Woman's Hour - Jessica Fellowes on the roaring twenties and comparisons with life today as come out of lockdown.

Episode Date: April 7, 2021

As we begin to emerge from lockdown, what are the similarities with the ‘Roaring 20s’ 100 years ago when Britain, having survived the Spanish Flu and the Great War, became a hedonistic playground? Will this time create a need for crowds, parties, touch, and an urge to ‘get out and enjoy life’? Jessica Fellowes, author of Mitford Murders crime series and companion books to the television series Downton Abbey, describes the Bright Young Things who were the influencers of their day, ‘Bachelor Girls’ who no longer needed to be married to enjoy independence, and gives parallels with how technology transformed lifestyles – from the labour saving devices that freed women from endless housework, to the internet which enables women to work from home today.The public’s understanding of dementia is generally very poor and the message we receive about it are overwhelmingly negative. Could fiction be the answer to showing a more rounded and factual portrayal? Emma Barnett talks to Wendy Mitchell, Anna Wharton and Professor Jan Oyebode.Presenter: Emma Barnett Producer: Lisa Jenkinson Studio Engineer: Tanzy Leitner

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. Good morning. Well, on one hand, we seem to be driving towards the big unlock and hoping for our lives to resume normality as soon as possible. But on the other, there are new realities which seem like they are going to be our norm, which weren't there before, whether it's face masks, hand sanitiser and the potential for Covid passports. The government has said Covid status certificates could be used at theatres, nightclubs, mass events like festivals from June onwards.

They could be used to prove if a person has been vaccinated, has had a recent negative test or has natural immunity. But they're controversial. And if put to a vote, the government will face opposition from its own benches, as well as Labour. On today's programme, we're going to explore the case for and against these, as well as any particular impact on women. But where do you come out on this? Would you mind carrying some form of card to show your status on COVID? Or does it go against your civil liberties? Or perhaps you think, well, my civil liberties have been infringed for the last year or so. This is just a part of getting back to normal. Where do you come out on this?

84844, please text Women's Hour on that. Text will be charged your standard message rate. Or let me know on social media at BBC Women's Hour or email us through our website. But this sort of card carrying flies in the face of another discussion we're having today on the programme around the roaring 20s. A hundred years ago when Britain, having survived the Spanish flu and the Great War, became a hedonistic playground, some are saying our 2020s, a hundred years on, could be the same. The writer Jessica Fellows will tell us more. She's extensively researched that period. And we're going to explore what life actually feels like

for those living with dementia. Twice as many women affected as men in the UK. And what role fiction can play in explaining it. That all to come on the programme. But please get your views in. We're ready to hear them because as lockdown eases, the government is considering COVID certification or COVID passports as a way of helping life get back to normal.

And not just us as citizens going to things, of course, business owners being able to open up shop, whatever that is. But how will that affect some groups such as pregnant women who aren't being routinely vaccinated? The current advice is that women should get the vaccine if they are a frontline health worker or if they have underlying health conditions that puts them at very high risk of serious complications from COVID. But this is an issue concerning a number of people, including Silky Carlo, the director of the civil liberties group, Big Brother Watch, who joins us now. Good morning.

Good morning. To start with the issue of pregnant women, this is something you're exploring with your legal team. Yes, because we're against Covid passports full stop, but we're really concerned that this is going to be not only divisive, but discriminatory. And I think what the government is doing is attempting to individualise risk without caring or really paying attention to the differential impact there'll be. And unsurprisingly, I do think pregnant women are a forgotten factor here. And we're seeing everything from vaccine passports, COVID passports being discussed to no jab, no job policies. And pregnant women are going to be on

the sharp end of this, whether that is because then you are less desirable as an employee, or even if it's that you start to be interrogated about these kinds of medical choices that you're making. And I think in rolling back that basic expectation of medical privacy and certainly privacy around your pregnancy status and employment, we're undoing decades of work that women have done to not be discriminated against at work because of their pregnancy. Sorry, but you're talking about, you know, in terms of their employment, nobody is saying that anybody's going to lose their job if they're not vaccinated. Well, I think that's a very real risk because there are some employers who are talking about no job no job policies i've debated for example um the head of pimlico plumbers and when i brought up the issue of pregnant women he said oh it's fine they can get the vaccine i mean and that that's on that's on national radio

