaign operator in the US would say this is a campaign that has worked. And that has been her role, really, to organise that and to execute on it. And a big role to play in Florida as well. Oh, certainly. I mean, but Florida, in a sense, is kind of nailed down for the Trump world.

And that's where it comes from. It's where her power base has been. She also worked previously for someone who's become a bit of a rival to Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, or Ron DeSantamonious, as Donald Trump with one of his terrible kind of cruel nicknames would put it. She's been in that kind of fight all the way through. And then Ron DeSantis basically always really pushed Trump to get her fired in 2020. There was a big, you know, sort of power cabal and she fell outside it. But she's really taken her revenge. And she's very open

about the fact that she takes revenge on those who dare in any sense to diss her. And I think Donald Trump really admires that, you know, she's a woman of a certain age. She's 67. She's a grandmother. She's very steely. So I think she kind of fits, she doesn't fit what you might think a campaign operator in Donald Trump world

would look or sound like. But gosh, you know, she has sort of, she doesn't speak on her own behalf very much, but she tends to speak through, show to speak through her contacts in the press. And one of them, and I'm making this a bit more polite, the way that it was attributed to her was along the lines of, if you mess with me, no, I mess with you. And we've seen that go around very quickly if anyone has crossed the campaign or Donald Trump. Susie Wiles, I think, has little tolerance for anyone who doesn't see it her way.

But, you know, she does make it work for him. And we said that she was referred to by Trump as the Ice Maiden. So where does that nickname come from? It seems a funny name to have, say someone who's a grandmother. I think looking at her, just looking at pictures of her, you can kind of see why she has a particular kind of Florida vibe, you know, the mirror sunglasses. She wears these sort of luxury goods, Gucci bomber jackets. It's a particular look, big earrings. You can't mistake her. And yet the same way she, I think he calls her the ice maiden because she's very controlled.

She has the strengths that match or sort of accommodate his much more random way of operating. So I think that's what he means, that she's always there. She's always controlling everything. She says herself, you know, what is the superpower is to execute on what Donald Trump wants and bring his strength of personality and that convening power that he's shown across so many demographics, including women, which is sometimes people struggle, I think, to grasp that. She's very much, she calls herself a MAGA moderate in the Make America Great Again world. That's moderate by Donald Trump's standards, I should say.

But I think that all of those things combined mean that she has that sense of lots of threads that she keeps in her hand at one time. And that's not Donald Trump. You know, he goes for whatever's right in front of him. I think she has also staged what are kind of slightly jokingly known as interventions with Donald Trump in the campaign when she felt that he was losing it a bit or that he was not coming across well. So I think for that reason, he respects her. And that's probably the ice maiden idea. It's quite interesting that he invited her to speak at his victory rally, but she declined. Why is that? I think that is the secret to her power. She understands the psychology of Donald Trump. He may have invited her to speak at the victory rally, but look at what's happened to a lot of other people who've spoken on Donald Trump's behalf. Where are they now? They're running podcasts on the speech circuit. They are certainly not working for Donald Trump.

There is really only one star in this show, and that is the president himself, and particularly so with Donald Trump, his personality type, his suspicion of people he thinks are getting in the way of his limelight. So I think it's been very sensible of Susie Wells, as he said, of her, she likes to stay at the back. And when she was pretty much invited to come forward, she held up her hand and said no. So her power is behind the throne. I think she's understood that very well, that you don't score in Trump world

by announcing that you've come to speak as his John the Baptist. You do it in the background, but she's very well known. She's very feared in certain quarters. Everyone who needs to know Susie Wells knows Susie Wells, whether it's in Florida or on the campaign trail more broadly. She doesn't need to take a bow. She's there. She's not just in the chorus line. She's really over his shoulder. Someone said to me, she'd worked on the campaign.

A lot of people are Trump whisperers. It's really hard to be a Trump organiser. And that's where the power resides for her. You mentioned that in the 2016 administration, President-elect Trump had four different chiefs of staff. So what's your prediction? Do you think she's likely to be there for a long time? Well, I think betting on the former record of chiefs of staff, you would say no, but lots of people have got bets wrong in the last week about the scale of Donald Trump's victory. I think she's got a better chance of hanging on in there than

most. But I do think at the moment we're seeing Donald Trump victorious, triumphant, absolutely has pounded his political opponents in the democratic movement when he takes up power again, when he's in the pressure of Washington and on the international, but also that really tough world of Washington politics, which he only ever quite half liked when he got to the last time. He's a campaigner. I think he finds governing a lot harder. He finds the presidency a lot more trying. He's a bit older. He's sometimes, I think, less sure of himself in some ways than he was, but he has a way of covering it up. So I think her role there will be to make him kind of happy in Washington. And I cannot predict whether in

