Woman's Hour - Greta Gerwig on Little Women, Signe Johansen, Ursula Owen and Marlene Hobsbawm

Episode Date: December 20, 2019

Jo March has been an inspiration for many women over the 150 years since Louisa May Alcott’s 'Little Women' was first published in 1869. Greta Gerwig is the director of the latest film version, to be released on Boxing Day - and it's already been highly praised, Greta talks about her life-long love for the character of Jo and her passion for bringing her to the big screen. Marlene Hobsbawm and Ursula Owen have recently published their memoirs, Meet Me in Buenos Aires and Single Journey Only. Both women are in their eighties and both were born to Jewish emigres families who settled in England before the Second World War. They both married at a young age, by the standards of today, to men on the political left. Both loved music and both adored their children. But, there are also significant differences. Marlene was married to one man for 50 years. Ursula had many significant relationships. Work and feminism played a large part in Ursula’s life. Marlene established her music career much later on. They join Jenni to discuss their memoirs. And, Signe Johansen’s new book 'Spirited: How to create easy, fun drinks at home' attempts to opens up the world of cocktails to everyone and celebrates coming together over drinks. She joins Jenni in the studio to make an Oolong, Whisky and Spice Punch.Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Ruth Watts

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, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Friday the 20th of December. Two eminent women, Ursula Owen and Marlena Hobsbawm, both in their 80s, have published their memoirs. Why look back on a long life at this time? Cook the Perfect today is Mix the Perfect. Senior Johansson's latest book is Spirited, how to create easy, fun drinks at home, most appropriate for the time of year.

And the serial, the final episode of Subterranean Homesick Blues. Now there's a lot of excitement in the air about the new film of Louisa May Olcott's Little Women which opens in the cinemas on Boxing Day. It's the eighth time the story of the March Sisters published in 1869 has been filmed. In the new adaptation Saoirse Ronan plays Jo, the inspiration for so many of us who wanted to become writers. And the film is directed by Greta Gerwig. Jane asked her why we needed a new film version of the novel. When I reread the book when I was an adult, and it had been a book that I had loved when I was young,

and the character of Jo March was the character that made me want to be a writer and made me feel like there was a kindred spirit for me in the world. But when I read it as an adult, I was just completely gobsmacked by how modern it was and how pressing it was. undercurrent of the book, the themes that were running under it were about authorship, ownership, women, art, commerce, money, and ambition. And those are the things I'm thinking about. And those are the things that the world is thinking about. And I thought I wanted to re-look at it with those things in the foreground. Okay, take us to your, I don't know, was it your adolescence when you read Little Women? What were you like? Well, actually, I was younger than that.

I read Little Women as a kid, like a kid. I was kind of like Joe. I mean, maybe somewhat less of a tomboy, but I was artistically inclined. I had a temper. I was competitive. I had a lot of energy. I think I was kind of too much in all of the ways. Did you have siblings? What was that? Yes, I had older brother, older sister. So my brother was eight years old and my sister was 10 years older. So I didn't have like that

group of sisters the way the Marsh family does. But I had a girlfriend group, which I drew upon pretty heavily for this movie. Okay, now Jo March is the character that so many young girls pin their hopes on. And who plays her is really significant. She's been played by Winona Ryder, Katherine Hepburn, and now Saoirse Ronan. And how did that, did you pick her? Did she pick the film? Did she pick you? What happened? Was she, the order in which everything went was I actually wrote a couple of drafts of Little Women before I made the first film we made together, which was Lady Bird.

And then after Lady Bird came out, the studio approached me and asked me if I wanted to direct, which I was thrilled because I'd always intended to direct it. And then we were at an awards show and Saoirse said, I know you're working on A Little Woman and I'm going to play Jo. I'm going to play Jo. Yeah, that's right. And she later told me she's never done that before. She's never gone after a part like that. She said it was more polite, like not wanting to be so aggressive with something. She said it was the Irish in her, never wants to like step too far out of her own bounds.