sorry we should just say to be clear some pregnant women are having the vaccine and the issue is around routinely being offered and that again, again, is being looked at. It seems all the time there's regular updates on this. So we don't want to give out wrong information on that side of things. But your broader concern is around discrimination. Absolutely. And, you know, clinical trials are ongoing, as you said, and some women, some pregnant women are receiving the vaccine, but it's not routinely advised. And what's really important is that women retain the ability to make that choice as well. I mean, of course, let's all hope

that the clinical trials progress and that it's safe and effective for pregnant women to take. But it's still an individual choice that we each have to make. And we still don't want employers or in fact, you know, not just bosses, but bouncers or whoever, whatever kind of civilian enforcement scheme we're going to see around Covid passports, God forbid, if they go ahead. It shouldn't be incumbent on anyone to disclose medical decisions they make and certainly not their pregnancy status. And yet at the same time, we know that the prime minister is pushing forward with some form of this and himself described himself as a great libertarian. We are living in extraordinary times. And you could argue that for the last 12 months, people have been, you know, in the main, happy to trade what they consider their civil liberty for the health and safety of those around them. Isn't this just a short term measure that you might just have to suck up in an extraordinary moment? We have made so many sacrifices over the past

year. And God knows women have made so many sacrifices over the past year. But don't tell us that we've been through all of this to emerge out of lockdown into some kind of segregation checkpoint society, where yet again women are going to bear the brunt of these policies it's really poorly thought through it's a liberal it's unnecessary there's a very poor evidence base behind it are you only are you only talking about women in terms of the pregnancy side of things or are you also talking about other groups of women i think in with regards to vaccination, then of course, this is a particular concern for women. And I'm 31, so I'm of an age now where my friends are starting to tell me that in their workplaces,

their bosses are starting to ask questions that are clearly getting towards whether they're thinking about having children and so on. And so this is a really serious thing because, you know, if we are now going to a kind of environment where we are expected to show this COVID pass, this status, and it's wrapped up with some medical interventions that aren't even available to pregnant women, the alternative being that you're constantly being tested. So you're at yet another disadvantage compared to other people. It's just not right.

Sorry, I'm just challenging the idea that this is harder for women overall than it is for men. I understand the point about pregnancy. It's a very important point. But what about the idea, which we've already covered on Women's Hour several times, that younger women, some younger women, are not wanting to get the vaccine because of unfounded fears to do with fertility. If that then is your choice once it gets around to your age group and you do not go for it, then some people will have very little sympathy for people arguing against short term, what we hope will be short term vaccine passports.

Because if you don't go and do it, then on your head be it? I think we have to avoid a kind of culture in which we are casting suspicion or even being unkind to other people for the medical choices that they make. I'm of the view that with the right information and where healthcare is free and accessible and it reaches everyone, then individuals are best to make decisions about themselves, their lives and their own bodies. And that's particularly important for women, of course, if you're trying to conceive or if you're pregnant or if you're breastfeeding. I don't want to live in a society where we are stigmatising

other people for the choices that they make. But what I mean is you can argue again, it could incentivise people. You know, it could incentivise people to be in the same boat as others, to make other people feel safe. Because you talk about discrimination. I'm just looking through these messages while we're talking and what people are getting in touch to say. Bridget said, I absolutely support COVID passports. As someone who shielded my elderly father for the past year, I won't be going anywhere that won't require them until we have global immunity.

Another one here says, I'd happily carry a COVID safe card to show I'm safe and healthy. It'd be no different to my normal vaccination card, especially the yellow fever card. Pregnant women could be exempted and vaccinated after giving birth, it being illegal to discriminate against them what would you say to those messages i think there's a line between incentivization and then just authoritarianism and if we get to a place where we're coercing people and saying you have less freedoms less rights you're a greater

socio-economic disadvantage if you don't take this medical intervention if you don't have this vaccine um then that's a very very troubling thing and let's bear in mind the clinical trials are ongoing i mean let's be sensible about this um you know we need to have the evidence there we need to have the research there and then women need to be able to make that choice. Well, sorry, just to be clear, we do have the evidence there around fertility. I must be extremely clear there. And we're talking about pregnant women as well. And as a point just came in, pregnant women are not pregnant forever, just in response to what you were just saying specifically around that group. Younger people