the end, if he gets frustrated, he will say, well, thanks very much, Susie, and off you go back to Florida. But she has many other strings to the bow. Trump world is also very financially motivated. You know, she's very close to a major lobbying company. There's been some whiff of, is that all right? Is there too much of a kind of one hand watches the other around finance around Donald Trump? She has a world she can go back to. She's never going to rely solely on Donald Trump. She's a divorcee woman of a certain age who has survived in what can frequently be a snake pit. I think she knows pretty well

that her time with Donald Trump could come to an end, but she's probably going to hang on longer than most, put it that way, and certainly a lot longer than a lot of the men who did the job before her. OK, Anne McElvoy, thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Now, my next guest was the England women's football captain for eight years

and led Manchester City's women's team from its inception until her retirement last season, becoming their most decorated player in the process. Steph Horton was one of the first big names in women's football, the first to grace the cover of Shoot magazine, and she's been central to the sport, evolving from niche to mainstream. Now, you may also know Steph for her tireless campaigning on motor neurone disease.

Her husband, fellow footballer Stephen Darby, was diagnosed with MND six years ago. Steph's book, Leading from the Back, charts her rise to football success, which mirrors the rise of the women's game itself. And I'm delighted to say that Steph joins me now. Hello, Steph. Lovely to see you. Nice to see you, too. Thanks for having us. I want to start with a comment, actually, from a friend and former teammate, Jill Scott, who has said the game would not be where it is now if this young Mackham lass didn't have the biggest heart and desire to keep pushing for change both on and off the pitch. Now, for starters, it must be amazing to hear that from somebody like Jill Scott. But take us back to that Mackham lass.

Mackham, of course, means someone from Sunderland and Wearside, for people who don't know. Do you think then you would ever have realised what you would have achieved today? Not a chance. I think as a young girl growing up in Sunderland and just loving football, I think when I was growing up, you couldn't really dream to be a female footballer. It was just kind of like you did it and you got accepted or you didn't get accepted and I think now I think sitting here

today doing this like that is a dream for young girls now is to be able to play football at whatever level they want to do and I absolutely love the fact that girls want little football kits whatever team they support or they want a lionesses. And back then that just wasn't the thing. And it was really early, wasn't it, that you were in the professional game, pretty much. You were scouted to play for Sunderland Ladies. Tell me about that. Yeah. So in the Easter holidays and stuff, me and my brother, like my mum and dad didn't really like us being in the house. So we always went to like football camps or go to like after school bits. And this one Sunderland camp, I actually got scouted

and I was the only girl there. And I did quite well and they asked us to go and play for Sunderland. And a couple of years later, then I got asked to go and play for the first team, but I was only 13 then, which now obviously that wouldn't happen. You have to be over 16 to be involved in that environment. But obviously it just wasn't a thing. And to be a 13-year-old thrown into a women's environment

was quite scary at the time. You're obviously still in school. I think it must have been year eight, year nine then. And you're going in with women who have full-time jobs. There's a range of people being a postwoman, to working nine till five doing electrics. It was such a range and then here's me coming from school going to go training and of course not only that but a massive physical

difference as well I was I was quite lanky but I was so skinny and just it was just different worlds really but I think to get thrown into that like you kind of just have to kind of either go with it or you kind of sink and for me I was always quite competitive so I wanted to know that I wanted to be there. Did you think at that point this is it for me this is what I want to do for my career? I knew that football would always be part of my life I knew that for definite I think for me it was always going to be a hobby I love playing it but no way did I ever think it would ever be my job I think there was just not the opportunity there there was females in general as athletes and as sports people weren't seen in the same vein as they

are now I think now we look up to them and they're role models for both male and female whereas back then it was just like okay yeah you play football but there wasn't really that pathway that girls have now. You talk really candidly I thought thought, in the book about money, which is something that, you know, we don't talk a lot about, do we? We don't really share, but you, it was quite, I could really picture you in that situation where you were signing contracts and you talk about how much you were paid. And it was, what, £4,000 an annual wage that you were paid and it was what four thousand pounds an annual pay wage that you were that you were paid and maybe with other work you might get up to nine thousand pounds can you tell us how you felt about those negotiations and whether you felt like you could ask for more money yeah I think when I started writing the book I always had in my mind that I wanted to kind of

tell the story as honest and as open as I possibly could and to kind of actually realize how much how many great steps we have made in the game and I think to do that I think sometimes it is good to reflect back on that and I think I was so lucky and I come from the northeast my mom and dad didn't have much come from a working class family come from a pit So for me, money was never really a driver. But I had the opportunity to move to Arsenal, which was first and foremost, it was very much football dominated in terms of my decision. I wanted to go there. I wanted to win trophies.

