Woman's Hour - Israel-Gaza war, Monica Dolan, Kathryn Mannix

Episode Date: October 25, 2023

As the Israel-Gaza war continues, aid groups are calling for a ceasefire in Gaza as power shortages threaten the lives of vulnerable patients, including women and children. UN agencies have estimated that one-third of hospitals in Gaza and nearly two-thirds of primary health care clinics have had to shut due to damage or a lack of fuel. The Israeli government says Hamas is stock-piling thousands of litres of fuel. The biggest aid provider in Gaza, the UN, says its fuel will run out tonight, unless it gets fresh supplies - hospitals in Gaza are already limiting services to critical cases only. Emma Barnett hears from Save the Children's Soraya Ali, as well as women's voices from Gaza and Israel.Lizzi Larbalestier has cared for 139 seals in her home in Cornwall. She also helped set up a new seal hospital with the British Divers Marine Life Rescue, and has just won an animal action award from the International Fund for Animal Welfare.Actor Monica Dolan joins Emma to talk about starring in a new film about the undiscovered artist Audrey Amiss. Amiss was tipped for artistic greatness, but ended up cycling between mental hospitals and menial jobs for decades, and was sadly never exhibited, or recognised in her lifetime. Typist Artist Pirate King comes out this Friday.What normally happens as someone dies? These questions and others are answered in a new short animation ‘Dying for Beginners’. Kathryn Mannix is a retired palliative care doctor, who’s made it her mission to demystify what happens as we die. She’s worked with Theos Think Tank to produce the video, and will also be giving their annual public lecture on the public understanding of dying at the Royal Society for Medicine on 1st November. Kathryn joins Emma.

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Emma Barnett and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Shortly, we will bring you women's voices from Gaza and Israel. We will also be hearing today from the actor Monica Dolan, she of W1A fame, about playing an undiscovered artist, Audrey Amis, who has quite the life story unknown until now. she of W1A fame, about playing an undiscovered artist, Audrey Amis, who has quite the life story unknown until now. Catherine Mannix, the former palliative care doctor,

will be joining me to talk about a new film she has made about the process of natural death, something she says few of us know about, unlike our foremothers. And I'll be talking to the woman who nursed 139 injured seal pups in her own home. Yes, and just won an award for her rather incredible work. All that to come. But it is one of the leading stories in the papers today I want to draw your attention to. The Equality and Human Rights Commission, the human rights watchdog responsible for enforcing the Equality Act, something of course we've talked a lot about here on Woman's Hour,

has closed its internal investigation into its chair, Baroness Kishwa Faulkner, after the government ordered a review into how a series of complaints about her by her colleagues were handled. Critics have said the initial complaints were ideologically motivated because of her position on trans rights. We have invited Kishwa, who has always denied any wrongdoing, onto Woman's Hour, and I do hope she'll take us up on that offer

in the not-too-distant future. I look forward to that interview. But a striking element of this story is the amount of time the investigation went on. Eight months, the best part of a year. Most days, there are stories in the papers, I read most of them most days, about investigations or tribunals or processes that drag on and on. And it is a sorry truth, as someone who does read the papers for a living and also surrounded by a team of

producers who are looking across for the best and most important stories to bring you each day, is that regularly there are stories about women taking their bosses to court over some form of discrimination. Take today Zoe Young, a customer service worker who refused to come into the office during a COVID outbreak because she was pregnant, who has won her case and a discrimination payout. There are also those, when I'm talking about women, who have made complaints about those that they work for and the conduct of those individuals. What I wanted to ask about today and give you the opportunity to speak about is the process. The process that may have hung over you. How long for and why? Have you made a complaint? Have you been the subject of complaint? Have you tried to take your bosses on, your employers on, on account of perhaps you and something you couldn't have helped. Perhaps it was discrimination.

What was that like? How long did it go on for? How long did it take? And crucially, how did you emerge from it? Share what you feel you can. Do get in touch on 84844. That's the number to text. Text will be charged at your standard message rate.

On social media, it's at BBC Women's Hour. Or email me through the Women's Hour website. The number for WhatsApp, 03700 100 444. You can do a message or a voice note. Just check for those data charges because they may apply depending on your provider. Now, as the Israel-Gaza war continues into its 19th day, aid groups are calling for a ceasefire in Gaza as power

shortages threaten the lives of vulnerable patients, including women and children. UN agencies have estimated that a third of hospitals in Gaza and nearly two-thirds of primary health care clinics have had to shut due to damage or lack of fuel. The Israeli government says Hamas is stockpiling thousands of litres of fuel. The biggest aid provider in Gaza, the United Nations, says its fuel will run out tonight unless it gets fresh supplies and hospitals are already limiting services to critical cases only. Najla Shawa is among hundreds of thousands of people who left their homes in Gaza City and moved south after Israeli military warnings.

She and her two daughters, aged nine and six, are now in a house where 57 people are sheltering. Here's what she had to say to my colleagues on the Today programme earlier this morning. The past nights have been really difficult. There has been continuous tank shelling. Now, as I'm speaking, there is distant bombing. During the day, there are airstrikes. At night, we manage to sleep, but we sleep and wake up, sleep and wake up, and like every maybe 20 minutes or so.

Sometimes it becomes closer, so we go all hide in the room, because I sleep in the car outside. Food, it differs from place to another, because some shops were actually physically damaged, but there are still basic supplies running. The problem is cooking gas. It's very limited. We had two days of very limited or no bread. We did some baking, but we had not enough wood to have fire.