don't seem to know that during the last war, we carried identity cards, reads this message. I still have mine. But Lee says, good morning. Card carrying is just a step to political ID cards. And, you know, am I only allowed to do something unless you vote right? Do you think that because of there has been, you're not alone in this opposition, Silke, talking to us from Big Brother Watch. Do you think with the opposition now we see from, we expect from the Labour benches, the Liberal Democrats, interestingly, the Scottish National Party, I think will be voting for this if it does go to a vote. But do you think with some of the concerns that we've seen across the political

spectrum, that this will be watered down now? Are you in any way calmed by that because of the concerns you have had? I'm not calmed, but I'm optimistic. I think we're going to beat this. I think this is inherently un-British. It's divisive. It's discriminatory. It's unnecessary. And we're going to fight it every step of the way. If we don't prevent these coming forwards, then we'll look at bringing a legal challenge. We're not going to accept living in a two-tier card-carrying society, especially one that discriminates against people and especially if it discriminates against women. We've got a message here from Jen. She's listening in North Wales.

Good morning. I'm currently breastfeeding my 18-month-old. If COVID passports were introduced, then this would massively discriminate against me just because I choose not to take the vaccine because of a lack of evidence in breastfeeding. Mothers, of course, the latest data, we should say, the latest guidance about all of that is on Public Health England and the other public health websites and also on the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

A message here, I certainly wouldn't want to carry a COVID-19 certificate. It's discriminatory. Where's the evidence that it will keep me safe? But I can't tell you how many we're also getting in saying I want to know I'm in a safe environment. My civil liberty, let me put this specifically to you, Silky, my civil liberty from Karen is to have the assurance of a safe environment. If flying to specific countries, I'd need proof of yellow fever vaccination, and she continues around what other proofs you need. How does that differ? You know, the fact that we already do need bits of paper and card in certain scenarios. Well, yellow fever is a high fatality disease and the certificate is needed where it's relevant to that geographic location. And that makes sense. And it's advised by the World Health Organization.

What isn't advised by the World Health Organization is actually even vaccination passports for international travel at the moment, let alone as an internal passport, which is what we're looking here with these draconian government plans. I have a lot of empathy with the listeners who are texting in and expressing concern about that. They're not alone. There are millions of people who are concerned about that. And as we're seeing, a huge cross-section in Parliament as well that we are in the precipice of one of the biggest civil liberties battles that we've had in in modern times this would change the way that we that we

live in in britain and if you're forced to do so what will you do if this goes through i'm not going to comply out of solidarity for everyone everyone who has less access to health care, for people that can't have a vaccination, for the people that will be disadvantaged by this, I think we have to know where to draw a line. We've put up with a lot over the last year. What about the business owner who can't open because he can't have a mass event?

Or she can't run whatever business she's been trying to run and they're on their knees? I think business, in my view, businesses are either safe to reopen or they're not safe. We can't individualise the risk and it doesn't make sense to do that. We need to look at this at a community level and a national level.

And once it's safe, it should be safe for everyone. But what if you can't know that and this is a short-term insurance policy? A final thought from you? We have to know that. We can't reopen if it's not... But that's the point, isn't it? That's about calculated risk and this is about mitigating risk. We do all sorts of things to mitigate risks all sorts of times and you have accepted, I presume you haven't broken lockdown or have you been breaking lockdown? No, of course I haven't. Well, there you go. You accepted that infringement on your civil liberty. I haven't accepted it, there you go. You accepted that infringement on your civil liberty.

I haven't accepted it at all, actually. If you know anything that Big Brother Watch has done over the last year. You accepted it by following it, is my point. We've fought every step of the way. And, you know, this is a proposal that does not come without its own risks. It's really important to recognise that there are huge risks with making this country a papers-carrying country that is segregated according to medical decisions that people make. And we've just explored, and I'm glad you have,

explored the ways in which this will affect pregnant women, but there are lots of other groups that will be on the sharp end of this as well. This will become a tool of oppression and a stick to beat people with through civilian enforcement. And I think it's something we should all be very worried about. Well, people are, and they are getting in touch. They've certainly got strong views. Thank you, Silky Carlo, director of the Civil Liberties Group,

Big Brother Watch. A message here, very clear. Please remember that those susceptible to death by COVID have faced discrimination for over a year. It should be somebody else's turn. Keep your messages coming in. Very strong views on this. 84844.