I wanted to establish myself in the England set up. I wanted to play with the best players. And them negotiations in terms of money was never a thing. But for me to be able to get that money per game was ridiculous I was so excited by that and I was living in London it was obviously a totally different word to living with your mum and dad back in the northeast and I think when I started to renegotiate my contract I first started to meet my agent and I think when we sat down and just kind of spoke about what my situation was, to be going in there by myself to speak about something was tough because the guy that I was speaking to, Vic Agers, which then so quite young in terms of not that much experience

but I had to stand up for myself and this was for me first and foremost I think you realise the potential that women's games got to go and for me to have that conversation and say no which was hard because at the time as a women's footballer you were so lucky to get this you were so lucky to be training two or three times a week and it was like we had to be in a position where we had to keep saying yes more than no and I think to say that word and it's at the time I probably overthought it so much

because Vic was really nice and he was like right okay just come back to us whereas you build it up in your head because for me now looking back it was such a pivotal moment for me individually, but for the sport itself. We've asked our listeners for their comments about when they've had to have difficult conversations about pay. There's a really interesting one here. It says, at a job interview in 1970, I was asked by the boss what salary I'd like. I named a figure.

He looked horrified and said I could get a man for that absolutely astonishing um I mean it was quite interesting to me to hear that your agent dealt with um a lot of male footballers male professionals and he was really shocked and and he kind of made you see didn't he that what you were getting wasn't wasn't right I think as well you only know what you know so at Arsenal I only knew what my teammates were on I only knew the level that I'm at Arsenal Football Club and they are the best female team in the country at that time and for me I was just like oh my god like I get to play with all these players every day I play on a good good pitch. I get three lots of kit. And that was for me, that was like,

this is what I'm taking from this situation. But I think speaking to Matt, my agent, and obviously for me, that was when I really got my eyes open to what is out there. And it's not about comparing male to female pay. It was just actually like, we need to start moving towards them

as quick as possible. And rightly so, we were playing in big games. We were playing in the UEFA Champions League. We were playing for England. We were on TV. So things were progressing nicely, but that thing just seemed to stay the same. So I think for us, it was kind of that realisation

that we need to move this game on quite quickly to try and, first and foremost, be kind of like earning what we really need to be earning um and to kind of get that level raised and that professionalism of the game yeah it strikes me that you weren't asking for a lot you're asking for what you needed yeah you've you've you've gone on you know to have so much success um you know captain for club and country and and you know really really leading teams, of course. What do you think has made you a good leader?

What is a good leader? I think for me, a good leader is always one that's always changing, always being adaptable. And first and foremost is being good with people. I think for me, I love being around people. I love talking to people. And sometimes you get a good feel of how somebody's feeling by even just being in the same room as someone or even really getting them to open up.

I think sometimes when you have that awareness of not just yourself but other people, it does help in your leadership skills. I feel as though I've always been that type of person. I think even when I was younger, I was captain of a lot of teams, mainly because I probably led by example. wanted to win I was competitive but I think when you become a captain for Manchester City for England there's a lot more than just what's on the pitch there's a lot more stuff that goes off the pitch and that probably leads us to why I called the book leading from the back I think naturally you're obviously that first person out onto the pitch you're leading the team out from the front but I think there was so many things that went on

in the background that nobody did see in terms of conversations in terms of keeping the groups together in terms of building their relationships with not just players but staff and hierarchy as well I think people don't really see that so I absolutely love being a leader to be honest I think for me the most important thing was I always wanted to learn I always wanted to get better and them difficult conversations when I was 22 23 became a lot easier because you were able to talk a lot better in terms of communicate the reasons why and you always had to have kind of context to a situation I think you learn from your managers you learn from your coaches you learn from the psychologist how to keep improving what was your

kind of um tactic I guess like at halftime if you're two nil down or something and you go into the dress dressing room what um changing room what do you um what do you what do you do to motivate the team are you harsh or are you kind of you know motivation or what is it I think you've got to be a bit balanced to be honest I think first and foremost I always kind of in my head I'm like right okay are we playing well if we're playing well it's like right okay keep doing the right things keep like similar messages to what the coach or the manager is saying and obviously just give people confidence I think that's my kind of way but on the other hand if we aren't playing great and people aren't doing what they're supposed to do I think sometimes you do need to bring that energy you maybe need to

be a little bit honest with everybody including myself and I think that's what my best leaders that I've ever had are they're ones that can be able to change in different situations depending on the mood and obviously the feel of the group. You were also the England captain for eight years, an absolutely massive achievement. But I've got to ask you about Serena Wiegman's decision not to include you in the England squad,