We found a nice lady who agreed to take some flour and bake for us a big batch. And we celebrated the bread yesterday. It was like a feast. We are totally dependent on our solar panel. We have one refrigerator on to keep it during the day. But the batteries are also not in the best shape. When your kids ask why this is happening, if they ask that, what can you say to them? I tell them that there is some injustice happening for generations and we have to bear with it.

And that's that's home. In the past couple of days, we were very down here and we were feeling really... that we really have no way to think what's coming next and how long we're going to be here. We can't believe it. We can't believe what we are doing, how we are setting up laundry, how we are setting up sleeping patterns, our food patterns,

how we are all this number of people living together. The hospitals are already not functioning. We are all worried that we will be hit and injured and will not be treated. You know, it's that level. It doesn't look hopeful. The situation doesn't look at all it's going to end. It's obvious looking at the broader picture. Before October 7th, Palestinians were suffering and nobody was paying attention. Nazha Shah was speaking to my colleagues about her experience and where she is on my colleagues on Today, I should say, and she's speaking from Gaza. Suraya Ali from the charity Save the Children joins me now on the line. Good morning. Good morning. Great to be here.

What is the situation you are hearing from your colleagues facing women and children specifically in Gaza? So the situation in Gaza right now is absolutely dire and getting worse. As we know, over 5,700 people have been killed and 62% of that are children and women. So we're talking about over 2,300 children killed right now. That's a horrendous number. And it equates to around one child killed every 13 minutes. And we know over 1,000 women killed. So the situation is absolutely dire. We talked in terms of the figures that you're attributing with the death toll there, just to say on the latest that it's almost 5,800 people, and that's according to the

health ministry in Gaza. You're talking, of course, to those you work with who are trying to help. What are they saying to you? So our colleagues on the ground are absolutely terrified. Like ordinary civilians, they've had to flee their homes. Just like the caller that you had on, they are, you know, holed up in a room, sometimes with 30, 40 people in a room. We're talking about having to ration water because there's a lack of safe, clean drinking water. They're rationing food and mothers are sat there with their children in their arms, not knowing what they can say, not knowing how to comfort them because they are still under the threat of bombardment. And nobody can be expected to live if there's a threat to life and if there's threat to bombardment. So we absolutely need all

parties to agree to a ceasefire. The situation with hospitals at the moment and the need for fuel, what are your colleagues saying about that and their ability to access supplies in that respect? So fuel supplies are running dangerously low. As we know, hospitals are saying they only have a day or two left of fuel. And just to put that in real terms, that means that hospitals are not sure if they're able to keep on life-saving machines, people, babies on life support. That's what we're talking about. So they're running out of the most basic supplies in Gaza. So it's absolutely imperative that aid is able to get in quickly and safely. This is life-saving aid we're talking about.

And from women who are expecting children, there has also been some detail around that. I don't know what you're able to say from those that you're talking to. Yes. So as we know from the UN figures, I believe it was over 5,500 pregnant women were due to give birth in Gaza in the coming month. And that situation is just unimaginable. Imagine being a pregnant woman in that situation, being under bombardment with a threat to life, and also having to ration water as a pregnant woman. We know the health risks of that. We know the danger of that. And we also know that the terror this is causing children. Children are always the most vulnerable in every conflict and with every single bullet and every airstrike a child's sense of security is really ripped away from them and it puts mothers in an unimaginable situation. In terms of where the work

is at the moment where your colleagues are focusing their energies, what are the focuses right now and what is able to be done? So right now, Save the Children has two trucks on the Rafah crossing the border with Egypt ready to go in and deliver aid. As for our colleagues in Gaza, just like ordinary civilians, you know, they've had to flee their homes. We're talking about 1.4 million people displaced. Right now, we've got limited contact with them because of the lack of electricity. But I think it's, you know, nobody can be expected to deliver aid and administer aid if there is a threat to life. And unless a ceasefire is agreed to, nobody can safely deliver the aid that is so desperately needed right now. You're not able to make that much contact or you are at the moment? Just trying to understand when

you last spoke to individuals and what they have been saying to you because we've of course just heard from Najla Sharwar but I didn't know when you were last able to talk to anybody. Of course so limited contact we're still able to talk to them. We're always checking in. Right now, all of our colleagues are accounted for, but every single colleague has lost either a family member or a friend. We're constantly talking to them. We're constantly trying to check in. Of course, they're conserving their battery because of a lack of electricity, but they let us know they're alive and they let us know that right now the situation is dire. They're still rationing water, food, there's pop-up shelters and they're trying to find safe spaces to shelter wherever they can.

So that's why it's essential that sacred civilian safe spaces like schools and hospitals where people like our colleagues are sheltering cannot be targeted and must not be targeted during this fighting. And is there an understanding or is there a faith that those places are safe? Or what is the latest on that? Well, I think nowhere is safe while there's active fighting. So that's why we need all parties to firstly agree to a ceasefire, but also to agree to adhere to international humanitarian law.

So these are the laws that govern fighting and they ensure that hospitals and civilian spaces like schools are not targeted. And what we're seeing right now is that people are sheltering in any space they can, but they're not sure where is safe. So the only answer to that is a ceasefire. The Israel military has said and would say it is not targeting hospitals and that Hamas makes those targets. And we have also seen what was initially confusion and then reports of where to attribute the particular rocket into that hospital last week. That's your experience of talking to those that you are working with at this time.