But then she said something just told her like go after it. And I felt the same way when I went to go talk to them about how I wanted to write and direct it. So we both have decided that it was the spirit of Louisa May Alcott slash Jill March speaking through us. I just feel like women, they have minds and they have souls as well as just hearts. And they've got ambition and they've got talent as well as just beauty. And I'm so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for. I'm so sick of it. But I'm so lonely. What is really fantastic about the film is actually how much Laura Dern,

who plays her mother, looks like your Jo in the film. Did that just take you by surprise? Oh, no, that was all very intentional. It's almost like you know what you're doing, isn't it? Oh, I know. No, we wanted them to be kind of mirror images of each other, because I think you don't get a family of, you know, four lady geniuses in the 19th century without having a mother who's pretty badass. And so I wanted to draw a pretty, pretty strong line between Marmee and pretty badass. And so I wanted to draw a pretty strong line between Marmee and her girls. And the actual woman, Abigail May, who was Louise May Alcott's mother, was a fascinating character. She was wildly intelligent. She was a brilliant writer. She was America's first social worker. She was just incredibly passionate and she made it her project

to raise these girls with ambition. Well, this is a story about women and essentially it's also a story about women getting their stories told, which back in those days, that this is the 19th century, women had almost no agency at all. Something that's made really, really clear in this film. Right. There's a speech that the character of Amy gives about the limited possibilities for women. And I think given that, it's extraordinary what Louise May Alcott did. And it's extraordinary that she wrote this book, that it was such a success, and that she did actually keep the copyright and negotiate a higher back end for herself. So she made a good living out of this little woman.

This was, you know, she was a smash success as an author. She was like J.K. Rowling or something. She was, this book sold out in two weeks when it was first printed. And then eventually it was translated into 54 languages and it's never been out of print since. And she took care of her entire family. She took care of her sisters and their kids. She sent her sister May to Europe to study painting, who is the model for Amy.

She helped her father get his books published. I mean, she was pretty extraordinary and certainly unlike any other female author of her time. So the fact that you start with Jo as an older woman, she has left the family home. Right. The film goes backwards and forwards in time, doesn't it? And we see her for the very first time trying to sell her story, which it makes me squirm to remember it, actually. Yeah. Well, I wanted to start with Jo trying to sell a story because I wanted to find the author all the way through of this movie.

I wanted to find the author of Joe March. I wanted to find the author of Louisa writing Joe. And I wanted to find the author of me writing Louisa writing Joe. This sort of kaleidoscope of authorship. Not the entire scene, but the bulk of the scene is actually taken word for word from the book. And when I read it, I just isolated the dialogue. And I thought this could be me talking to a studio head yesterday. Trying to get my film made. Yeah. And they're telling me morals don't sell nowadays. Have they told you that?

Everybody says that morals don't sell nowadays. When I saw that in her book, I thought, I thought, oh, I guess there's no days in which morals would sell. What does sell? What do they think sells? Honestly, I don't know. I don't know. But I think the wonderful thing about authors is, and taking chances on films and taking chances on new voices is that often there's a lot of room for surprise and there's a lot of room for, you know, I think every year there's films that people say, oh, I didn't know people were interested in that. And I think that that's why it's good for studios to take risks.

Does it matter that only one woman has won the Best Director Oscar? And that was Catherine Bigelow for The Hurt Locker, which was a couple of years ago now, wasn't it? Well, I mean, I'd love to see more women win things and be nominated for different awards for directing because I think the work is so worthy and so beautiful. But I do think that where I try to focus on is the fact that the work is getting done. The work is beautiful. It's going to keep getting made. And they released a study

this year by the Annenberg Institute that this year, the number of films in the top 100 films that were directed by women is vastly higher than it has been any other year. So progress is being made. Progress is being made. It sounds so much better, progress, rather than progress. Yes, well, it does sound better, because we speak properly, you see. That's what you have to understand. And I'm from California, so it's doubly bad. Oh, dear. Well, we'll let you off, because you are quite good at what you do.