which has obviously gone on to have a great deal of success. Many were shocked by your omission. Were you shocked by that? Yeah I was to be honest I think of course I'd been at England for a long time I picked up an Achilles injury around the February time I think as soon as I knew I need to get an operation I think my thoughts were okay it's a six-month injury but how quick can I get back would would England be okay with me getting back in a short time frame what does that mean for selection and I think them conversations were always ongoing in terms of my recovery and rehab and to get myself back

fully fit for the last camp before selection and yeah I think we all know the ending in terms of I didn't go and that it was really tough to take because I think I really felt as though I did enough to get into the squad and I did everything that I was asked to do, but it just didn't happen. And I think them two years especially were really tough because you're constantly fighting every single day to get back in. You're wanting to get like a single chance

just to kind of prove yourself again. And I think, yeah, it was a tough period for myself and probably one of the toughest of my career but at the same time it has made us stronger and it gives us a lot of perspective especially with things that are going on at home as well. We'll talk about that in a moment and your husband but I just want to get a sense of what it felt for you you know the team was winning the Euros World Cup final how did it feel watching that was it kind of bittersweet? I think I really I did struggle in the Euros because I knew how close I was potentially to being a part of that squad but

that never ever changed how I felt about the girls winning something that we'd all worked so hard to try and achieve I think obviously it was that squad that won the Euros, but there's a lot of players that have led us to win that trophy, especially over the last 10 to 15 years and even players before I started playing for England. I think we really changed the face of the women's game within England. I think this was just the pinnacle of what we'd all been trying to achieve. We'd been so close to a few semi-finals,

but this group did it, and the way that they did it at home at Wembley Stadium was unbelievable. But I think there was definitely a different feel from the Euros to the World Cup because I had even more idea that I probably was never going to go to the World Cup. So I was able just to come and work with BBC

and watch that as a fan and just to kind of relax a little bit more but I think in them scenarios with the Euros I kind of just took myself away I went on holiday with my family and tried to process it that way which that worked for me it might not work for different people but in that instance it worked and yeah I sat at home and watched them lift the trophy. You've mentioned your family there and listeners might be familiar with your husband, the ex-Liverpool player Stephen Darby. And Stephen was actually diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 2018. That was three months after your wedding. Yeah. Yeah.

And you've been raising awareness for the disease and you you share in in detail in the book in quite an emotional way I think um about how you came to understand that he had MND and you'd actually gone he'd said he'd said to you he'd supported you hadn't he and said he was finding out these test results but he'd said to you you you go you know you were off you were off somewhere playing football weren't you? Yeah. What was that like when you got that call from him? Yeah that was that was tough I think I write about in the book in terms of probably the feeling of guilt but also the fact that we found out that Stephen had motor neuron disease when I was away in Spain playing for Manchester City and I think I talk about it quite a lot in the sense of that we've always tried to live a normal life as much as we possibly could.

We don't want MND to kind of rule what we do. We want to be positive. We want to be hopeful. And that mindset's been crucial. And that kind of typifies Steve in the sense of, right, you keep doing what you do and you go and play football. And bear in mind, he'd only retired maybe, well, he retired that weekend.

So for me, I think being in that position, being his wife and not being there for that conversation, obviously there's a lot of guilt, there's a lot of anger, there's a lot of frustration because we'd had two years of tests and we'd had two years of different conversations and not really had MND being mentioned. So to hear that over a phone call where you're not really with any of your family, you're with your teammates, which pretty much are your family,

but it's just different. You don't know how to react. You're trying to be strong. But I'm still like 10 hours away from seeing Stephen. By the time I get a flight back from Spain, I think that was the longest journey I've ever had because what do you actually think you don't know what that means for for him for us we'd just been married you'd had the best day ever and to then hear that news was yeah the emotions I it was hard to put down in words but I try to make it as real as possible

because I know how many families are going through that at this moment in time and that's part of our duty as people with a little bit of profile is to kind of spread that as much as we can and hopefully you can see that a lot on the book is that if we can influence one family or give one family hope then that's part and parcel of what we've done. Did you know much about MND before Stephen's diagnosis? No not a clue I think I remember one one appointment where we went to Sheffield and there was a slight mention. And I always remember going back in the car and Googling it and the first line, I just closed my phone straight away.

I was like, no, he's not got that. That's not us. He definitely hasn't. He's absolutely fine. He's still training. He's as bubbly as ever we're still doing normal things um but yeah that was the first time and it wasn't as common as it is now but i don't know whether that's because it's so out there and people have pushed so much

to make motor neuron disease kind of it is massively underfunded and there's so many people like the late doddy weir rob bur Burrows, obviously, with Kevin Sinfield, Marcus Stewart, that have all pushed for this to be a common thing that people know about and to raise as much money as possible. How is Stephen now? You know what, he's really good at the moment. I think, I did an interview previously and we'd, it's been a bit of a tough few months if I'm being honest.

