Woman's Hour - Kaos with Janet McTeer, India protests, author Clare Chambers

Episode Date: August 29, 2024

Protests have been happening across India after a 31-year-old junior doctor was raped and murdered in a hospital in Kolkata earlier this month. Her death prompted marches and strikes nationwide over safety issues for female doctors and this soon developed into a talking point for women’s safety in general. BBC Delhi Correspondent Kirti Dubey joins Anita Rani to report on the latest news, along with Dr Aishwarya Singh Raghuvanshi, a female doctor in India.A new Netflix series, Kaos is a modern, darkly comic retelling of Greek mythology that will perhaps have you seeing the gender politics of ancient Greece in a new light. Stage and film actor Janet McTeer stars as the Queen of the gods, Hera. Janet joins Anita to talk about Hera’s sexual power as well as her previous roles and what has changed in the industry.In a new analysis, researchers from Imperial College, London estimate that the number of people living with food allergies in England has more than doubled since 2008, with the largest increase seen in young children. Using anonymised data from GP practices covering 13 million patients, researchers estimated trends in the prevalence of food allergy in the UK population. Anita is joined by Dr Paul Turner, Professor of Paediatric Allergy at the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College, who led the research.Author Clare Chambers’ novel Small Pleasures was inspired by an interview she heard on Woman’s Hour about a 1950’s local newspaper competition to find a “virgin mother”. That book, Clare’s ninth, became a whirlwind bestseller and now she’s back with another, Shy Creatures. Based on a newspaper article Clare discovered in an archive, this story focusses on a man who is found with a beard down to his waist and whose aunts have kept him locked away for several decades. Set in Croydon in 1964, the novel takes in the world of 1960s psychiatry and is told from the perspective of art therapist Helen, a single woman in her thirties and is having an affair with a married man. Clare joins Anita to tell her all about it.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Rebecca Myatt

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 Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good morning and welcome to Woman's Hour. Chaos is a new Netflix series. Binge watched a couple of episodes last night, very good it is. It takes Greek gods, places them in a very modern setting. Janet McTeer is coming in to talk to me about her role. In fact, she's here.

Good morning, Janet. Good morning. I'm going to come to you in a moment to talk about this role. Janet, the Tony and Olivier Award winning actor who famously played the governor in the Linda LaPlante TV series in the mid 90s for fans of the Ozarks. She was Helen, the lawyer. In Chaos, Janet plays the wife of Zeus, Hera, queen of the gods. And she's heartless, hot as hell and ruthless. So this morning, I thought we'd have a bit of fun.

That was my summation. I think I've got it spot on. I thought we'd have a bit of fun. I'd like you to tell me about a time when you have been completely heartless, totally and utterly selfish, made a decision just for you, no regrets. We spend so long thinking about everybody else. How about the time it was all about you? I'm going to look forward to reading these. Get in touch with me in the usual way. The text number is 84844. You can email us by going to our website. You can also WhatsApp the programme on 03700 100 444.

And our social media is at BBC Woman's Hour. And remember, you can remain totally anonymous. Also on the programme, why has the number of people living with food allergies doubled since 2008? And Claire Chambers, author of Small Pleasures, will be here to tell us about her new book, Shy Creatures. That text number, once again, 84844. But first to India, where the last few weeks, medical professionals and members of the public have been taking to the streets in protest. At the start of the month, a 31-year-old junior doctor was raped and murdered at her place of work, a hospital in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata. Her death has prompted marches and strikes nationwide over safety issues for female doctors,

soon becoming a talking point for women's safety in general. The most recent on Tuesday night when police in Kolkata fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse thousands of protesters. Well, earlier this morning, I spoke to Dr. Aishwarya Singh Raghuvanshi, who's been taking part in these protests in her home city of Bhopal in central India. She's an ophthalmologist or eye doctor, and it wasn't that long ago that she was doing her junior doctor residency herself. I started by asking her how she felt when she first heard the news. We are very outraged right now. And the thing is felt when she first heard the news. That we were in this vulnerable situation whole time for two, three years of our life.

We were in this vulnerable situation and it could have been us because the security was never there. It's a mixture of sadness, anger and shock. And it is believed that like our own female sister resident of medicine had to go through such atrocities. So 9th of August was very difficult for us. I'm sure. I'm sure sure it wasn't that long ago that you were a junior doctor on a similar residency and you said that you know it showed just how vulnerable that you are in that period explain what what that's like what what is it expected of you okay um so um after uh when we've done our mb, that is, we are pronounced as doctors. So we give an exam called as a NEET PG exam. So according to the ranks in that exam, we get institutes and PG

residency all over India. Okay, so we have to move to a different state. We have to step out of our comfort zone into a completely new place, into a completely new hostel, new surroundings and new hospital. And you are posted there for 36 hours every day you are on call. I would like to recall my residency experience. So I just joined in June. So I remember that I was put on call throughout one year and the night duties were particularly horrifying because there's a three o'clock call coming in the night and you as a girl are walking on the like a very poorly lit road which has a lot of drunk patients because that hospital was on the main highway. There are a lot of road traffic accident cases that come.