And as we mentioned about UN agencies also making similar calls about how to get fuel, how to help those around. I should say alongside the Gazans, over 200 Israeli hostages are still being held by Hamas, the group which the UK government and other governments around the world designate as a terrorist organisation in Gaza. You're just listening to Saraya Ali there from the charity Save the Children. The Israeli military say the number of hostages includes 20 children. Among those believed to have been

kidnapped is an Israeli mother along with her three-year-old son and nine-month old baby. Hamas also seized elderly women. Yecheved Lifshitz is an 85-year-old grandmother and peace activist who was released by Hamas on Monday. I'm sure you will have seen the images and heard some of her words yesterday

as she was speaking to the media. She told journalists about her horrific ordeal with her daughter, who lives here in London, translating her words into English. She's with her mother in Israel. And we should say that her elderly husband is still missing, presumed to be a hostage. My mum is saying that she was taken on the back of a motorbike with her legs on one side and her head on another side,

that she was taken through the ploughed fields with a man on one side and a man behind her, and that while she was being taken, she was hit by sticks by Shabab people until they reached the tunnels. There, they walked for a few kilometres on the wet ground. There are a huge network of tunnels underneath. It looks like a spider web. That's Sharon Lifshitz, the daughter of Yecheved Lifshitz, who managed to survive being taken hostage by Hamas,

an 85-year-old grandmother and peace activist. They're talking through her daughter and describing surviving and her experience in the Hamas tunnels in Gaza. Your messages have been coming in as well throughout that discussion, but also will, I'm sure, continue for whatever else we talk about in today's programme. So please do feel free to contribute. But just before we began that update and that particular insight and those insights, I did ask you about whether you yourself have ever been involved in a process or taken on those around you and how long that process has taken.

This is after reports today around the Equality Watchdog, an investigation that was going on, an internal investigation into the chair of that watchdog, Baroness Kishore Faulkner, which has been closed. There's one here, and we were just struck, of course, because we do a lot of these stories here on Women's Hour about when women are in the middle of these stories. We were just struck how many there seem to be most days.

And they're not all the same by any stretch, but also how long they take. And there's a message here that says, my ex-employer suspended me from my job on the 31st of January this year without any warning. It since transpires to get rid of me, so a new executive director could bring in her team of friends. I ended up signing a compromise agreement, so I didn't have a dismissal on my file meaning I can't take them to tribunal. It's been one of the worst

years of my life. I'm out of work despite applying for jobs consistently over a whole year. I feel absolutely bereft after seven years in my job and I have never experienced anything like this in my career. No name on that message, but an insight into the stress, but also how long something can go on for and how much it can take a toll and hang over you. Thank you for trusting us with that. Another one, I took my school and local authority to employment tribunal in 1997. The case, including compensation, concluded in September 1999. That's two years of your life, isn't it? I represented myself, all while caring for my young daughter who was six months old when it started.

The case took all my emotional and mental energy. I lost earnings, not least because the headteacher refused at one point to give me a reference. By the end, I was exhausted and in debt. Two decades on, I'm wary of the workplace and I've chosen to work for myself. That is, I suppose, one way to have some element of control. Again, no name on that message.

You do not have to give your name. Please do get in touch, though. And thank you very much for your messages. Keep them coming in. And you can also send an email through the Women's Hour website. Now, can you imagine tending to more than 100 injured seal pups in your home? That is what my next guest apparently did. I definitely want to hear more about this.

And has set up a new sea hospital with the British Divers Marine Life Rescue. And as much as anything else, what at the moment has just won an award? Welcome to Women's Hour, Lizzie Labalstier. Lizzie, good morning. Welcome to the programme and congratulations on your award. Good morning and thank you very much. It's a real honour to accept the award on behalf of all our volunteers.

We have a big group of volunteers that are involved, as you might. Yes, I should say the award is the International Fund for Animal Welfare and it's the Animal Action Award. That's right. and there were some amazing organizations represented so please do have a look at their website because there were lots of different charities involved and all doing amazing work and i think people should and maybe

we could we could link to a few of those but can i focus on you because i did mention and i think you know the power of video calls now i can see a bit into your home where you are. Tell me where you live. It looks like a regular home. And I'm now trying to imagine 139 injured seal pups in your living room. OK, so I live in Perranporth. It sounds a little bit more impressive than it was. We didn't have all 139 at the same time okay we had a maximum of six one time I mean otherwise we'd have a massive house and that would be pretty chaotic but between September and May during one of the seal pup seasons we were lucky enough to be the host for Cornwall Seal Hospital

and that was before we had our purpose-built facility and it's important to say other volunteers had done that in the past so over the last seven years prior to that, seal pups had been housed in all sorts of places because we just didn't have facilities at the time. But we were lucky to have them in our garage and Airbnb. And they'd come in the garage, not in the living room, as I blithely put it. I mean, I'm just trying to picture the scene. There were four in the garage and two at one point three in our air bed and breakfast.

So we had our standard Airbnb tarpaulin out and made into a mini extension for our seal hospital. So, yes, they certainly were in the home, much to my husband's joy because he said four maximum, four maximum. And they need to stay in the garage. And then obviously as the season evolved, they expanded slightly. I'm so sorry to ask this. I promise we're going to keep going on about the amazing work. But just a question. And I can't believe I'm asking these two days on the truck. Because yesterday we had a discussion about hot yoga. And I did ask about the smell of that.

But I do have to ask again. The smell? Does your husband have a point? Well, randomly, yes. I thought it would never smell the same again. And our garage certainly has never smelled quite the same. But the Airbnb, we haven't had any complaints since. So fingers crossed we've managed to completely decontaminate it.