When we think about Hurt Locker, I suppose you could say it was a film made by a woman, but about men. It's a very male story. And unashamedly, you've made your films about women, haven't you? Well, you know, it's actually interesting. I'm a big fan of, obviously, Catherine Bigelow. And what was interesting is the things that stuck with me about that film so much are, I mean,

it's an extraordinary piece of filmmaking, and it is about men in war, but it's also about them as human beings. I remember the scene in the grocery store where he's walking around and he doesn't know how to be part of the world anymore. And I think that it's a very humanist film. Okay, so she made a film about men that a man wouldn't have made? She made a film she would have made. And I think that that's the important thing is I'm interested in personal idiosyncratic filmmaking.

And I think it is a personal idiosyncratic film for her. And I think that, for me, I don't set out to say, well, I'm going to make a bunch of movies about women. I make movies about things that I'm interested in. And I happen to be incredibly interested in women. If one day I wake up and I'm only interested in dogs, then, well, we'll just have dog films. But I'm fascinated by women and I haven't yet had my fill. I love relationships between friends, between sisters, between mothers and daughters, between colleagues. I think it's just so rich. Can I ask about the subject of sisters in the film, which obviously this film and the book, of course, are very dear to people, particularly to women. How do you get that sibling dynamic

right on film? Because it's actually rather a subtle thing. I've got a sister. It's quite hard to play. Well, the thing that I wanted very much going into it was I wanted it to be very loud because when I think of four women together, I think of volume, really. And I thought I wanted it to feel like a cacophony. And I wanted it to be both. I wanted it to be loud and I wanted it to be physical. So a lot of it was actually rehearsals and getting the timing of all of these lines coming in over each other, right? And then once we had it up to speed, then adding this movement. So they're constantly hitting each other, pinching each other,

hugging each other, kissing each other. It was this constant physical interaction that they were having because I wanted them to all be strong characters individually, but that when they got together, it was like a four-headed beast. A four-headed beast, okay. Anyone with sisters will know what that means. I think they'll be able to relate to that. So it's had fantastic reviews.

I know it's not actually properly out until Boxing Day in this country. You look really positive and energetic. Well, you know how well it's been received, don't you? Well, I mean, I can't tell you how thrilled I am. I'm nervous because this is the biggest movie I've made. So I'm nervous because it's just scary. It's a big swing but I'm thrilled that the reviews are nice and I hope I hope people go because I genuinely think you couldn't have a

better Boxing Day than spending it with us I promise you. Greta Gerwig and as Jane said Little Women opens on Boxing Day still to come in today's programme, Cook the Perfect Becomes, Mix the Perfect, Senior Johansson Creates Cocktails for the Festive Season, and the final episode of Subterranean Homesick Blues. And looking ahead to the big day next Wednesday, do

join me for a woman's hour Christmas with live music from the a cappella singers, the All Sort, an analysis of the psychology of tradition, and the startling piece of news that Turkey is not a long standing Christmas custom at all. Now Meet Me in Buenos Aires and Single Journey Only are the titles of new memoirs written respectively by two eminent women who were both in their 80s, Marlena Hobsbawm and Ursula Owen. Marlena was a teacher of music who was married for 50 years to the communist historian Eric Hobsbawm. Ursula married, adopted a daughter, and when her marriage ended, she went into publishing, becoming a founding director of Virago and then the chief executive of Index on Censorship.