Which are usually drunk truck drivers that come in. And they are already very angry. And they are in a drunk state. They are not in a state that they would respect females. They used to abuse us. They used to shout on us. And we used to go there just for our profession. That we want to help out them.

And as a primary caregiver. To stop the bleeding and do some suturing in their eyes and that also was not taken well by them they wanted a male person there uh and was it often you on your own yeah yeah so we we used to take our female colleagues with us so as to feel a little bit more safer. And that was just a provision that you chose to do? We arranged ourselves. And there was no security, I would like to tell you. In the wards, there was no security in the casualty area, emergency area. And any relative would barge inside the emergency room and would bash doctors, would verbally abuse them. There is no security. There is no law for that in India.

This incident happened in Kolkata and the protests soon spread around the country. They're still ongoing. Tell us about what happened in your own town of Bhopal. We have a doctor's association over here. We had organized a peaceful protest march that started from our hospital building throughout our own campus to the outside area. We protested peacefully. And we want the Central Protection Act for the safety of doctors, for the abuse against violence. All our protest was against that freedom against fear

to make it as a safe place for girls to step out of their house and work. And because if we can't give safety to our females that are just going out to work, there's no equality in that, I think. How did it feel coming together? It was very emotional. I felt very supported in that kind of environment because I thought that finally somebody's talking about it. Finally, the things that we could never say it aloud, people are talking about it now. We have that safe space where we could acknowledge or talk about our feelings and people were there who understood us finally

people understood us that yes women's safety working women's safety and is a huge thing that we need to work on as a society do you feel like you're being listened to do you feel like this has happened before in India women have come to the streets you know you are you are there is an entire new generation of young educated bright women who want the culture to change. Do you think things will change? It's a very difficult question for me because the thing is, I am a very hopeful person. I always thought that there would be change coming in. But Nirbhaya case that happened in 2014 and 2012, sorry.

And now, 12 years down the line, we're still at the same crossroads. And now is the time that everybody's together, the whole country's protesting together. I'm so glad that this issue is getting national and also international attention now. I really hope things change now. So what is your experience like now

going back into work post the protests? How is the situation at work? So the first day when I went to work after this incident we were all very angry at the male gaze I'm sorry to say and we were all we all had a heightened sense of vulnerability at work also so we were all female colleagues and even our male colleagues they were also very supportive we were discussing about it because you know a lot of our old triggers came back in because we just felt lucky that we were not on the receiving end but it could have been us any day so we were all we felt supported by our staff members and I would like to add that there were a lot of committee meetings in our hospital personally also. There were some measures that were added that there would be no entry given to

any personnel in the hospital without an ID card. Another meeting just yesterday happened and they said that there will be CCTV surveillance of every part of the hospital. So we've taken matters into our hand now like our safety is our responsibility now. We are carrying pepper sprays with us. We are carrying our own safety because we do not trust the safety that is provided by the officials anymore. Into work, you're carrying pepper spray into work. We used to do that in our residency also because there was no proper security guards and now again so we stopped now again after this issue we are now again carrying our own safety with us. Dr. Aishwarya Singh

Raghuvanshi talking to me earlier this morning now let's cross live to Delhi where I'm joined by BBC correspondent Kirti Dubey to give us the latest. Thank you for joining us to talk on Women's Hour this morning, Kirti. You've been out reporting on this in Kolkata for the last few weeks. How would you describe the atmosphere there at the moment? There's a sense of anger and frustration, not just among doctors, but also among the general public. But what began as a movement for doctors' rights has now escalated into broader political conflict. So over the past few days, the focus has shifted from doctors' demand, you know, turning in

a state of power struggle between the Bharti Janata Party and the ruling state party, Srimul Congress. Just two nights ago, on 27th, a new student group, they held rally in Kolkata and that turned into a riot. And there are credible reports that suggest that this group was backed by the BJP and the main opposition party in West Bengal, where the incidents are unfolding. The protest actually is leading clash between police and the protesters. And the next day, BJP organized their own their own demonstration calling for a 12-hour strike. And that also turned into violence.

Amid all of this, the doctors' movement has been sidelined. This is what doctors feel there in Kolkata. And they feel that they're a legitimate concern. They have been overshadowed

by this whole political power show that we are seeing in West Bengal between Trinamool Congress and the BJP. And even the father of the trainee doctor, he yesterday also released a statement saying that he does not want to, you know, want these strikes that disrupt people's day-to-day life. He emphasized that what we want is the justice. And especially he believed that over the last few days, this whole demand has been overshadowed

and this whole matter has become very political, which they are really disappointed and angry about it. So let's remind our listeners that the reason this all began, all the protests began, is because of the horrific rape and murder of a junior doctor in Kolkata. You actually spoke with her family, didn't you? How are they dealing with the loss of their daughter? So, you know, it's very difficult for them. And I met them last week only. And they were saying that they are devastated because