There was a lot of tarpaulin involved. There was a lot of tarpaulin. I think, you know, on your website, wherever you advertise your rental, you might have to say it's got a unique odour and we care very much about animals. In all seriousness, though, you've been doing some incredibly important work, a lot of it voluntary. Why do you do what you do? What drives you, Lizzie? So much like anybody that might consider themselves a coastal person I absolutely love the ocean and and therefore there are lots of us that get involved in things like beach cleaning those sorts of things where it's actually removing items of litter but I love animals and and most of us do and seals are really

charismatic and dolphins too and when I found out about British Divers Marine Life Rescue it was so inspiring the work that they were doing and then to find out that anybody can get involved in this was amazing so um so literally i could not get involved and i've just been completely hooked since and we have really dedicated team and they're from all walks of life as well so all ages all different careers or non-careers there's such a mixture of people that get involved in this, that you not only do you get the joy of helping marine life, you've also got this real sense of community, which is beautiful. And how, the injured seal pups, do they make a good recovery? How does

that work? Because there'll be those, I'm sure, who literally want to know what happened. So we're really lucky that grey seals, which is predominantly the type of seal that we have in Cornwall, are pretty robust and they do respond very well to rehabilitation. So obviously we don't save every single animal that comes into our care and we do lose some, but predominantly we have a really high success rate. And even when an animal doesn't survive, we know that everything that we're doing is to reduce its suffering so rather than it having a long drawn out end to its life it could well be that through through our care we've ended it allowed it to leave with grace leave the world with grace so so yeah it's light and shade you have a lot it's an emotional

roller coaster but again we have real support network with each other that we can check in with each other if perhaps an animal doesn't make it. But it's such a joy to be in the ocean. I mean, that's amazing. Yes, that must be. And not least for your husband when they've been in your house. How do they get injured, though? What's been happening and why do they need such help? So pretty much every challenge that our seal pups have is human related. So whether that is disturbance, so people can be, they're so fascinated, people want to get close. So it can be disturbance of seal pups where people just get too close and

the mum gets spooked. So they end up getting separated from their mums. That can happen with really young seals. But also climate change is having a real impact. So at the time that our seal pups are at that stage where they're leaving their mums, which is only at three weeks old, they have to leave their mums and become seals. At that point in time, that tends to be the type of year that we're getting lots and lots of storm conditions. So they're having to fight bigger swell whilst learning how to hunt for themselves and fend for themselves. So they get caught up in that swell, they get malnourished, they get totally exhausted, dehydrated, get bashed up against rocks, all sorts of challenges that they face that appear to be indirectly linked to us, but it's certainly climate change related. And then we have things like net entanglements.

And currently one of our things we're focusing on is those flying rings, the frisbees that have a gap in the middle of them. That's a big focus for ourselves at British Divers Marine Life Rescue and Cornwall Seal Group Research Trust, because those are fascinating to seals, but they can get them caught on their necks. So those flying rings are absolutely horrendous for marine life. So lots of different dangers to navigate. Yes. And we talked about the newAL hospital with British Divers Marine Life Rescue it's been reported that the location is secret why is that? So we don't publicise our

location because it's not a visitor centre so generally we're dealing with SEAL pups straight after rescue they're in that critical phase where they require quite a lot of care they're really poorly so we're looking for privacy and not not visitors coming in in and out of their space they require a lot of rest and they require a lot of care at that time so we get them through those initial stages of rehabilitation then they go on to larger rehab centres such as RSPCA West Hatch and Cornwall Seal Sanctuary so lots of the pups that you see go through those though through those rehabilitation centres will have potentially been at our hospital first, gaining their initial critical care. And it's just about giving them some space and quiet to heal.

What does this mean to you, winning this award? I know you work with a lot of people and you've done the important thing of pointing to their work and making sure people know that and there is this community. But it is something you personally feel very passionate about that's really clear and it obviously gives a lot to you yeah it's um it's one of those strange things it's deeply humbling one of my fellow volunteers actually nominated me a lady called vanessa lever so really grateful for her for nominating me and also enabling us to shed a spotlight on British Divers Marine Life Rescue and then there's that that sense of well nothing happens without a team so it's lovely and it's amazing and I'm really grateful to I4 as well and at the same time we have 2,500 volunteers across the UK

and a lot of volunteers that work within our hospital so I so it's it's a beautiful thing and it's also an opportunity to say thank you to all of those people for all the work that they do. Well, it's also an opportunity for us to have you on Woman's Hour. So Lizzie, that was a great added bonus for us. All the best with it. Good luck with the smell and with the new hospital. And I'll let you get back to your important work. Thank you so much. Lovely to talk to you there. It's a very important one and also that sense of community. You possibly can relate to that with something you do in volunteering.

You tell me, the number you need is 84844. Another message here that's just come in, this is from an experienced investigator for the NHS. We've been talking about how long processes can hang over you and change your life in the experience. It says, I have done many investigations, a lot of them complex, alleging bullying and harassment, and I have witnessed the impact of long drawn out processes on individuals. Many leave their position or go off on long term sick during the investigation. Some have told me that the process is nearly as bad or worse than the actual incidents that caused them to complain. There were very long delays for tribunals during COVID. That's fascinating. I hadn't even thought about that. And yes, we have covered many of those cases, not anywhere near the amount there will be,

but with regard to the NHS. And I do hear that from people, you know, it being in their life and it hanging over them is far worse than the initial. So thank you for messaging in, whoever that is. Again, no name, but you don't have to put your name and sharing that with us because I had a feeling that some of the experiences may reflect that. But it's very interesting to hear from an investigator. Let me remind you of a story we covered last week here on Woman's Hour. It seemed to get you going. Of course, not that many phone calls, as you'll understand why. A survey of 18 to 24 year olds-olds found that half of those questioned