Each of them was born into a Jewish family. Marlena's was from Austria, Ursula's from Germany. And they came to this country as refugees before the Second World War. Ursula was only 18 months old when she arrived. Marlena was a little older, at five. How easy did Marlena find it to adjust to her new life in England? Well, no, it was dreadful for me because they never told me anything. I was too young, they thought. Well, I just decided to become a self-imposed mute. They sent me to a kindergarten and they said she was very happy playing in the sand

pit and so on, but I wouldn't speak a word of English. Now I can start to think about it and it seems very, very strange that they didn't even invent a story about a bad man called Hitler and something like that and were going to somewhere else. Anyway, I just refused to speak and they were very worried about me. As you grew older, how did you begin to assimilate having had such a difficult start? Well, I suppose I did in the end. My mother says that she heard me talk very good English to my dolls when she was stood outside. I think I was just confused. I was a German girl, speaking girl at home, and then I wanted to be like the English children in the kindergarten,

and I just couldn't figure it all out myself, and so I just decided I was going to say nothing. But I did, of course, in the end. But my parents were very, very loving to me. But they did really mess up with this. They had no idea what it was like for me. You were much younger. You, I think, were 18 months, Ursula. Yes.

And I know you wrote you wanted, as you grew, to be part of what you thought was Englishness. Yes. How successful were you in that? Well, my parents who were assimilators but knew they could never assimilate, they had strong guttural accents. And they remained very German and very Jewish, although they converted to Anglicanism, but they always thought of themselves as Jewish. So they wanted their children to assimilate, and we were good at it. Gosh, I was good at it.

I was quite conformist. I was quite... My brother went to a public school and was even more conformist than I did. So we knew how to do it. But I never quite felt that I was English. Never have. We had a complicated childhood. My parents, I can't say it was very happy.

My mother was mentally ill a lot. You actually write really rather brutally about it. You describe it as your mother's madness. Yeah. What effect did that have on you? A large one. I mean, I was partly because I was the kind of chosen child to be her mother. It's not an unusual situation to mother your mother, but that's what I did.

But, you know, it was what my life was. And I got used to it. And of course, I did do other things too. But it was a childhood imbued with a lot of anxiety, hers and mine, and everyone's, quite a lot of walking on eggshells. And it was really only quite a lot later that I thought I won't go mad myself. I was sure I would go mad. I was very like her. I understood her. I talked to her a lot. So it was really only when I was about 40 that I thought perhaps I won't go mad.

Now, you studied at Oxford. You expected, as so many young women did in that time, that marriage would be the only choice open to you. What was married life like for you? Well, the extraordinary thing was, us 50s girls, is that we didn't mind, that we fitted our life around our husbands. And that was OK. Nice man, my ex-husband now, who's just died, actually. gradually and very slowly because I was a 50s girl began to realize that there were things about marriage that weren't very easy for me I needed time alone probably partly to do with my mother and needing time alone and I needed in the end oddly enough I needed my own pursuits. So I've always had, I've had men in my life, and men and love has been very important,

but marriage I've only done once. Marlena, you've only done marriage once. I've only done it once. And it lasted for a very long time. Yes, 50 years. 50 years. Now, your husband, Eric, was older than you, and he'd been a member of the Communist Party

since, I think, his schoolboy days in Berlin. He was right to the end, yes. What effect did his communism have on your lives? Well, not a lot, really. He was not an activist. I mean, he was a member of the Communist Party. They put MI5 on you, and I couldn't see all that until

2015. I went and had a look at the... They wrote horrible things. Absolutely horrible things. What sort of horrible things? Anti-Semitic things. He was ugly. They didn't like his clothes. They thought he was a terrible man.

And I was completely shocked that they wrote all this. But he never got to see his first. They never allowed him to see. And, of course, our phone got tapped. That didn't really affect us very much. I mean, I've been already on the BBC about that. People asked me. And I said,

I felt sorry for those people listening. Because then when I had my first child, I was really on the phone to my mother about nappies a lot of the time. I felt sorry for these people. But the only really nasty bit of being a communist, I think, was when he wanted to get a job. He got a double first and other tributes in his degree and he couldn't get a job teaching in Cambridge and Oxford and he was that was the first time that he was really

upset otherwise not. To what extent did you share his politics? I was a labour girl. I wasn't a communist. We were together on the left. It was just a question of degree. But what about the Women's Liberation Movement?