I think we've been fortunate enough that Stephen's had the disease for six years now. These last six to seven months have been tough. There's been a lot of changes. I think we weren't as used to changes but now it's kind of like we just keep adapting as we go. He's had a feeding tube fitted which is going to help in the long run. We had a few scary weeks in the sense that it didn't go down as well as we thought it would but now Stephen's on the up and you know what I'm so proud of him I think for me I think in terms of how I get through day-to-day is because

of him and how positive he is and I know that he has an effect on a lot of people with his charity work but also as for him as a person. And I know you've raised so much money as well. Just finally, I just want to talk about you and your legacy. What do you want yours to be? I think for me, I think if you put your mind to something and you work as hard as you possibly can, you can be absolutely anything. And I think that was my mantra throughout my whole career, I think coming

from the North East and coming from a hard working family and a hard working village, I think no matter what, nothing was ever going to stop me trying to achieve something and I think for me it's just being able to have that dream now for young girls and boys that you can put your mind to anything

and that mentality and that positivity can help you achieve your dreams absolutely um Steph it's been absolutely wonderful speaking to you thank you so much well Steph's book Leading from the Back came out yesterday 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.

Don't forget, we want to hear from you, your comments, if you've got any comments about what Steph has been talking about, and particularly if you have had to have any of those rather difficult conversations about money that we were talking about, maybe interesting conversations with a boss. No, you don't have to mention names, of course. You can text Women's Hour on 84844 and on social media, it's at BBC Women's Hour. Now, a new play, Women Who Blew on Knots, has been adapted from the novel by award-winning Turkish novelist and journalist Ece Temelkuran. Currently on stage at the Arcola Theatre in East London, it's set in 2012 against the backdrop of the Arab Spring. Four women embark on a road trip starting from Tunisia through Libya and Egypt to Lebanon. Ece recently joined Anita Rani in the Woman's Hour studio to talk about her story.

And Anita asked Ece about a number of things, including the recent murders of women in Turkey that have sparked a lot of anger and subsequent demonstrations. But she started by asking her where the story came from and what propelled her to create these characters. It was 2011 and 12 when I was writing the book, that was the time when the prosecution against journalists has begun. Where were you? I was in Tunisia already because I was already in trouble. So I told my editor, if I keep on writing about Turkish politics, obviously I'm going to put you and myself in trouble. So why not I go to, you know, some Arab country like Egypt or Tunisia to report on the Arab spring?

And they were happily, you know, they happily accepted it. So that's why I was in Tunisia. Let's get some context. Why were you in trouble? What were you writing about? I was writing things against the government, Mr. Erdogan. So, yeah, it was the beginning of the darkest hour for the country and for journalists, for anyone who is opposing the regime. That was why I was in Tunisia and, you know, keeping myself out of trouble. But then it didn't really help. I wrote two articles about Erdogan and that's why it became a little bit dangerous for me to go back to the country. So I decided the only way out

of this, you know, dim times is to create beauty. So I created, I made up these characters, just to hold on to them while I was trying to survive on my own in Tunisia. Who are the women that blow on knots? Well, Women Who Blow on Knots, the title of the novel and now the play, comes from a surah from Quran. In Quran it says, be aware of those women who blow on knots. And it refers to women who are doing witchcraft. But in the play, or in the novel, there are four characters.

Amira, the dancer from Tunisia. Mariam, a historian from Egypt. A journalist from Turkey, which is not named in the novel, but in the play, her name is Eve. And Madame Lilla, the fabulous Madame Lilla. Tell us about them. Well, Amira has just arrived in Tunisia.

Tunisia is happening. It's Arab Spring. And Mariam ran away from something in Egypt. We don't know what. And this Turkish journalist, Eve, cannot go back to her country because there is, you know, prosecutions on journalists.

And Madame Lila, we actually do not know anything about her. She's just a mysterious figure who is, you know, larger than life character. She's an older woman and she captures the souls of these three younger women. And they're about to go on a journey that they didn't expect before. Which one's based on you? Make a wild guess. The funny part of the story is, you know, there's no name for the protagonist in the novel,

who is the Turkish journalist. Who's Eve in the play. Eve, but we made up the name for the play because we need a name for the character. And Eve is the name that comes up through auto-correction in my emails when I write Ece, my name. So yeah, the protagonist is me, obviously. That's a nice fact. That's how Eve came up. The Arab Spring, which we were all aware of at the time in December 2010, that's where it started in Tunisia. That's where the play