don't answer the phone to their parents, and a third feel awkward, generally speaking, on the phone. 17-year-old Iona Cook-McIntosh was on the programme, and just before that, writer and comedian Helen Thorne. It feels like talking on the phone is the worst thing. There's such anxiety around it. I think it's so different to me. I'm 44. Getting a phone call was the most exciting thing. I'm one of five children. We used to elbow each other in the hall to get there. And then, you know, you would talk on the phone all night

to friends and it was delicious. You know, you talk about gossip, what happened at school. And now it's like the dreaded phone call. I think it's really funny the word, can we talk, is so loaded now because now it's associated with like, I don't know, breaking up a relationship or that you're going to get fired. It has been completely switched around. I do feel taken aback when people are trying to contact me when I'm in my house. I'm like, oh, but I'm at home. Like I'm kind of, I've logged off. It's like, it's not time for me to chat anymore.

I'm shocked because I'm like, why do you have access to me 24-7? I do feel very anxious when someone's like, can we talk or can we call? I feel like, oh, I'm about to have a big moment, like something's about to happen. It does feel like a doom thing. Yeah, exactly. You're like, why do they want to talk to me? But I know people in my generation, so many people would prefer an email or like, can we just talk? And then we'll get this sort of sorted in five minutes. You can solve so much, so many things. That's why I like it so quick.

It's such an art is a good conversation. Like, you know, you don't want to be on the phone for six hours. But I think listening to people, properly listening, not a voice note, but listening and responding is really important. The writer and comedian Helen Thorne and 17-year-old Iona Cook-McIntosh speaking to me in real life last week, not on the telephone. Don't worry. I hope we're all getting a bit braver, it seems, if you do have that affliction, or those who are like me and love the telephone.

You know, let's have a... 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's 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. Ciao.

Joining me now though in the studio is the actor Monica Dolan. You may know her from the series W1A, which parodies a corporation I can't possibly name, the BBC. She also played Rose West in the TV drama, very powerfully, Appropriate Adult, but she is now starring in a new film called Typist Artist, Pirate King, a great title, as the undiscovered artist Audrey Amis.

Amis was tipped for artistic greatness, but ended up between mental hospitals and doing menial jobs for decades and sadly was never exhibited or recognised in her lifetime. Could that be about to change? Monica Dolan, good morning. Good morning. I definitely want to get onto that, and that's what we're going to talk about. But when you walked in, I was in the luxury, which I don't have very often on a live programme, of having a brief 10-second conversation with you.

And this studio, which is now the Woman's Hour studio, you haven't been here for a while. I haven't been here for a while. I actually was interviewed by Woman's Hour, but it was during COVID. And so that was over the phone. But the first time I was here, and I think the only time I was here, was filming my first ever scene of W1A and standing and fighting Jessica Hines

outside that window, holding up a sign saying Carol Vorderman. So yeah, while murray was in here talking to hugh bonneville so and that that yeah that was the first very first scene that i filmed of the whole series so i'm really happy this is deep this is bringing back good memories of parodying the exact place we sit well it always feels um i probably shouldn't say this but it always feels feels like a bit of a game being at the BBC. It doesn't feel like a serious place to me, really. Well, let's play the game. It feels like a set.

Let's play the game and see where we go. I'm up for this. On your latest project, though, let's talk about it. I did say, what a title, first of all, the film. Typist, Artist, Pirate King. Why is it called that? Yeah, it's a great title. And actually, it's Audrey Amos who gave us the title. So the Wellcome Trust had a huge archive of her work and her diaries and sort of a whole load of material in her thoughts that were found in her flat. And one of the things that was found was her passport. And you used to have to, on your passport, you used to have to put your occupation.

And Audrey Amis had put typist, artist, pirate king. So I think Carol Morley thought, thank you very much. I've got the title of my film. Yes, the writer and the person who did all this research, I should say. Six years worth. It's an incredible amount of work that's gone into this. Yes.

Audrey, though, to get a bit more of an understanding as to why she might write that on her passport. Where was she from? What do we know about her? So she was brought up in Sunderland and she was considered a really exceptional artist from a very young age. And, you know, her sister Dorothy in the film she talks about her being a high achiever at many things actually that she could catch a ball that she could run faster than anyone else um so she studied at Sunderland Art College and she spent a year at the Royal Academy and then ran I think there was an incident and she ran into mental health problems and woke up in a mental institution.

So was in and out of mental institutions for the rest of her life, really. And but also trained as a typist. There's, you know, in in these institutions, there were I was given lots of videos of sort of occupational therapy and things that they did there. And so she trained as a typist and became a typist for Her Majesty's Government. But she was always very active in her art, engaged very much with the world, and loved the world, which I hope comes over in the film. And the art of what you have seen is, I mean, can you describe the style, the type of work that it was? Because, you know, people who had seen it were obviously taken with it, weren't they?