Now, I know you actually went to the first Women's Liberation Conference, which was held in Oxford in 1970. But you didn't write about it in your memoir. What did you actually make of it when you went to it? I thought, my God, these girls are leading the life of Riley.

I mean, they talked about their studies and they talked about lunch times and they talked about all sorts of things. I mean, compared with the life I had of children already, I thought, my goodness, this is it. This is how to live, you know. But, no, feminism was difficult. Now I'm a feminist, but my mother never was.

She was so traditional. And girls often follow their mother, I think, in this. I wasn't a feminist, and one of the main reasons for me, I was very close to my brother Walter in age, so we did more things together than the one who was. Every morning I had breakfast with Walter, and he had told me that he would only know when a brown envelope came that he would have to go to war.

And every day before eating cornflakes, I looked to see whether this letter would be there. And it wasn't. And then I was relieved. Because I thought, I knew what happened. They went away and they didn't know where they were going and who was going to scream and shout at them and if they'd come back without at them and if they'd come back

without a leg or without or if they'd come back at all and I was terrified anyway one day the letter did come and he was going to Malaysia Malaya and I went with my mother to Liverpool

to say goodbye and we I mean we just I was just beside myself. But of course he came back and he wanted to be a journalist and he was all his life a journalist. I thought women never have to do things like that, as if we would go. I couldn't understand how they went willingly

without any protest. You know, this is just what you had to do. And I was so glad I wasn't a man. It just seems such an extraordinary thing to have to do and accept. Ursula, you didn't go to that conference. I didn't go to that. Although you could have gone.

Why did you not go? Because at that time i was living in oxford actually and some friends were staying for the weekend and she went this friend went said why don't you come because i thought it wasn't much to do with me i by then i'd lived in the middle east i'd become a socialist and it didn't make i had very very little knowledge about feminism then and then i moved to london in the next year and got to know a woman who our children were the same age at the nursery school that we took them to and i she was going to a women's meeting at Sheila Robottom's apartment in semi-basement in Dalston.

And I went and I was absolutely agog with the level of conversation about, actually the first evening was about work. And I went to the next one and then I was in it. You became quite involved with the women's movement. I became quite involved. And I mean, I absolutely see what Marlene means about men because I did always think men, in my generation, men had to take responsibility for making the money too.

So I did think men didn't have the easiest life, but that doesn't mean that I didn't think that women had loads of discrimination against them. Not just me, although I had some, but women in general. How did you become involved with a publishing house called Virago? Well, I was in publishing and I was working very, very happily, probably the very happy years of my life with two or three people, Christopher McLehose and a man called John Nola, who was a friend of Carmen Khalil's and he knew that she had started, she'd, I think, registered the company and she needed a fellow worker.

She was looking for a fellow worker. And there actually were very few feminists in publishing then. Very few. So we had lunch and thereby hangs a tale. Thereby hangs lots of tales, indeed. You had a child. Yes. And obviously became a single mother when your marriage broke up.

How did you manage your juggling, your career in publishing and raising a child? Well, I think the thing about not being married, I mean, I think I should say that most of my life I've had a man in my life, but not been married to them after my marriage to Roger. Roger was a very good father and we stayed very closely in touch and he saw Kate a lot and I felt very badly about it. But I think one of the things about not being married and living your own life, it's not so much being a single mother, is you have to create your own life. And that is a huge difference, I think.

I think the thing about one child, it was just about manageable, just about manageable. I was the only woman with a child at Virago for 10 years, actually, which is not surprising because we were very driven at Virago. We did work very hard. But I think with one, it wasn't too difficult. But of course, there were things I missed and still feel sad I missed and like being there at tea time I would always ring her but it wasn't the same. Your marriage Marlene lasted for 50 years how happy a marriage was it? Oh it was it was I mean I don't know what is a happy marriage and what we had rows, of course.