begins. Briefly remind us what happened. Well, it was a time after Tahrir, Tunisia started resisting against their dictator. It was like spreading all over the Arab countries, actually, including Lebanon. And then it came to Turkey through Gezi uprising in 2013. What was happening was people went onto the streets, onto the squares to defend their dignity and freedom. And they wanted to change the destiny of Arab lands. And it was mostly young people, but then the entire population joined. After all these years, of course, you know, one can ask, did it change anything? Or was it an absolute failure, the entire movement? I do think that I'm like, you know, in real politic,

not many things have changed. But then I think it changed our thinking. All those movements gave us a new frontier for imagination. It set a high bar about what we can do. And now I think we all know what we can do. And more importantly, the dictators know what people can do. So I think it left a mark on a generation, on my generation of people. On a macro level and on a micro level, it definitely changed the course of your life because you wrote this story and you take these women on the journey. Explain the journey that they go on.

Well, I don't want to spoil. No spoilers. Okay, but the journey goes through Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and then they pass Mediterranean, they go to Lebanon, and then to Syrian border to kill a man. Do they kill the man? It's a question. But the entire journey is about Arab Spring. I mean, the plot is Arab Spring. But it is more about how that time, in those circumstances, how women changed themselves. Yeah. So how did it impact your characters? They empowered themselves.

They remembered their power. Because, you know, dictatorships, fascism in general, oppression, any kind of oppression. The magic formula that they, you know, practice on women especially is to make them forget how powerful they are. So these women throughout this journey, they remind each other who they are, what they can do, not only in terms of their personal lives, but also in terms of politics. What did it do for women generally? Did it change their lives in any meaningful way? Absolutely. It is not easy to remember what it was like before Arab Spring. Those women

became the women they are, I think, through that movement. How much does the experience and the impact vary from country to country, though? Well, in Turkey, for instance, I think the strongest movement is the women's movement, still resisting. The loudest movement, I think. I mean, like, we couldn sparked horrific violence, lasting violence, mass displacement, and actually worsening repression in some of the regions. So it's a great risk and a great cost that women speak out. Well, this is one of the topics of the novel and the play. When you show your power as women, of course, there's a backlash. We are talking about thousands years long oppression on women.

And this is the first time in human history that women are this powerful. They have better education. They have political experience. They are economically better than they have been before. And most importantly, this is the first time in human history, women are not afraid of being alone. They are not afraid of not being loved. So this gives them immense power. And by the way, we see the scenes of violence in that part of the world. But this is a global war on women. And the frontline of this global war might be happening in that part of the world. But this is a global war on women. And the front line of this global war

might be happening in that part of the world. But the women's rights are diminishing in this part of the world as well. So the backlash against the power of women is happening in Western countries as well. But you being able to speak out, to have written this play, to be here, you've not actually lived in Turkey since 2016. You live in Berlin. How is that for you? Well, I mean, like, I don't want to overshare and get too sentimental about this, but then it is... As women's are, we overshare. You're in a safe space. Well, you know what? I'm writing a book now about home. What is home in 21st century? Yeah. And one of the reasons I write this book, of course, I feel homeless.

And the other reason I write the book is that I think we share that sense of homelessness on several levels. It is the most central sense or zeitgeist that is determining the soul of our times. I am homeless because I had to leave my country due to the oppression, because fear of being prosecuted had become incredibly paralyzing. But then I think many women in London, or in Paris, in New York, definitely in Iran, they feel like their homeland is not their home anymore. It's not accommodating them as humans. And so this homelessness, not only for women, for men as well, is our shared problem in today's world. So how does it feel for me? I feel like I have to reinvent home in these times of homelessness. I wanted to ask you about, if I may, the recent series of horrific killings of women that sparked national outrage in Turkey. They

actually forced President Erdogan to pledge to harden the country's criminal law. We actually discussed it on Woman's Hour with Alif Shafak. But I wondered how you see the situation for women in Turkey currently. First of all, obviously, it is devastating. And then it tells me more than anything about how the sense of law has disappeared in the country. Unfortunately, Erdogan has been the reason for this loss of sense of law. And when there is no sense of law, it is first and foremost, the most vulnerable who become the sacrifice, who become the victim. It starts with animals, then it goes to kids, and then it comes to women. But then for men especially, there's this sense of they'll be immune to this lawless,

this devastating situation. It comes to them as well eventually. Women killings in Turkey have been going unpunished for the last two decades, especially for the last decade. So this is the natural outcome. And we are at a point in history in Turkey, where women do not feel safe. They do not have this basic security of life. Even if it doesn't kill you, it paralyzes your mind with fear. I want to ask you a question, OJ, and it's a question I think about often,