they actually didn't get time to process the grief of the loss. they I mean the news broke out and since then they are in you know they're speaking in media and they are interrogated by investigating agencies and her mother was telling me that the day she was raped and killed she wrote in her diary that she wanted to top in her medical school and she wanted to lead a good life take care of their parents and these are the things that they were telling me and his father who spent 62 years of his life dreaming that one day had you know his daughter will be a doctor that or you know their life in their words their life had crumbled down over the night and now they are demanding justice but they are really sad to see that this whole matter has become a political issue between two political parties. The family declined compensation offered

by the state government. Yes they do because what they demand is for justice and they believe that initially when the state government was investigating the case uh west bengal police they believe that they didn't do the right job so and even now only one arrest has been happened so far and they have no update on investigation i mean what is happening uh after that arrest so what they are actually emphasizing on what they want is i mean not only words and compensation, but actions. And that's the reason they declined this offer by the state government, because they think that they want very basic thing and they don't want any other thing. And they don't accept any other thing rather than justice. You've just mentioned that a man has been arrested. Do we know anything about him?

Yeah, so he is a civil volunteer in the hospital and his name is Roy and I did speak to his mother-in-law a few days back and she tells me that he was he has a very troubled history because you know her daughter she died last year with blood cancer but she was telling me that he abused uh you know her daughter and physically assaulted her that led to this is what she claimed that led to her miscarriage and since then they were not living together and this is this only information we have so far because uh government is not coming up any update on this matter and what's about the victim What do we know about her? Oh, her friends were telling her she was a very disciplined and very ambitious girl. She wanted to be the topper in her batch of tennis students.

And she was fond of paintings. Her Instagram stories and Instagram posts say that she was a very brilliant photographer. Nature photography was her thing. And also her deep interest in automobile. Her father tells me that recently she bought a car and she was full of life and wanted to achieve so much in her life. What have the police said

about the family's criticism of them? So initially, the West Bengal police was investigating this case. And what happened, the principal of this medical college, they initially tried to pin this whole case as a societal case and then police also did not, this was the allegation of West Bengal police, that they didn't actually register FIR on time. So police was actually under so much criticism. And after that, this case has been investigated by the Central Investigating Agency, which is CBI,

a flagship investigating agency in India, and they are investigating the case. And to be honest, there is no update. I mean, given the scale of protest, people are demanding justice. People are asking questions. But there is no media briefing, you know, by these investigating agencies. So we don't know much about where this investigation is leading right now. And at the heart of all of this is the safety of women in India. Generally, it started a conversation that's much, much broader than just what's happening in hospitals and I saw the largest march saw tens of thousands of women across West Bengal participating in the Reclaim the Night march that was on the 14th of August to demand independence to live in freedom and without fear I wonder I mean you've been out there you've been there for a month you're talking to women on the streets what are the conversations happening and we know that India is divided

amongst socio and economic lines is this bringing women from all backgrounds together of course i mean people are from all the background it's not only you know women who are working as a primary health caregiver and women in medical uh fraternity all the women across the country and all the doctors regardless of their gender they are coming out people are coming out and they're protesting but the very important discussion that i find really interesting and people were asking is not about you know uh just addressing because the state government is saying they are making this a stringent law and there's a supreme

court ruling that says they are forming national task force. But all they are saying that it's very important to talk about what it means for women to feel safe at workplace. And they are talking about that, that this is something which is very important. Otherwise, over the years, and we have seen even bigger protests in the street back in 2012. And they were saying that these cases will not stop until we are not talking about the very core issue, the very core problem. So this is a conversation I find truly interesting that people are not only looking for superficial, you know, solutions, superficial judgments, superficial steps, they now want a very concrete solution to this problem

because women's safety is a persistent problem in India and it keeps happening. It can't be up to female doctors to be taking pepper into their places of work, as we just heard from the doctor I was speaking to before I was talking to you, Kirti. The Supreme Court have said that the incident had shocked the conscience of the nation and it's taken up the case.

What's the latest developments there? So the Supreme Court has decided that they are forming a nine-member national task force and the mandate of this task force is to form a modality and forming a national protocol that to be followed by medical institutions, medical colleges and hospitals, because as of now, we don't have any central or federal protocol. So every hospital is responsible for their safety.

And that's the reason there's no proper safety measurement taken by the hospitals. So this is the very basic problem, and that's the reason Supreme Court intervened and they said it's not about one case and we just can't be waiting for another rape to change things on ground. And that's the reason we are ordering to form a committee. And this committee will suggest a recommendation what to be done and what kind of protocol we can, you know, make to control hospitals and ensuring safety and dignity of medical staff workers at their workplace.

I'm sure we will be discussing this again in future. Kirti Dube, BBC correspondent, speaking to us live from Kolkata. Thank you very much. 84844 is the number to text. I asked you this morning if you'd like to share with me a time in your life when you've been completely selfish. I'll tell you why in a moment.

A few of you have got in touch. I was heartless at the age of six when myself and my three siblings were all given chocolate advent calendars at Christmas. One day, I went round to all their rooms, ate all the chocolate from their calendars before closing all the doors to hide my chocolate crimes. That was 24 years ago. My siblings still won't let me forget it.