Currently, 850,000 people are living with dementia in the UK, with twice as many women affected as men. But for all that we do hear about dementia, Alzheimer's being the most common form, what do we really know about what it's like to live with? The answer is not very much. Public understanding is blighted by negative clichés, wandering old ladies, people unable to care for themselves,

mothers unable to recognise their own children. We focus on the medical aspects of the disease, the symptoms, what's lost. But these clichés tell us very little about how to respond as friends and relatives, and even less about how it feels to be the person living with dementia. Could fiction be the answer to showing a more rounded and factual portrayal of the human

experience of it? Here to talk about that, two authors, Wendy Mitchell, who wrote the bestseller Somebody I Used to Know after her diagnosis of dementia at the age of 58, and journalist and writer Anna Wharton, whose novel The Imposter features a character with dementia. That's her new novel. And also we're going to be talking to Professor Jan Oyabode, who's a dementia care expert from the University of Bradford. Wendy, if I could start with you. Good morning. Good morning. Thanks for being with us today. I know you were diagnosed with Alzheimer's and vascular dementia at the age of 58.

What was the experience of being diagnosed like? It was a very negative experience because the clinical world focuses on the negative. You know, there's nothing they can do. There's... We don't meet certain requirements. We fail in tests, we fail in the scans we have. It's all a negative experience and we need to almost turn the diagnosis process on its head by having a balance of focusing on the clinical expertise to diagnosis but also the the social expertise of the fact that there is life still to be lived. And there's so much we can still do, even though the clinical experts can't

do anything, we can still do so much. Do you feel that you were unlucky in the way perhaps you were diagnosed and what the focus was? Or is this a wider issue? No, this is a much wider issue. I mean, I was diagnosed six, seven years ago. And yet last week I heard from somebody who'd had the same experience. And when I was diagnosed seven years ago, my playmates who'd been diagnosed years before had had the same experience. So while our attitudes might change, the clinical world seems to be stuck in the negativity of diagnosis. And in terms of what I was saying, we're trying to get across here in this discussion how does it feel you know being in your situation living with dementia could could you try and describe it

oh yeah well I often describe it like imagine the brain as a string of fairy lights and each fairy light represents a different function of the brain. And different fairy lights flicker and fail for all of us because we all experience dementia in our way. But when the light goes out altogether, that specific ability has disappeared. So that's why some people can still cook and I can't. That's why I can type, but they can't. That's why they still feel hunger, but I don't. We're all affected in different ways, so different fairy lights flicker and fail for all of us. Let's bring Jan into this, a dementia care expert from the University of Bradford. Jan, just listening to how Wendy felt in terms of her diagnosis and the focus that's given,

and in fact, the way that we all perhaps think about those living with dementia, what do you think perhaps needs to change? Well, I suppose receiving a diagnosis isn't ever going to be a welcome thing, is it? Because, you know, dementia is a progressive conditioning and, you know, a life shortening condition. But that doesn't mean that the news of having that diagnosis can't be given very sensitively. And it's true, there's no medical treatment that will put things right, we don't have a cure. But there are lots of ways people with dementia can continue to enjoy life and continue to contribute. So I think it's really important to emphasise that when a diagnosis is given. I mean, one key message might be that

you're still the same person the day after a diagnosis as you were before. And it's important for you and the people around you to realise that because you can still go on doing everything you were doing the day before. The day after, you can enjoy life, you can continue to contribute to society. You haven't got to give anything up or be wrapped up in cotton wool. So I think it's really important that when a diagnosis is given, there's time to cover this aspect and not just the medical aspect. Now, I think a lot of people are sent away after being given a diagnosis with leaflets. And I think what people often want is not necessarily an overload of written information, but maybe they would appreciate someone to talk to, someone who has met many people living with dementia and who can respond to questions.