Well, what's really wonderful about the film is that the art pops up throughout the film. So it's, the film's kind of a road trip, but there are certain points and incidents where art of hers that relates to that will pop up. I think at the beginning, it was probably more conventional art, and certainly her sister Dorothy said that her early period was what she preferred

and then sort of became more conceptual, I think. But all of it's really, really responding to the world around her and she's very, very present, you know, in the smallest things, in the most mundane objects, she would find something beautiful or interesting. And, you know, that's what an artist does. They look at the world in a certain way and say to us, look at it like this and we go oh yeah or a new lens i don't understand lens on it yeah she died in 2013 and you've alluded to the um the digging into archives but

but how has her work come to light how have we got this story on the screen we've got carol morley to thank for it um so uh carol got a fellowship of the screenwriting fellowship um from the welcome trust and um i think they said what do you want to do and somebody told her about this woman who saved all of the rappers from everything she ever ate and annotated them and I think Carol thought I've got to find out who this woman is and um the I think Audrey's niece and nephew saved all of the material from her flat and really the welcome trust was uh categorizing it really under patient art and so what carol's done is is sort of gone into it all i got digital books and books of um material to look at and um you know carol's sort of trying to bring her to to life and to the world as an artist, really, and just for her to be recognised,

which I think is what Audrey always wanted. Let's listen to a clip. This is where you're persuading your community psychiatric nurse, played by Kelly MacDonald, to take you to an art gallery. You're just like my sister. You know what my report said in my student days? Outstanding. A rare artist. Take me to the gallery. It's a matter of urgency.

Enough drama-rama. Catch the bus. You love a bus ride. I had a bag of my sketches stolen on the bus once. Well, treat yourself to a taxi, then. Last time I was in a taxi, I was mistaken for a prostitute. What about your sister? Can't she take you? She's in Yorkshire,

200 miles away. She's not going to gallivant down here. She hasn't wanted to see me for six years. You should know that from the files. I've had a lot on my mind, Audrey.

As have I. She does experience an altered reality. The film mostly stays in conventional reality, so you're having to have to imagine as the viewer what she's seeing and trying to go along with that yeah one of the things that the film does really well I think is in order for us to discover and in order for her

past life to be uncovered and for us to understand her rather than being very conventional and doing it in flashbacks it explores it through her mental health so I think it's called delusional identification syndrome where you delusional misidentification I'm sorry no no where where you where you see somebody you might somebody perhaps you've never met but you recognize them as somebody from your real life and your past life so as she goes on this road movie with um Sandra Panzer who drives her she meets all of these different people identifies them as people from her life and then I think that's that's how we discover her life and what's happened to her before and what her journey's been like, really. What have you taken from creating this character or recreating this real life?

You know, what have you learned? Because there's a lot in there, isn't there, about, you know, somebody being overlooked and then how we treat those with mental health issues and how that may have changed as well I suppose what I've taken is that um there are many different realities uh certainly Audrey thought that hers was no less valid than anyone else's everyone has a different way of looking at the world and there's not necessarily the truth there's a truth and you know, that can be a perspective. Or I suppose I'd say to everyone to have confidence in the way that they look at the world, because just because it's not the same as how other people look at the world

doesn't mean it isn't valid or, you know, right and wrong are kind of overrated, really. It's, yeah, I suppose move forward with how you see the world and find ways to help other people experience how you experience the world. And that's how we get art. I mean, it's a big performance from you in terms of verbally, physically, all of that. It must have been quite an intense experience. Well, she talks such a lot.

Isn't that good in your line of work a lot of script it it's it's great but we only had yeah i mean it's wonderful but we only had 26 days to film it and also uh because of covid and sort of doing other other thing i mean i i was i think one of the very lucky because i worked sort of pretty much all the way through COVID but um yeah there were lots and lots of lines and sort of so at the weekend usually we'd get two days off so at the weekend I think okay I think I've got my head around the beginning of the week Monday Tuesday and then I'll learn the rest as I go along and by Friday I was like well yeah I don't really know what I'm saying but um but I also had to be really really know what I'm saying but I also

had to be really really specific and I do passionately believe with I passionately believe that with a writer it's important to mind what they've written and say it exactly because your rhythms or your way

of expressing yourself aren't necessarily as interesting as theirs and not what they've chosen to do so with Audrey many of the lines come from her diaries and so they had to be exact um I could you know I couldn't sort of paraphrase and I wouldn't want to but um also when you're writing you're kind of in a different register than when you're speaking to somebody else so it you know it's a matter of making that work as well do you keep a diary oh i'm not i'm not very committed i mean you know i'll go through periods of kind of in the mornings maybe writing a few pages or it's good to write in the mornings because you're you're so

close to your subconscious so So, you know. I've always tried to do it at night. Maybe that's where I'm going wrong because I'm too tired now. So it just never happens. So it sort of trails off. Yes, and I tend to write when I'm the most unhappy. So, you know, everyone around me knows

if the diary's back out, things aren't good. But it's an interesting thing to look at how people's language and how they express themselves in a space like a diary, which isn't meant for an audience. It's always quite a thing for those around. No, and also it's not necessarily, you know, if you're acting something, it needs to be active

and it's not necessarily very active when you, it can be quite reflective when you write something. I'm going to say the name again of the artist. We sometimes have this, you've been talking for ages and you haven't said the name again. It's Audrey Amos. No, no, not you, me. That's my job.

And I say that name because and just to finish our time together because do you think this film might mean that Audrey Amis gets the recognition finally as an artist I hope so yes I mean there's um hopefully there's going to be an exhibition in Sunderland and I think there's an online exhibition with um that the with the Welcome Trust and um I think that the just the way that her art pops up in the film and it's so, you can see so beautifully and experience so beautifully the way that she thinks. So I'm sort of hoping that people fall in love with it

and in love with her a bit. What's next work-wise? Anything with fewer words or? Oh, well, I've been doing, so I spent the summer doing a piece of four episodes about the post office scandal. So that's cool. I think it's still called Mr. Bates versus the post office. And I've just finished filming Sherwood, too, which was a great experience.