But, she says, the chocolate was delicious and chose to remain anonymous. 84844 is the number to text. The reason I ask is because we're going to talk Greek mythology. You probably recognise names like Zeus and Orpheus, just two of the gods and heroes that make up the ancient Greek stories. And now they're being told in a brand new way in the series Chaos. It's dark, comical, modern, and will perhaps have you seeing the gender politics of ancient Greece in a new light. Stage and film actor Janet McTeer stars as Hera, queen of the gods, and is here with me now in the studio.

Welcome, Janet. Thank you so much. Thank you. It's an absolute romp from what I've seen. What a great character you get to play. Hera, Queen of the Gods. Sounds like a dream role. Why did you want to play her? Because...

I'm only pausing because it's quite hard to talk about this year when we've just listened to those. Well, do you know, we can process that as well. You know, which is so hard to listen to what's happening there. And our programme is very cruel and very violent in many ways but in a very ironic and sardonic and very particular allegorical way in a way that I hope is helpful.

So segueing from that, I'm finding it a little bit difficult right now. But Queen of the Gods, Hero, why wouldn't you want to play that? Honestly, it all boils down to the writing. It always boils down to the writing. And Charlie Cavell, who wrote it, is the most amazing writer. And their work is just fantastic. So when you've been around as long as I have, to read, to get something sent to you that's so original with a whole new voice.

And then I did a Zoom with Charlie and Georgie, who was the lead director, and I just fell madly in love with both of them. And I just thought they're so bright so passionate and I love working with bright passionate people it's just fantastic and when something's high quality and well written then why not do you know what I mean and you want to be part of it's it's so it's not just the part it has to be all of it yeah I'm just thinking that yeah sometimes we hear that it's you know just the the dream part yeah but for you yeah somebody has to have the whole experience yeah I think you know and I think sometimes people forget that when we're playing these roles in in the filming of

them that's our everyday life right so that's what we do for months and months and months so I'm old enough to think that if I'm not going to have a good time, I don't want to waste my time to do it. Do you know what I mean? So I don't like working with bad people. I only like working with decent people and nice people. And this particular project was just finished,

filled with amazing people. Yeah, you and Jeff Goldblum. I know, we had such a laugh. Can we just discuss, please? He's so great, Zeus. He's so great. I mean, you are great together. Let's put that down there.

We'll allow a little brief Jeff chat on Woman's Hour. Yes, we can have a Jeff chat. He's a delight to work with. And most of my scenes are with him. So for us to work together, that has to work. Do you know what I mean? And again, what was so fantastic about Charlie and Georgie is they allowed us to work in our particular way and find our own chemistry together, which we really have as actors. It's just and we get on very, very well.

And so that really helped. That really helped because that fleshed out the relationship between them how do you figure that out the chemistry do you did you get into rehearsal chemistry chemistry is just chemistry isn't it you either you know it's there or it isn't we all know that and as actors we absolutely have chemistry and as pals you know he's he's a pal. And he's quixotic, and as Zeus, he's quixotic and neurotic, and he brings everything that Jeff is in all those best ways. And also when he's scary, he's scary. And yet he's also incredibly charming.

So he's just the most... And in the tone of the piece, which is ironic and sardonic, whilst, in many ways, whilst also becoming... The longer you watch it, it gets... OK, the whole thing about the Greek myths and why they are consistently interesting is because they are so epic. And what's so great about drama

is to be able to go from, you know, from A to Z. And this piece does. It gets... I don't want to give much away. No spoilers. No spoilers. But, you know, it does get bigger and bigger and bigger as the piece goes on. And it starts off pretty big. Well, it does get bigger and bigger and bigger as the piece goes on. And so in the first couple of episodes...

And it starts off pretty big. It starts... Well, it sort of does. It starts off as you sort of see this dysfunctional family and dysfunctional families, actually, and the stories, different stories, you know, which are not necessarily interconnected, obviously, at the beginning. And it's basically about. So what was so much fun was playing this, you know, Zeus and Hera, not only are they husband and wife, they're also brother and sister.

And they've been married for a couple of thousand years well imagine that so we but she has power within this within this relationship she does and she has a lot of power and what's i love about her is um and about the piece is as it goes on as you as you see some of the women in the peace taking on more power as the peace goes on. But at the beginning, the person with the most power is absolutely Zeus. And it's about his abuse of power and what that kind of sets off and uh so and the piece itself it's just you know it's just so smart and so well written that what happens is it's an allegory for our world where we are now um and you don't have to know a lot about greek myths if you don't know anything about greek myths um i mean there's just the the i thought that was genius casting you and Jeff Goldblum together

because you kind of are so like gods. As someone who is, you know, five foot four and a half, the half really important, to have the two of you as these. Yeah, we're pretty massive, both of us. Yes. And if I'm wearing heels, I can look him in the eye because he's very tall. And you had your growth spurt quite young. In real life?