So I think in some services, the service will invite you back some weeks later and give you a chance to ask those questions that are relevant to you as an individual. But unfortunately, due to pressure on services, that doesn't always happen. So I think taking time and giving an opportunity for the news to sink in so that someone can come back with questions, emphasising the social as well as the medical are all really important things to do. Anna, you have just written this novel, The Imposter, where one of the key characters is living with dementia. Tell us some of your bugbears about the way that it does get presented a lot of the time. Well, I suppose I learnt a lot through ghosting Wendy's book, Somebody I Used to Know. So I came to the subject of dementia with my own preconceptions, even though my father had actually had vascular dementia. kind of compounds the message that we think and how scary we find it. But there are so many things that you can do to live well with dementia

or to live as well as you can, as Wendy often says. And it was important to me to continue, you know, because predominantly I'm a ghostwriter, but it was important for me to continue in my fiction writing to talk about dementia because I don't think we've finished the conversation I don't think we've even started it but what's what sort of things do you think people you know I listed some of the cliches what do you think we should replace those with well with helpful advice I mean we tend to dis we first of all we don't understand that people

have sensory issues with dementia we think it's all about memory. So in my book, there's a situation where Nan, who's the character who has dementia, tells Chloe, who looks after her granddaughter, that she thinks her greenhouse has disappeared. And because that's a visual hallucination. So it's only when Chloe takes the time to go outside and stand her inside the greenhouse and let her smell the earth and see the pots and things like that that she understands it is still there and it's just her mind playing a trick on her so there's also this idea about people with dementia wandering um and that you you know you think you're going to find people wandering down the street people with dementia are walking like we walk with a purpose. It's just that we don't know what their purpose is. And there's a line in the book where the matron of the care home

says, you know, there's one thing I've learned in 32 years this job is that people come in here with brain diseases, but they still have a mind of their own. And that's what we tend to forget when we're thinking of dementia or thinking of people living with dementia. Wendy, do you think, is there something that you would like to say to people who perhaps are supporting those living with dementia that they should always do or not do? I mean, you know, what have you sought to try and communicate about how to support people? Well, the most important thing me and my daughters have learned through all this is the power of talking. Because if you don't talk, how do you know what each other's struggling with?

And we soon learned that the worst thing they can do is wrap me in cotton wool. They were starting to disable me rather than enabling me. So they start to put on my coat. But I realized when they weren't there that I was struggling to put on my coat. So I told them if they if they continue to come and put on my coat, they'd have to come to my house every single day when I wanted to go out and put on my coat. And they stopped immediately. So they've learnt to face the fear,

to face the fear of what would happen if I'm left to my own devices. They track me but they don't stop me. You know they enable me to do the things I still love instead of saying oh no you can't do that, you have dementia. So it's enabling people. Don't disable people before they've lost that ability. And do you think it's important as well for people to perhaps read, like we're talking about here? What's the role for fiction in understanding here? Oh, my goodness.

The more people write about dementia, more people will talk about it. And that's, you know, we talk so little because it's a fearful subject in most people's mind. When they hear the word dementia, they skip straight to the end stages instead of remembering there's a beginning and the middle. And so much life still to be lived. So the more that it's written about fiction, but in a real way. You know, fiction can be bad if written in the wrong way. But like Anna's book, The Imposter, it's written by her asking me questions. Is this right? Have I got have I got this right

to enable people to see the reality of dementia of life with dementia to take away that stigma that people hold on to. Jan do you use books as a dementia care expert? Do you talk to people about that? Yes, I do. I've done quite a lot of training of health and care professionals in my career. And I've always advised people to turn to fiction and to read fiction. I think it's really helpful because, as Wendy says, dementia is much feared and much misunderstood. And students are often really nervous about working with people with dementia. You know, maybe they think that people with dementia are a different sort of person that they're not going to be able to relate to or that people are going to be aggressive.