which is how you deal with that conflict of living somewhere where you know you're safe, not being able to go back to the country, knowing what's happening to women who don't have that privilege, using your voice in a positive way, but how you reconcile all of that? Well, you know what? You don't reconcile, period. You start living this parallel life, so to speak. And it is a form of disassociation. That is why the joy of life, any joy, any kind of joy, feels like half. You don't fully live. And then you actually get into this survival mode. And in survival mode, as you know, the only thing you have to do is to survive. And then I thought, I cannot go on with emotions. So I literally imagined putting my emotions in the freezer. And they were in the freezer for about eight years. And you know what, when you put your emotions in the freezer, they get rotten. And when you want to defrost them, and that's why I'm writing the poem book right now, it's not easy to deal with. So it's a price, you see. I mean, like staying in the country, dealing with the fear,

resisting, is a price that some people can pay. And some, like me, decide to pay another price, which is living a half-life, so to speak. And finally, what does it feel like to see your story and your experience on stage? Well, it was an out-of-body experience because I saw myself as a character as well. Yeah, yeah. It is so interesting because this is an independent artwork and I have to look at it like that. But then I couldn't stop myself.

When I saw Eve crying in a scene, I was like, I don't cry, I I was like, I don't cry. I don't cry. I don't cry. So I went to the actress and said, I don't cry. So this was a very revealing moment for me as well. Because when you're surviving, you don't cry. You don't cry.

And you don't want to be perceived as naive. Yeah. The actress laughed at me and we laughed together. That was Turkish writer Ece Temelkuran there speaking to Anita and Women Who Blow on Knots is at the Arcola Theatre in East London until November the 23rd. But now I want to talk to you about Wolf Hall, whether you've seen the series from 2015 on the BBC or read the Hilary Mantel trilogy that they're based on, it's a much-loved perspective on Henry VIII and the women in his life via the King's trusted advisor, Thomas Cromwell. And the much-anticipated second series, Wolf Hall, The Mirror and the Light,

is back this Sunday on BBC One. I'm delighted to say that Kate Phillips is returning as Jane Seymour, Henry's third queen. And Kate joins me in the Woman's Hour studio now. Thanks so much for coming in. Hi. Can you take me back to the first series? And when you got the role of Jane 10 years ago, what was that like? Unexpected. I was still at drama drama school i um having never auditioned before uh i was a whole new world really i um uh i remember leaning on a friend of mine who i trained with who

had done some auditions and work before we trained and um just sort of asked him how the whole process worked um printed out all the scripts arrived uh at the audition in a sort of white lacy dress that i thought would be very sort of um jane-like and uh and anyway it was successful met peter a few months later kosminski the director and um mean, I was just very fortunate. It's incredibly hard to get a job. So I think I just got very lucky. What did it feel like being on set then, surrounded by those huge names?

Utterly terrifying. It's been really interesting returning to that world 10 years later because I'm 10 years older. I'm now a mother of two my life has completely changed this sort of 10-year gap between season one and season two has has sort of um you know it's it I've your 20s and now my in my mid-30s you know it's been a very sort of you change a lot in those years and um it's been really interesting to kind of reflect on the woman that I was around the table read those rehearsals on the first day of season one to what it was like when we got started this time round.

It was quite sort of triggering being back in that room, you know, being faced with Mark Rylance and Damian Lewis and then sort of thinking, oh my God, I can't do this. And then realising that, no, it's fine. I'm not that person that I was when I was 24. Did you have a kind of imposter syndrome then do you think? Yeah I mean that's something that I have had to look at and deal with over the years and I still have a little bit of that but 100% yeah. And of course you play one of Henry VIII's wives and I said at the start of the programme about that whole mantra that we all remember, seen in sort of um very one-dimensional ways you know you have Catherine of Aragon she was barren uh Anne Boleyn she was the harlot

Jane Seymour she was the uh meek and mild and what's been really interesting is um reading what hillary mantel so cleverly did is that with with the use of mark rylance sorry cromwell his character we see the whole book and the series um through his eyes and we are and because he's so empathetic and he is able to see women on a level in a way that someone like henry the eighth isn't is incapable of you get into the minds of these women you get to meet them for who they are and he um it's just a very clever device that she used in order to bring out these these women that history have just has just sort of as as I say, given them very little agency, but now we can see them as being far more complex beings.

We can have a listen to, it's in episode two of the new series, and it's an exchange between Thomas Cromwell and Jane Seymour. My ladies say that if a wife does not take pleasure in the act, then she will not get a child Is that true? Perhaps you should consult with your lady mother your grace Or one of the dames that court here might advise you they have forgotten. They are old Your lady sister then she has two fine infants

the best bit heartened me, she said. Say an ave, Jane, and the king will soon spend. She says she did not take pleasure in her own marriage, but with her late husband it was like a military maneuver. Brisk. He did not beat the drum, I hope. But she always knew when he was on his way.