Really wonderful actors on that. I loved working with Lorraine Ashbourne and Chrissie Bottomley. We were stuck in a car for quite a long time. There are worse people to be stuck in a car with. Indeed, all the best with that. It was good to have you on, whether you're parodying us or part of us or talking about your project. Monica Dolan.

The film is called Typist Artist Pirate King and it's out in cinemas this Friday. Thank you for your messages that have continued to come in. This is about the processes that can hang over you and the effect that they can have on you. This is off the back of an investigation being closed at the Equality Watchdog after eight months. One message here says, I raised a complaint against a housing association. Whilst I was successful, the retaliation is horrendous, including three threats of legal action. And this continues 16 years on. This is beyond anything I could have ever imagined when I entered into shared ownership housing, which was sold as a way to get onto the

property ladder. Thank you for that message. I'm so sorry you're in this situation. Another one here. I'm an HR director with 30 plus years experience who has raised a discrimination complaint against a senior manager a few months ago. The company has made every attempt to bury me in a Kafkaesque bureaucracy. As someone very familiar with the steps of the dance, I have found it irksome, yet slightly amusing, as I am lucky enough to have the time, resources and skills to spend the next year or so prioritising this, which not everyone can do. This system is stacked against the complainant. So it's very fascinating to hear from those who are now, I mean, in this case, having the experience of having handled complaints,

but now having to make a complaint, navigate these sorts of systems, labyrinthine, bureaucratic, Kafkaesque, these are the words that you don't necessarily think about, perhaps even when you're a bit more idealistic and naive about these things, about how these things might work. But they seem to always, the thing they have in common, no matter the context, which can all be very different, is the amount of time they take. So keep those messages coming in. We certainly have time to hear from you, as we always do. And these messages are fascinating. Fascinating indeed.

Keep them coming in. My next guest, though, spent 30 years working as a palliative care doctor and is now a best-selling author on the subject. Dr Catherine Mannix has now made a new animated film trying to explain what happens during a natural death, which happens to most of us, I should say, compared to some of the newspaper headlines and the more extreme stories of how people die,

and is dedicated to trying to demystify death and remove our fear. Dr. Catherine Mannix, good morning. Good morning. Thanks for inviting me. I've watched the animation, just over four minutes this morning, and it's very peaceful. It's quite calm, and your voice is there, and you've scripted it and worked with those who've made it with you. Why did you want to put something like this out there in the world because i know you've written and you give lectures but why this i think this is a really accessible way of helping people with a small enough soundbite and so beautifully illustrated by emily down to talk about something that i think

people are just afraid to go there in case it becomes unbearable at some point. So rather than trying to attend a lecture or read a chunky book, here's four minutes that's just gorgeous. And actually, I think it will carry people through to the very end, at the end of which they'll think, oh, do you know what? If I've sat at a deathbed, that explains what I saw. And if I haven't done that yet, then I'll be ready. I think it's interesting as well because it made me think about death differently while watching it, not least some of the facts I didn't know, which we'll get to. But it made me think about my own, you know, as opposed to,

I think when we often think about death, if we think about it at all, we don't like to put it in a box marked, I don't want to go there until I have to. We think about those around us that we couldn't bear to lose. But our knowledge of what actually happens, the process of dying is limited. That's absolutely right. And this video has actually been made by the Theos think tank because i'm giving their annual public lecture next week and they have done a piece of research coming out later this month but just looking at public understanding of dying attitudes what people know what sorts of things people worry about and that's in a long andable line of polling to try and find out and they all show very much the same thing,

that people are so afraid of thinking about their own deaths that they postpone it and then, of course, they need to prepare all in a rush. Yes, and the other thing that I said and I just want to contextualise because I'm so aware even on this programme what we've been talking about this morning you know there's a great deal of death in the news uh especially at the moment with what with what people are thinking about and hearing about but what you're talking about is natural death yeah I'm talking about I'm calling it ordinary dying the thing that will happen towards the very end of almost everybody's life about 10 or 12 percent of us will die suddenly you know in an accident or because something unexpected medically happens

very very quickly but the rest of us will go through a process of dying as our body closes down that is really the parallel to other bodily processes giving birth springs to mind and welcome back by the way thank you um so you know we know that when a woman is going through pregnancy and labor she's having a perfectly unique experience but the midwives and the obstetricians who attend those women just see the same thing that they always see same stages perhaps different lengths individualized because it's this person's pregnancy and birth at the very end of life it's very much a similar story there are phases and stages that are recognizable and what I found through kind of going public with it is that people get in touch with me to say,

do you know what, knowing that helped me to, somebody contacted me this morning, put it on Twitter as well, helped me not to call an ambulance when my person was dying, helped me to recognize that what was happening was normal and safe and we could be there. I've had feedback from people saying, you know, the nurses told us we'd been there for a long time at hospital with mum, why didn't we go home and get some sleep? And I looked at mum and I said to my sister, oh no, I've read a book about this, mum's breathing has changed, I don't think we should go. And had we left, we wouldn't have got home before mum died. So that understanding that our foremothers knew has become lost as dying doesn't take place at home anymore and has got medically complicated

by often unhelpful treatments so people aren't seeing that underlying process and understanding it in the way they used to and I'm simply trying to replace that lost wisdom I'm not saying anything new in fact I'm saying something very very old what is the process when you go what what does happen you mentioned about the breathing but what actually happens okay so it's an interesting thing that it doesn't seem to matter what the illness is towards the end of our lives. The process is very similar. And the first thing that's noticeable is just that the body starts to run out of energy, almost like, you know, when you've got an old mobile phone and the battery won't stay charged. And the charger is sleep, more than food, more

than drink. And in fact, a lot of dying people don't feel very hungry. And that's fine. They're not dying because they're not eating. They're not eating because their body is dying. So as time goes by, people gradually need more sleep to give them intervals of enough energy to think and do what they can. And gradually, people become not just asleep, but unconscious. Now, they don't recognize the difference. We know that we keep being unconscious because perhaps it was a visitor or a phone call.