We were in love. We were. We just didn't fall out of love. It really lasted all this time. You know, just before I met Eric, he'd had a decade of being alone completely when his first wife left him. And he then had a sort of mini breakdown and he was determined not to go to a shrink

and to lick it himself, this depression. And he said, I'm going to write like hell. I'm just going to write, write, write, write. And he did. For ten years he was alone. And it was so incredible that what happened then, when he met me, there was chemistry between us, more or less, immediately. And then, you know, we had two children straight away

and then grandchildren. And, I mean, it all suited him so down to a T. And you too, presumably. Yes, well, I was, as I say, not a strong feminist. I mean, I'm different now because I mix with a lot of young women, and I can see what they think. But I think raising children is a lovely thing, and I think the happiest time in my life

was when I was teaching children in school. You taught the recorder. I taught the recorder, yeah. Let's just look at the titles of your books, which are fascinating. Yours, Marlena, is Meet Me in Buenos Aires. Why? Well, you have to buy the book and you have to read it, and then you know. We got married in the middle of the Cuban crisis, and we didn't know whether there was going to be war or not.

It was just, and just after our honeymoon, Eric had to go away to, he was invited to a thing he couldn't refuse, which was a Rockefeller Foundation grant to go for three months to Latin America to research more on the subject that he was working on. And so he had to go. Anyway, I went to the airport and he said to me, I've made sure there's enough money in the bank and you have to get a ticket. If the war does break out, you have to get a single ticket to Argentina

and I'll meet you in Buenos Aires. And I thought, wow, I mean, I didn't know what to do. How romantic. I just hadn't expected that. I expected a lot of unusual things from Eric, but this I didn't. I thought, well, how do you mean a one way? It's the word one way that flummoxed me the most. What about my mum and dad?

Can I not come back? Anyway, then I just said, no, this has fallen into my lap and this is the life I'm going to lead. And there you did. And yours, Ursula, is single journey only. Why? I have to explain. A friend of our family's, when my mother got pregnant, both in 1933 with my brother and in 1937 with me, suggested that she had the children in England because they were Jewish and German. And so she did.

She had my brother in Leeds in 1933, just after Hitler got in. And then in 37, she went again to England to have me in Oxford and came back. And that was what was so extraordinary. But they hadn't got exit visas. So she came back to Germany and then they left without us. And this has been the great mystery. So I used to say, why did you leave without us? They left us with our Jewish grandparents in Heidelberg, who also had to leave. And my parents always said, rather uneasily in my mother's case, we needed to settle down first. And on it, it said, single journey only.

And when they finally realized that war was imminent, they got my grandfather and a maid who wasn't Jewish to go to the Dutch border on a train with us two. And the maid who wasn't Jewish crossed the border with us to meet my father in Holland and by a miracle they did. So it was a pretty touch and go really. So single journey was what was written on the exit visa. Asila Owen was talking about her memoir Single Journey Only and Marlena Hobsbawm's is Meet Me in Buenos Aires. Now the last time Senior Johansson joined us for Cook the Perfect, it was

to discuss her book Solo, The Joy of Cooking for One, and she made Late Night Ramen Noodles. Today, in the festive spirit, we're discussing her book Spirited, How to Create Easy, Fun Drinks at Home, Spirited, how to create easy, fun drinks at home. And she will be mixing the perfect oolong, whiskey and spice punch. Senior, oolong is tea. Why does tea work well in a punch?

Well, that's a very good question. Oolong tea has a broad spectrum of flavours. So you get fruity elements, you get smoky elements. It's actually considered the wine of tea. So it's much more versatile as an ingredient than, say, green tea or standard black tea. And it's a lovely colour as well. You get this sort of rich, kind of rust colour from the tea that's made. I really like adding teas to drinks because they add a bit of depth and you get some tannins as well it's also fantastic if you're making a non-alcoholic version of this punch

to give it a bit of backbone and some extra flavour and of course you could use something like Lady Grey or Earl Grey tea instead but it's a great ingredient to have on standby for drinks like this So how do you put this particular punch together? Well, we have a bottle of whiskey which I'm going to open. Not much left in it. Oh well, it is the festive season after all. We have had a few scotches recently. So we've got a bottle of scotch which we're going to pour into the mixing bowl, our punch bowl. And we've also got some Campari, which gives a wonderful colour to this particular punch. It gives this kind of coral colour.