And so if you read fiction, you've got a chance to understand more you know what it's like to live have you got have you got set books that you recommend um well i've got some favorite books at the moment um and um i think i would recommend people to read elizabeth is missing um which i think the author is uh emma healy um and And then there's another wonderful book by a Black American author called Walter Mosley, who's written a book called The Last Days of Ptolemy Gray. And I like both those books because they both have a person with dementia right at their heart. And in both cases, the people with dementia are drawing threads together to solve a puzzle from the past. And they don't beat around the bush in terms of the difficulty of coping with a brain that's not working well.

But they do show the complexity and that people with dementia are thinking and making sense of things. Which is exactly, I suppose, what Wendy was saying and what we can hear from Wendy. Wendy, thank you so much to you for talking to us this morning. Wendy Mitchell there. And I know this is what Anna's been trying to do with her work. Anna Wharton, her new novel, The Impostor, does feature a character with dementia.

Messages coming in on that, to which I will return, but also many messages still coming in around ID cards and liberties. They're being described as ID cards by some of you, I should say, the COVID passport idea. And Margot really wants to say, I'm sorry, but it's utter nonsense to suggest that countries

that use ID cards are automatically illiberal, discriminatory, stigmatising or un-British. Isn't a driving licence card a form of ID? This is the government's proposals, which we're still waiting for more detail on, I should also say. And I believe it was the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, who talked about it being un-British.

And then another one, in these extraordinary circumstances, when push comes to shove, other people's lives are more important than my civil liberties. And another one here, why should the rest of the population suffer just because a few women

who have chosen to become pregnant or have unfounded superstitions about the vaccine choose not to be vaccinated. Very strong views indeed. Keep them coming in on 84844. Just a word on a bike, a particular bike that is. Many of us do love our bicycles. I only recently got one, trying to get less nervous with it. And especially when we were younger, it may have represented our first taste of freedom. Well, it seems Diana, Princess of Wales, loved the freedom of her bike. As a single woman, she often rode through the streets of London on her 1970s blue Raleigh Traveller bike.

And apparently she was ordered to stop riding it after her engagement to Prince Charles. And after the engagement was announced, it was quietly sold to a friend's father. Why am I telling you this? It's now up for auction and will go under hammer later this month where it's expected to sell for thousands of pounds. The Sussex-based auctioneers say this item is a famous symbol of Diana's oppression, something she loved being taken away.

Mark Ellen is the auctioneer. Mark, why are you selling this bike and why are're selling it because it's a commodity and it's a one-off and it's to me I remember that period of time in the early 80s when she became engaged and she was living in Earl's Court and pursued by the press along the pavement. And this is the bike that she used to ride to work on when she was a nursery assistant. And it's just an iconic image, I think. It's an unfortunate image, but this is an item that's been brought in to us to sell at auction. And some people say it's been dubbed the shame bike. It was unfit for a princess.

Do we know that? I've heard that too, but I'm not sure who coined that phrase. Yes, I've seen it advertised as a shame bike, but I think it was actually her. It was the royal advisors who said it was slightly unseemly that a future princess should be riding around on a pushbike. I mean, in 2008, it sold for just a couple of hundred pounds. What do you expect it to go for now?

Well, it was then sold about five years ago for close to £10,000. And we're hoping for £15,000 to £ 20,000 for it. But there is certainly a far higher global interest now than there was a few years ago due to the crown. There's just a huge interest in anything to do with the dine. And there was a large archive of letters that was just sold a couple of weeks ago at auction not far from here, made huge amounts of money, many thousands each letter. So there's so many people out there that would like to own a piece,

a tangible piece of history. Yes, I suppose. But I mean, the way you're marketing it as a famous symbol of her oppression, why have you gone for that as the patter? I don't know. That's not me. Well, no, no. I mean, it caught our eye because, of course, it symbolised a younger woman's freedom, didn't it?

And I suppose, you know, there's a sadness to that as well wrapped up in this story. But at the same time, it was iconic. Yes, it certainly was. And I think she, well, it certainly portrayed that her freedom was taken away from her quite forcibly. But who do you think will buy this? Looking at who's buying this sort of stuff at the moment, you've got any tips on that?

What do you think? Absolutely none at all. Our buyers are all online now. They're all anonymous. And the audience is enormous. Since the lockdown, all our auctions are held behind closed doors, internet only, thousands and thousands of people registering to bid at every sale. And we have no idea who they are.