In real life, not as the Greek gods. But you embraced your heights from a very young age. I thought that was very interesting. Yeah, well, actually, I was the smallest in my class until I was about 13 or 14 I think and I grew something like seven inches in a year and it really upset me at the time and I got terrible terrible growing pains and I used to have to wear bandages on my knees and stuff and on my mum's side of the family they've always been two sisters for quite a few generations and my mum was a lot taller than my auntie sylvia who is not tall and uh my grandmother was much taller than her sister etc etc and my sister was always tall

and my sister helen and um i was always much shorter and then suddenly i really grew and then i really um i was probably 40 and i 14 by then I'd be yeah and uh I grew about seven inches in a year and then there was this boy that I fancied yeah and I suddenly realized I was half an inch taller than him and I was absolutely devastated and I went home and I had to do my piano practice and my dad was there and I was just obviously not in a good place. And I started crying and my dad came over and he couldn't quite cope with it. My mum was out. And so I'll never forget.

He gave me a whiskey and a crabby's green ginger. Did it work? And tell me to sit down and wait for my mother. I remember sitting there thinking, right, I'm either going own this yeah or and make it a power or i'm going to um be embarrassed by it and ever since then from that very moment i stood up and i have never stooped ever not unless a part called for it and then when i went to college when i went to the academy i did i went to rada when i went to rada I suddenly realised it was such a tool, you know, to help me be,

because you can use it in so many ways, being tall, and every part you play, of course, we all, as people, we all have different ideas about our bodies and our perspectives and we hate them, we like them, we don't like this, we do like this, we don't care about like them we don't like this we do like this we don't care about this we don't notice this and and when it just sort of became so six foot one is that yeah i think i'm probably just short of six foot one but i'm happy to say i'm six foot one yeah oh i love it yes i love being tall i love being tall and i'm just thinking of because obviously you're

a great stage actress this what that means when you're on the present scene. Yeah. And I think also, I think when I was young, I think I thought it was going to be a sort of a disadvantage to be so tall. And it just never was. It never was. It never has been. And if I've lost parts because I'm too tall,

then I've never noticed it and I've got other parts. And I think it's also helped that the parts that I'm drawn to are I've always been interested in women in power always always always and um why why why are those roles because why because we never had enough you know and women have never had enough power and look at what we've just had to listen to because it's so extraordinarily upsetting. And there's lots of gender politics and power plays in chaos. There are indeed. I know we should be coming back to it.

No, no, no. We can take it absolutely in any direction. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's, it just, you know, it's just astonishing that here we are and we still have to fight these battles. It's just awful. I remember as a young woman, I share in the 80s, you know, well, you weren't there, I was. I was just.

You were like one. Anyway, there was long coats and big shoulders. Big was the fashion. And I remember when I lived in London and I would come out and I had long hair with lots of curls in it and I'd tie it up and put it in the back of my coat and I would stride down the road in my Doc Martens. And I have often thought, given so much, especially after the Me Too movement, I've been incredibly fortunate

touch wood to never be in danger like that of any kind of physical danger and i but i was scared and i would stride because i would think if you're an opportunist out there you're not going to touch me because you're going to because i'm amazonian you're going to think i'm going to deck you and i would have but the my friend who I lived with who was very small and blonde and very beautiful she would she would just run down the street and it's just it's still so horrific that we still have to think about this and and have these conversations and have these conversations and women still have to think about how we have to protect ourselves just just that you having to wear the coat it's horrific and it shouldn't still be happening, but it still is.

So let's talk about some of the other roles where you have taken on women in authority and the one I mentioned at the beginning of the programme, a role that you are remembered for is in the drama The Governor, another woman with power. Yeah. How do you think that set you up for later roles? Actually, well, that was... I had such a good time doing that we had

such a lovely time it was such a lovely bunch of people i think um i went and visited prisons uh as part of my research and i did find that really scary i found it very scary to walk through the male the male war wards i was going to say, you know what I mean, the wings of some of the prisons. And even now when I watch stuff and you have female wardens in prisons, even now I think, God, I'm not sure I could do that. I think I would be too scared. It's just, I hate that we even have to think that. I think for many, many years I used to think if I could have one wish, it would be to be a man.

And I don't think that anymore, obviously. But I did, and I think the reason I did was because it was that they had so much power, not only over themselves, but over us. And that really annoyed me and that bugged me. And so I think power in general is just something. And now, of course, you know, as an older woman, I think being an older woman is just so much more fun

than being an older man. I don't know why, I just do. And I feel like, going back to my craft, there are more parts being written and better parts being written. Funnily enough enough one of the parts that i um just played not not here but in in in uh new york where i lived and uh live is was um sarah bernhardt who was this amazing amazing amazing actor one of the very first celebrities yeah and at 50 i think she was 50 uh there weren't enough parts for women so

she just played all the male parts and she was one of the first people to do it and I did this fantastic play called uh Bernhard Hamlet uh about her rehearsing Hamlet very funny and very good play but uh and I I think I've just always been fascinated by by women women in any kind of power. And I think partly because it's also about thinking, if I'd been born in the suffragette movement, for example, right at the beginning, if I'd been in a family where everybody disagreed with me and I was a suffragette, would I, would I genuinely, and I used to think about this a lot when I was a young woman, would I have had the guts to think about this a lot when I was a young woman would I have had

the guts to go against my family exactly would I have had the guts to go against every all the pressure that was on me to do you know all of those things would I have had the guts to do that and I wasn't convinced that the answer was yes well I don't know not when I was young I mean sitting here talking to you now I feel like you probably would have I'm not only that I'd like to think I would feel like you would have taken a few others with you as well I would like to think I would have and but but but when I was young yeah I would you know because I wasn't brought up to be you know nobody was in my generation you know with with parents who lived through the war you know you know we we just weren't that's not what we were brought up to be.