So it looks particularly festive. Because it's a really quite bright red, isn't it? It is, it is. It's that kind of crimson red. So it's a fantastic ingredient not only for flavour but just colour because you know drinks we obviously treat drinks the same way that we drink treat food we look at them with our eyes and we think oh that looks enticing that looks bright and cheering so I'm going to add some of that to give a bit of colour and of course the bitterness that you get from Campari gives a bit of extra structure and depth of flavor.

And we also have, in fact, speaking of bitters, we have Angostura bitters, which are fantastic. They're a really good ingredient to have in your store cupboard. Delicious on their own, actually, with some soda water and a slice of lemon as a kind of post-sports tonic, if you fancy that kind of thing. But also it gives a great color. It's a sort of deep kind of rusty orange color. So again, a nod to that festive look of the drink. And then let's see, we have some spiced sugar syrup. Now, this has been made in advance. I made this yesterday and it's actually worth making quite large batches of this if you are planning to do some festive entertaining at Christmas.

It's so easy. All you make is a simple sugar syrup, so 50-50 sugar and water, and then you infuse the spices that you'd like to add to it. So I've added all the classics. You've got a's in there? I've got cinnamon, star anise, peppercorns, cardamom pods, clove and ginger. And I've also added some lemon and some clementine peel, which gives that extra citrusy flavour. Now, we're not actually giving amounts for this. You're just tipping stuff in.

Does one have to measure everything? I mean, the recipe obviously calls for specific proportions um but i always say that the best thing is to make it according to taste so add you know a certain amount of each ingredient build the drink and then taste it and see what's missing so you know if you think laterally like a cook for example who's always tasting a sauce or a stew um adding a little bit of extra sweetness to the drink might offset some of the bitterness. Adding more lemon juice or clementine juice

would add a bit more freshness to it. So if you think along the lines of someone who's creating a dish, when you create a cocktail, they're exactly the same principles. So finding that right balance is really important. And often recipes can be too prescriptive in that direction because not everyone has a... Like like I have quite a sour palate. I like sour, tangy things, but not everyone does. So the best thing is to kind of use that as a formula to start with and then adjust as necessary.

So when does the tea go in? So the tea is going in now. We've got our infused tea, which is quite a lovely pale kind of pale golden color you can obviously You can obviously make it darker by adding more tea But the risk is that you kind of overwhelm the flavors of the punch if you have too much tea So that's gone in there and I will do also some lemon and some and some clementine very festive flavors, so I'm going to actually grate some of the clementine zest into it.

So the great thing about one of these little microplane graters is that they really get your citrus zest very fine. So it's perfect for drinks like this, where you're not kind of chomping away at big slices of citrus peel. And will you put the peel of the lemon in as well? Or a slice of the lemon? Well we could put a slice in just for a more decorative effect but that smell that kind of wonderful sort of citrus smell that comes out so uplifting. I'm particularly drawn to these flavors at this time of year I think as most of us are because you know we need a bit of cheering up especially now that it's getting dark at

four o'clock in the afternoon. And then we've got some lemon juice. Let's squeeze that in. I mean, lemon is just one of those ingredients that you should always have in your kitchen. It's a lifesaver for so many things, both as a cook and as a drinks enthusiast. It helps to lift any drink beyond the sum of its parts. And we're nearly there with this one then, aren't we?