They just register to bid and bid enthusiastically. Well, there you go. So it's three weeks' time or so, isn't it, this particular? It is, on the 28th. We'll see what happens with it. Thank you for talking to us, Mark Allen, the auctioneer of this bike, which symbolised so much freedom to a young Princess Diana before she was. We'll see what happens with that.

But we're talking about freedom throughout the programme today, whether it's if you would feel less or more free with a so-called COVID passport. And as we begin to emerge from lockdown, are you going to feel really free? Are you going to really go for it? What are the similarities perhaps with the roaring 20s, 100 years ago when Britain, having survived Spanish flu, the Great War, became for some a hedonistic playground?

Will this time create needs for crowds, parties, touch and an urge to get out there and enjoy it? Jessica Fellows is with us, author of Mitford Murders crime series and companion books to the television series Downton Abbey. She's researched this era extensively. I think it's safe to say. Jessica, do you think this is just going to go mad even if we do or don't have these little passports in our hands? Oh, yeah, definitely. I think the need to get out there and just be amongst people is going to get greater and greater. Do you think this decade will inspire us then from 100 years ago? How do you tell us a bit about that time and how it might be similar? Well, one of the ways I mean, the things that I feel have been feeling for a while are quite similar.

I didn't expect us to then have the pandemic mirror the Spanish flu as well. That came in a bit left field. But even before that, it was the fact that we've had this increasing technology, which has been sort of hovering and brewing for a while, but it's now reached mass saturation. So, you know, for us, that might be Zoom calls or DNA testing and AI, but for them it was radios and telephones and telephone boxes, the ability to do air travel, cheap motor cars and so on.

And that affected the way in which they could move and work and live and play. You also had this emergence of the female voice in the 1920s, which we're seeing now in terms of women taking more control, women going out to work. That was the result of the war, women having had to keep the country going during the First World War and then getting the vote. But then you've got jazz music coming in from America. And I think there was this kind of need after all the crises that they've been through, all the guilt and the grief that the older generations were going through, the younger generations took the moment to say, actually, this is an opportunity to change the way that things were done before.

And so what you really get in the 1920s is the beginning of the modern age as we recognise it. And that's what I think is important for us now. I think we've had a lot of things develop over the last 20 years. We've had to assimilate them in some ways very quickly. And it's all been about, you know, do you embrace that change or do you resist that change? And then in the crisis, in the pandemic, we've all had to work differently, think differently, reset our lives. And I think we're now going to look at how our 21st century is really going to look. And it's our opportunity to pause and reset. But that idea of bright young things, you've compared them to today's influencers.

Yeah, well, they were the sort of the good-looking people who were always in the papers. They'd never really achieved any kind of discernible thing. They just kind of looked fantastic and their parties were great. And they would do these enormous fancy dress parties. They were the first to bring a bottle. They did these big treasure hunts all around london infuriating everybody it was mainly there was kind of a lot of rich posh people who didn't really have enough to do but then there were also a lot of very original people like cecil beaton nancy mickford and someone they

weren't particularly um overly smart or rich but, but it was about being original. It was about trying to do things in a new way. So doing your cross-dressing party and then just kind of being in the papers and everybody wanted to follow their look. So they were just like, yeah, exactly like the influencers. Well, you talk also about jazz there and loosening of our sexual inhibitions. Mary Stokes at this time wrote Wise Parenthood, which you couldn't get over how revolutionary that would have been. It would have been just extraordinary. So jazz, just to take jazz, was a real sort of phoenix out of the ashes.

That only came to London in 1919 with the original Dixie Band. And they came to the Hippodrome for three months and kind of blew the lid off. But it was music. Imagine all you've ever heard is Mozart and Beethoven. And suddenly they're all these crazy jazz musicians. They're not even reading sheet music. They're improvising. And you can just get out there and dance.

You don't have to wait to be asked to dance by someone. You're not standing by the wall filling in a dance card. And it's that real, I don't know if you remember, but that kind of that first moment when you go to a nightclub when you're younger and you've got that feeling of being part of an amorphous, rather safe body of people. You're all moving together. You're just incredibly happy.