But my mum, luckily, my mum passed away, but my mum was such a wonderful woman. And she often said that, you know, she would have loved to have done other things had she not been such a young... So she must have been incredibly proud of all the stuff that you'd achieved then. Yeah, she was very proud of me

and very proud of my sister too. Well, it's a great series. I've watched the first two. Cannot wait to watch the rest of it. It's so much fun. It's so much fun. And it's just what we need. We need something to disappear into.

We need a feast for our eyes. Yes. You are incredible in it. And you really do get a really great part in this. It's such a good part. And again, who writes part? And again, here we are. Yeah.

I had my 63rd birthday a couple of weeks ago and you know i've been written as part of the the sexual power of the piece i mean what's not to love about that and you embody you embody her well janet mctear thank you thank you thank you it's been a real joy talking to you chaos is out on netflix now you're gonna binge watch it and you're gonna love it thank you thank you um and another one here we've had sarah messaging in about heartlessness she says nearly every time i take a shower when my husband's home to keep an eye on our one-year-old twins i can hear the chaos ensuing downstairs but pretend i'm blissfully unaware she also says thank you woman so our maternity leave ends this week and you've been there for me every day. Hey, it's our pleasure. 84844 is... I'm Sarah Trelevan, 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. The number to text. Now, in a new analysis, researchers from Imperial College London estimate that the number of people living with food allergies in England has more than doubled since 2008, with the largest increase seen in young children. There is good news, though. The researchers highlight that newly diagnosed cases of food allergy may be levelling off in some age groups.

I'm joined by Dr Paul Turner, Professor of Paediatric Allergy at the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London, who led the research. Welcome to Woman's Hour, Dr Turner. So let's understand. I think there'll be lots of people paying attention to this. How common is food allergy? So, yeah, this is sort of why we did the study in the first place, because there are a lot of figures that are sort of thrown around. And, you know, some of them can be be sort of scary over 10 percent and so on and we wanted to really get a good idea in a really group of group of people and you know this was seven million people living in england how common food allergy is and sort of the headline figures basically that we found

was in sort of preschool age children so zero to four it's about four percent according to our methods um school-aged children around two and a half percent and then an adult between one and two percent and i think the reason that's important because it's the first time in the uk that we've had this sort of data available in a, you know, in a really large group of people. So, you know, it's quite useful to sort of guide where things are going. And I started by saying that food allergies in England have more than doubled since 2008. And in children in particular, why is that? So I think we want to sort of put it in context. Obviously, the data we did showed

it's gone up, you know, twofold from 2008 to 2018. But if you imagine that you've got a bucket of water, and that represents how many people have food allergy in the UK, every single year, a new group of babies are born, and some of them will get food allergy and we did used to think that if you had a glass of water that represents those new babies the glass we thought might be getting bigger every single year there's a bigger glass or we're sticking two glasses instead of one glass but actually what we've shown especially the last sort of five years in the study is that that glass is now staying the same so the reason the numbers are going up is just because it's basically because every single year a whole year's worth of babies are born who get food allergy it's not more babies than before we're getting food allergy that that's the sort of the good news piece things need to seem to be

leveling off i suppose we should try and understand or you can explain to us what you mean by food allergies yeah so that's a really really important question key question isn't it absolutely and so a sort of food allergy is when someone has a bad reaction to a food what we medically call an adverse reaction to a food and it involves the immune system and the difference, the key thing to sort of differ it from differentiate it from is something called food intolerance. And obviously, a lot of people know about those. And that's where you eat or drink something. And it causes something in your body, or you think it's causing something in your body. But it doesn't involve the immune system. And so, you know, a good example of that is lactose intolerance, which, you know, is fairly common. And sometimes people just have it genetically. Sometimes you get it after you've had a bad spell of gastroenteritis, a gut infection.

And you basically can't cope with the milk sugar lactose that's in milk foods and so on. And so the body gets, the tummy gets this huge sugar load and sugar naturally attracts water in to try and dilute it. So the body tries to dilute it down. So then you get bloating, you get lots of water in your gut and that causes diarrhoea and pain. So it's very uncomfortable in some people, but it's not involving the immune system. Whereas food allergy involves the immune system, so it can affect growth in children, young children, and it can cause really bad life-threatening reactions like anaphylaxis and so on. And that's why we worry more about food allergy than intolerance. And food allergies are often in the news. So what's significant about this study now?