Mm-hm. Yeah, the infants will come when they will, she says, pleasure or not. Perhaps I should not have asked you. It's a really nice moment, that exchange between them. And a bit of light, which, you know, is quite welcome in that episode, I thought. What did you know about Jane Seymour before you played her?

Because you said kind of that meek and mild year, I was still at a real loss. I think she was still an enigma for me. I lent a lot on Peter Kosminski, the director, to try and find this character because people describe her as shy and in fact at one point Henry speaks to Cromwell and says have I married an idiot but she herself comes out with really witty very playful lines and you think maybe there's something else going on going on here and I think I was actually speaking to a woman who's who's in the process of writing the definitive biography about Jane Seymour it's not finished yet I met her at the screening on Monday and she was describing Jane as this this fierce landlord this woman who wore really sexy underwear. I knew her to be someone who didn't shy away from

really glamorous clothing, very rich. She always wore her jewellery. You know, I think again, history has just painted her out to be one version. But actually, I think she was very sophisticated and in many ways knew exactly what she was doing. She would have studied under Catherine of Aragon as her Lady in Waiting and again with Anne Boleyn. she was doing she would have studied uh um under Catherine of Aragon as her lady-in-waiting and again with Anne Boleyn and I think she would have understood the kind of qualities that Henry would have liked and I think she played the game really well. It's interesting you mentioned the costumes let's talk about them they're pretty amazing aren't they what was it like to wear them? Uh um of fab i mean fabulous uh comfortable fabulously uncomfortable

um joanna eat well and and claire her supervisor they they are one i believe them to be one of the the true experts in their field they um their attention to detail their levels of research they really understand how these costumes were created. And whilst they were really uncomfortable, I really enjoyed our mornings sort of getting ready because it's unlike any other costume I've worn. I mean, I've done lots of period dramas, but these are sort of, you know,

there's a good 20 minutes of layering of petticoats and, you know, you're tying sleeves in. And then the head, I mean, the headdresses actually are really uncomfortable, but you only have to wear them for a few days so um you mentioned period drama you have you have been in a lot of period dramas is that your choosing or is that the kind of people think that you're good at those roles how does that work I can only imagine it's the latter because I am not in a position where I can choose the jobs I get. I have wondered over the years why it is that I land these period roles.

But I've sort of realized I was reflecting recently the kind of dramas that I grew up on where they were the Foresight Saga. They were the BBC's Pride and Prejudice. You know, those are the worlds that I really, really love to dive into. So I wonder whether that's what I've carried around. Is there any role that you'd really like to play that would show a different side of your profession? Yes, I want to play a character that leads an army of women into battle. Okay.

I want to play an undercover operative in the Second World War. There are these number of women who worked for the SOE and they were sort of fighting in combat, sort of gun-to-gun combat with German officers, that kind of thing. I want to see women. Those stories did exist and we just haven't seen them on screen. Okay.

And you have set up a and we just haven't seen them on screen okay and you you have um meant set up a production company haven't you with with two other actors is is that something that you feel like you can steer in the right direction and make some of those things that you'd like to make yeah i mean that's kind of how it came about it was it came out about sort of organically from conversations we were having about this sort of story. If we want to see on screen the stories that we've discovered that we want to tell and the worlds that we as actors want to be immersed in. It's two other women, I should point out. Yeah, two other women. And I should add, it wouldn't happen without them.

Amber Anderson and Rosie Day. Rosie's a brilliant actor, director and writer. And I mean, more than anything, we're just having a huge amount of fun. And we feel just very, yeah, it's extraordinary to be so driven because you have some stories that you want to get out there. mainly women's stories you think there's a bit of a gap there it is mainly women's stories um and that's really because those are the stories that we ourselves want to see and they're the ones that inspire and excite us and i think that speaks a lot to the sort of innate bias that we as individuals carry around whether we like it or not and um and you know it makes so much sense therefore that the people in the rooms who are making all the decisions those rooms need to be populated by people who can speak to so many different experiences as we as women have stories that we want to tell that that speak about our

experience and that's understandable kate it's been fantastic to speak to you wolf hall the mirror and the light starts on bbc One at nine o'clock on Sunday. On weekend women's hour tomorrow, the fastest woman on the planet, the current Olympic 100 metre gold medalist, Julianne Alfred. Thank you very much for listening. That's all for today's women's hour. Join us again next time. Hello, I'm India Axon and I just want to quickly talk to you about witches.

In this series from BBC Radio 4, simply titled Witch, I'm going to explore the meaning of the word today. It is a twisting, turning rabbit warren of a world, full of forgotten connections to land and to power, lost graves, stolen words and indelible marks on the world. Because the story of the witch is actually the story of us all. Come and find out why on Witch with me, India Rackerson. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 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.