It was medicine time. We couldn't wake them up. And when they wake up later, they can't understand why. You mustn't have tried hard enough. So the first important message is that it's about tiredness and weariness. And the second important message is that we don't know when we're unconscious. It's not a frightening mental state to be in. It's a state of not knowing anything.

Towards the very end of people's lives, they become unconscious all of the time. And the unconscious brain really only runs one circuit properly at that point, and that's the breathing circuit. So instead of our usual quiet breathing, the brain runs reflex breathing patterns that move backwards and forwards between quite deep breathing that gradually becomes more shallow and then back to the beginning again and backwards and forwards between periods quite slow breathing more rapid breathing back to slow breathing again

now if you haven't seen that before you might think that the person who is breathing perhaps fast but shallow is struggling to breathe or is panting or is uncomfortable. And if you haven't seen it before, you might think a person who's breathing deeply, slowly, breathing out through their vocal cords because they can't feel the back of their throat anymore, might make a noise and we might wonder whether they're sighing, groaning, trying to speak. So it's really important to help people to recognize that these are signs of deep unconsciousness. This person is quite safe. And then at the very end of somebody's life,

they'll be usually one of those slow breathing phases there'll be a breath out it just doesn't have another breath in after it which is not at all what hollywood has led us all to expect so the gentleness of it takes families by surprise now if we know that then there's a lot less to be afraid of than we would think from newspaper headlines we can't make it not be sad i mean it would be awful to think that there was nobody to be sad about our death in a way it's the it's the other side of the coin of having had loving relationships but to take away the fear i think is the mission that I'm on. It's very powerfully described, thank you. I think it's a really important message because of the research that's done

that shows the fear around it and also the lack of knowledge or the knowledge we've lost. I'm very struck by you talking about our foremothers knowing this and having laid bodies out and had death around them and having that experience very and had death around them and and having that experience very much in the home i just wanted to also say about hearing you talk in the animation about hearing being one of the last things to go and that's why people make playlists i am a big playlist compiler i haven't thought about that particular playlist yet but um

or for anyone else but it was it But it's really interesting to know that. So it's something that's been observed for centuries, that people seem to be more relaxed when the right voices or the right noises are around them. And let's remember that for some people, the right noise is silence. I will not want people playing even radio for me when it's my turn i think that's fair enough yeah um but you know until recently we just kind of thought from experience that that was true so you would see nurses talking to people who are deeply unconscious explaining they were about to move them um you would see we would encourage families

to talk to people but just before covid some great research came out of uh the university british columbia and vancouver where dying people patients in one of their hospice services agreed to join an experiment where they wore little electric probes just like sticky tape yes with chips in on on their scalps during their dying and the researchers had previously been in to meet them and thank them for joining in the research and to start the experiment by playing different noises to them and recording the brain waves that their brains made in response to that noise being heard. And then during their descent into unconsciousness and during their dying, these noises were played and the little chips on their scalp picked up the responses.

The numbers were only small, but almost all of the patients had the same response quite close to death in their brain that they've had when the initial experiment was done so our hunch down the years that the brain still hears seems to be true we still haven't done the experiments that tell us whether or not people make sense of what they're hearing or whether it's just the comfort of the tones of the voices in the room that's helpful. We certainly know that if people speak calmly and there isn't an edge of panic in their voices, then their dying person is likely to be calmer. We also know that when people come in and they're panicking and a bit shrill, that that sometimes impacts the person. Their breathing starts to change. Perhaps they start to rouse a little bit.

So panic is contagious. But calm is contagious too. So practicing, talking gently, calmly is a really important gift that we can give. Thank you so much for talking to us this morning. Dr. Catherine Mannix, and there's that video on the Think Tank website. She's also giving the annual public lecture, their annual public lecture on the understanding of dying at the Royal Society for Medicine on the 1st of November. Many messages just coming in with what you've just heard,

very powerful ones. And one says here, my husband died in a hospice, but was not unconscious. He said, I'm going, hurry up. He eyeballed me, holding his arms out to me and said, I love you, to which I replied, I love you, and held him as he took his two final breaths. I'll be back with you tomorrow at 10. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Thank you so much for your time. Join us again for the next one. Hi, I'm Christy Young and this is Young Again, my podcast for BBC Radio 4, where I get the chance to meet some of the world's most noteworthy and intriguing people and ask them the question, if you knew then what you know now, what would you tell yourself? I don't regret anything in my life. You don't? No.

No way. Oh, if we could only turn back. For me, well, I'd probably tell my younger self to slow down, not to be so judgmental, that all that worrying was wasted energy and that a perm is always a bad idea. This might be the best therapy I've had all year, by the way. Okay. And no charge. Join me for some frank and, I hope, fascinating exchanges. Perm is always a bad idea. This might be the best therapy I've had all year, by the way. So you never know. Join me for some frank and I hope fascinating exchanges.

Subscribe to Young Again 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.