Anything is possible. And I think there was that kind of large-scale feeling. Jazz also changed everything in that it changed the way they wore their dresses. So you wanted looser dresses. They got rid of corsets. They had girdles, which were rather like Spanx, kind of full length, thick elastic. It was about having an androgynous body shape, which is something we often see when women get a voice in history. Fashion often becomes more androgynous uh but there and there was a kind of loosening of the sexual inhibitions that

came with that it was mostly about the fact that women had independence without marriage for the first time in history uh before the first world war upper class women particularly in middle class women were brought up not to expect a career or further education but you would sort of prepare before the First World War, upper class women, particularly middle class women, were brought up not to expect a career or further education, but you would sort of prepare yourself for marriage. That was how you would achieve some kind of success. I was just going to say, to cast your mind back, those things have already changed and have been the way. I know you're not saying that's the case now. What do you think the modern manifestations of those things could be?

Because I'm just thinking now and looking at some of the modern manifestations of those things could be? Because I'm just thinking now and looking at some of the messages we've got coming in around people having to carry COVID passports, you know, there's great fear now about going for some people, not for everyone, about trying to get back to normal. Do you think that fear would have been there as well because of what they've just been through? Well, that was the big divide, which was people who wanted, the older generations who wanted to get back to normal and the younger generations who said the before can't be returned to.

You know, it's about looking forward. And, you know, one of the other things that we got in the First World War was a sort of closer relationship with America. I mean, the war in the 20s came from America because their economy was booming in the 20s. They hadn't spent all their money on the war. So they started exporting all these labour-saving devices and cool Cadillacs and refrigerators and Hoovers and things

that enabled women to go out and work. You didn't have to stay in and be a housewife. And thank goodness for those labour-saving. I was just going to say thank thank goodness for those labour saving devices. Let's never forget that, but carry on. Absolutely. Enabling those women to go out to work, I mean, it was still very difficult. I'm not saying it was all kind of marvellous. You know, women went out to work and we've got a pay gap now at Widger Canyon then, you know, women weren't seen as having any kind of need to earn money for dependents.

They only had to earn money for themselves, you know, so they were paid very badly. But they were pioneering. They were doing something that their mothers hadn't done or their grandmothers. And so they were showing us a new way. And I think that's really my hopeful kind of inspiration that I want to take from that period for today. It's for the younger generations to see, you know, what's incredibly difficult, but they demonstrated to us a vast amount of resilience and daring. And, you know, I've got two stepkids of 22 and 28, and I love what they do, and they work incredibly hard,

and their generation is thinking all the time about how to reset things differently. But I also want to say to them, have fun. Well, what about you, though? I mean, you've got've got to do something Jessica what have you got planned for the great unlock you know lots of big parties I'm planning lots of big parties and I think we need that you know I think that we've sort of suddenly realized that it's a sort of daunting moment of getting going back out you know kind of am i ready for this i've been sitting inside on my sofa for the you know for the last sort of year um but i think there's also it's

going to be really really exciting to get out there and to remember what it is when we get from seeing other people in real life when you can really bounce off each other and get new ideas and now we're all in the mood well not everybody's in the everybody's in the mood, I'm telling you that looking at some of our messages. Jessica Fellows, thank you very much for talking to us potentially about what we could learn from 100 years ago. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Thank you so much for your time. Join us again

for the next one. I'm here just to tell you about a new one on BBC Sounds called Life Changing, in which I get the chance to have some really, I hope, insightful conversations with people who've lived through some extraordinary challenges and experiences. Just have a listen. this is it. I didn't know where I was going what I was going to do and literally like what is seen in the films I just took apart my mobile phone and threw out the sim card and I just drove as fast and as far away as I could. We just quietly stood there just stunned disbelief

you cannot believe what you're looking at. I just want to get inside your head here. You're sitting there in your house in Wales and you're messaging a. I just want to get inside your head here. You're sitting there in your house in Wales and you're messaging a woman whose Malaysian royalty, as it turns out, also your half-sister. I mean, have you got a cup of tea there with you? A packet of hobnobs? I mean, this is crazy, isn't it? Oh, absolutely crazy. It's absolutely crazy. Join us if you can. I promise you won't regret it. Subscribe now to Life Changing 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.