So, yeah, I mean, we've, you know, every month or so we get a really tragic headline, don't we, about someone, often a young person dying, often because of, you know, lots of things going wrong all at the same time. And of course, those stories are incredibly tragic and really bother us. And as a doctor, I've had some of my patients, unfortunately, die from food allergy. But what we do know is that, thank God, those occasions, those tragic fatalities are incredibly rare, incredibly rare. And it's a little bit like, you know, if you cut yourself by accident, you don't need to rush to hospital and have stitches put in. Most of us, you know, our blood can clot and the body sorts itself out. We know that's the same in food allergy. You know, we did a study about sort of 15, 20 years ago in teenagers in the UK where we asked them what's happened in last year.

Have you had a reaction or not? And around 200 odd had had anaphylaxis. They'd had a breathing problem and like an asthma attack or something after having food. And less than 20 percent of them had used their adrenaline pens. So 80 percent hadn't done the right thing. And they just came back and told us about it, you know, a year later. And so just like if you cut yourself, the body tries to fix itself when you have an allergic reaction.

And the big challenge for us really is that we can't predict those people where that doesn't happen. A little bit like, have we got people with haemophilia, the food allergy equivalent? You know, haemophilia, if you do cut yourself badly,

you do need to go to hospital and get a lot of sort of treatment. Is it serving the food allergy equivalent you know haemophilia if you do cut yourself badly you do need to go to hospital um and get a lot of sort of treatment talking about food allergy um you mentioned uh the the pens that can be life-saving you found many people with a previous severe reaction from food allergy they weren't actually prescribed the adrenaline auto-injector pens that can be life-saving why is that happening so so yeah so i think there are probably various reasons for that you know the reason we chose that group of people who've had previous anaphylaxis is because every sort of guideline that exists in the uk or abroad says these people should have adrenaline pens like epi pen or jext and i think in, those devices are free. And if you live in Scotland or Wales or Northern Ireland, and even if you're an adult, you can get those devices free on prescription. But in England,

you have to pay. And I think what we're seeing is people in their 20s or 30s, or parents as well, who often will think, well, we've never used it. Why do we need to bother? I'm not going to go back to the GP. I'm really busy. Or, you know, I don't want to have to pay for it for 10 quid for something that I haven't needed to use. And so it just drops off the radar. But of course, with really severe food allergy,

we can't predict those people who are going to have those reactions. And it's a really key thing to have to look after yourself. And so finally, I think it's really important. What to have to look after yourself and and so finally i think it's really important um what should parents take from your research and what can people do to reduce the risk of children getting allergies so i think the two take-home messages is first of all i think the increase which we have seen is leveling off so we're not living in an epidemic yeah you know yes it is four percent of kids and it is two percent of adults but it's not ten percent um and we've got to get the numbers right and i think the

second thing is it's really important that we get the care right the advice right for people who are living with food allergy nine out of ten people in this study were only ever seen in primary care by GPs or nurses. And so we need to really support people working in GP practices that they've got the right information, they've got the information sheets to hand out, the right tools, the right training. It's not really part of GP training normally to manage food allergies, so that people can get the right care and they're not scared about the food allergy. Our whole job as doctors and nurses working with food allergic patients is to say you can live life, you can go on holiday and you can do all of these things. You just need to take some extra safeguards.

It's not to say, no, you can't, you can't go to parties, you can't go travelling. We've got to help our patients really live their lives to the full and not be different. Thank you so much for speaking to me this morning, Dr. Paul Turner. And I must add that I suppose this is correct to say always ask for advice from your doctor if you do have any concerns. Absolutely, absolutely. Thank you for having me on.

Thank you. 84844, the number to text now. Author Claire Chambers' novel, Small Pleasures, was inspired by an interview she heard on Woman's Hour about a 1950s local newspaper competition to find a virgin mother. That book, Claire's ninth, became a whirlwind bestseller. She's back with another one, Shy Creatures, based on a newspaper article Claire discovered in an archive.

This story focuses on a man who's found with a beard down to his waist and whose aunts have kept him locked away for several decades. It's set in Croydon in 1964. The novel takes in the world of 1960s psychiatry and is told from the perspective of art therapist Helen, a single woman in her 30s who's having an affair with a married man. Claire joins me now. Welcome to Woman's Hour. Thank you for having me. Before we start talking about Shy Creatures, we mentioned there you first published your first book in 1992, seven more before your huge bestseller, Small Pleasures, came out

in 2020. How much has life changed since then for you? Well, it has changed very much since 2020 when Small Pleasures came out. It's almost unrecognizably changed um what one of the nicest things is that I now get sent lots of books to read and as reading is about my favorite thing to do that it couldn't be nicer you know I get asked my opinion about books as if as if my opinion counts for something that it does and it's it's really lovely um so yes it you know it's and and my friends now don't have to pity me and and sort of feel sorry for my underachievement.