We're nearly there. I'm going to have to say to you, I am prepared to sniff this drink and describe what it smells like. Because I've got a very long dare head, I'm not going to taste it. And it has to be said, a lot of people these days don't drink alcohol anymore. Why do you suppose that trend has become so prevalent? Well, that's an excellent question. I mean, certainly, I realise I say this as someone who's just made a punch, but I'm actually a moderate drinker. I very often will just have one drink if I go out. And sometimes I choose not to have an alcoholic drink. And I think

drinking habits have changed quite dramatically in recent years, particularly amongst younger people who, for whatever reason, feel like they can't afford necessarily to have a hangover the next day, or they just want to feel more clear-headed. I mean, we know the health effects, obviously, of too much alcohol in our bodies. You know, it's not great for our liver, for well-being for various illnesses that might develop in life so i think part of it is that people are more health conscious but also sometimes you just don't feel like it it's not you know you don't have to have a good time you don't have to have a drink to have a good time and i think you can have a non-alcoholic drink and be just as jolly you have set up a group for women who enjoy whiskey and other spirits why i think you call it Spirited Women.

That's right. Yes, we have. I mean, it's a very informal network of gals who like to get together over a well-crafted drink. And it doesn't have to be whisky, although we obviously like to encourage women to get into whisky. Women are the fastest-growing demographic for whisky drinking, which is considered for a long time a man's drink. But really the idea is that women can get together in a very casual way,

not having to go down the sex and city route of sitting in cocktail bars and our high heels and our finery, but rather just you can literally show up in your pajamas and sit and have a drink together and talk about whatever we feel like. You know, we can talk about books that we've read or politics. I mean, ideally not politics, but if someone feels like they'd like to talk about it. So really, it's just a kind of environment for women to get together and just have a laugh and, you know, drink what they like. What about a non-alcoholic cocktail then? What sort of things would you put into that?

So a non-alcoholic cocktail, actually, there's so many options now. I mean, tea is a very good example of what you can do to give a bit of structure to a drink, but there are lots and lots of non-alcoholic distilled spirits available now for those who decide not to drink alcohol. And, you know, you can get them in sort of bitter flavours, you can get them in kind of floral, herbal, citrus flavours. So there's actually a lot more available for those who choose not to drink anymore.

And I think also as a host, as a considerate host, it's a nice gesture to those who are coming to your festive gathering to offer them a delicious non-alcoholic drink alongside the punch that you might have made, whether it's a spirited punch or otherwise. So you put some tea in a glass there. What else are you going to put into my non-alcoholic cup? So, well, would you mind terribly if I had a tiny bit of Angostura bitters? Is there alcohol in that? There's a small amount, but I'm adding a drop. Tiny, tiny. Just a drop.

It's so minuscule, you won't notice it. So we're going to give that a stir. Lots of ice. Lots of ice. Lots of ice. Nice chilled drink. And then I'm going to also add the same trick as I did with the punch. I'm going to add some of the clementine zest. And then we'll put in a lemon slice as well for that extra citrus freshness.

There we go. And you can also add some bitters to this, some non-alcoholic bitters, obviously, if you choose to, if you want to give it a little bit of extra oomph. Just no Campari and no whisky. No whisky and no Campari. Absolutely no whisky. I have had a sniff of the one with the oolong,

whisky and spice punch in it. It's a lovely, lovely red, and it smells very rich and very festive, but you very specially made me one with no alcohol in it. It's golden. It's clinky, obviously, because you put the ice in it. It smells lemony, orangey and here's a sip. It tastes really good.

It's spicy and it's perfect. I was talking to Senior Johansson about Christmas festive cocktails and the non-alcoholic one was particularly delicious and I'm still stone cold sober.

Do join me tomorrow for weekend Woman's Hour. Until then, bye bye. Henry Akeley disappeared from his home on the edge of Rendlesham Forest somewhere around the end of June 2019. They come every night now. The police don't believe me. Please, I just need you to get in touch. What we uncovered is a mystery that has sent us deep into England's past. To an area steeped in witchcraft, the occult, secret government operations.

Now we have multiple sites of five lights with a similar shape. And something that might indeed be altogether otherworldly. This is The Whisperer in Darkness. otherworldly. This is The Whisperer in Darkness. Available now on BBC Sounds. 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.