You know, it's just been lovely to feel that I've actually, you know, that all that time I spent writing books that didn't quite make it has paid off as an investment. And you were still doing your, you were still working before, weren't you? Yes, I worked right up to, well, to 2022, really. I was still working until I stopped last year and concentrated on writing. So the new book, Shy Creatures, it's also based on a true story. How did you come across it? I came across it when I was looking through a newspaper archive on local news stories for small pleasures. I just find local papers tend to have these little gems

that get overlooked by national press and then they're not so well known. And I found this story about a man in Bristol who'd been found living in this house in a sort of a semi-feral state with his aunts and had been rescued and taken to a psychiatric hospital for treatment. And you know, he'd been either a prisoner or a recluse for 20 years or more. And I just wondered how he would ever recover from that. And so I tried to find more about him in the paper, but I couldn't find anything until about a year later, I found a report into his death. And I thought, oh, how disappointing that he'd escaped from the hospital or run away and fallen into a river. And that was the end of him. And I just thought, oh, I wish I could write a story

that would kind of explain how he came to this situation and give him a slightly better future than fate delivered him. So that was really the springboard for writing it. And like Small Pleasures, Shy Creatures focuses on the quiet lives of people in extraordinary circumstances. What is it about that that appeals to you? I suppose it's that kind of suburban kind of gap between the respectable and, you know, conventional appearance and the chaos underneath that's very fruitful when you're writing fiction and I'm sort of drawn to that setting.

You know, people use suburban as a sort of insult to mean mediocrity, but I kind of want to reclaim the term to be quite less disparaging than that. And I sort of feel that's how I've treated the character William and his aunts know that the secrecy behind these high hedges and net curtains is is very interesting to me. William is the character with the long beard who gets brought into the psychiatric hospital so in Shy Creatures tell us about Helen she's having an affair with Gil. Yeah she's she's an art therapist so she's a sort of subordinate worker and she's having a completely unsatisfactory affair with a man who's a colleague and he's also married to a distant cousin of hers. So it's kind of inappropriate on every level and, you know, cannot possibly meet her emotional needs in the long term.

So it's sort of an anti-romance. It starts at the point where it's starting to go wrong then we we sort of take it from there um and why and why did you choose to put her in that position i just wanted to show it was a sort of different stage from the heroine of small pleasures that they're both they're both women who are slightly trapped um in a kind of soft imprisonment but not you know of their own choosing to some extent but but helens is is kind of more advanced we're into the 60s so she has a certain freedom she she lives as a single woman in on in a flat she has a job she she's on the pill but she's still kind of enthralled to to a kind of emotional slavery to someone who really can't you know can't offer her more than crumbs of commitment. And I just wanted to sort of explore women's roles in that setting, in that decade.

And before we came on air, we got you to read a little bit out for us. So this is where Helen is talking about how she's feeling let down by Gil. Helen wished she could imagine some distant future in which she could hear Gil's name and feel nothing. There had been one occasion about six months into their affair when she'd been surprised into seeing him through momentarily unclouded eyes. She had been walking through Surrey Street Market on a Saturday, buying fruit and vegetables for the week ahead. Gil had been a few stalls ahead of her, his daughter Susan by his side. He was wearing his tweed overcoat and corduroy trousers,

and his dark hair was shot through with grey. For more than a moment, Helen didn't recognise him. Away from the hospital, he looked so ordinary, just a tired middle-aged man buying potatoes. No heads turned as he passed, and Helen had experienced the curious sensation of seeing him as everyone else must, as he really was, perhaps. She had ducked out of sight behind a stall selling a tray of white eggs, her heart thumping in protest at this unwanted awakening. The feeling of estrangement lasted the rest of that day, but when she woke the following morning it had worn off, to her great relief,

and the next time they met, in her storeroom off the the art studio he had reacquired all of his old powers. So good, beautiful writing. You're also drawn to the world of as well as unconventional anti-romances, we like that phrase anti-romance, drawn to the world of 1960s psychiatry. Why did you want to take us there? I just find you know the disordered mind endlessly interesting. And I like reading case histories of psychiatric patients and their treatments and things. But I had this idea that, you know, psychiatric hospitals and boarding schools and to some extent the family are all examples of institutions that have a way of kind of crushing individualism and trying to get people

to conform in order to, you know, for the smooth running of society and that there is something that they have in common. And so I wanted to tell the story of William's, you know, incarceration in these various institutions and his eventual liberation. And the 1960s are a very interesting time in the history of psychiatry. It was sort of the time when R.D. Lange was coming up with his new sort of anti-psychiatry and trying to introduce more humane and less kind of judgmental treatments or therapies and bring in sort of more alternative methods um so it's it's kind of pivotal point in in the history of psychiatry and and indeed society and

i think the novel is very good um not my novel particularly but i mean the novel in general is very good at dealing with change and with with how people deal with change or don't deal with change. So I'm kind of interested in those moments when something in society seems to be shifting. Did you feel pressure having to write this book after Small Pleasures? And how did you sort of turn the noise down to just be able to focus on? Well, you always feel a certain amount of, you know, trepidation that it's not going to be as well received as as the previous book and I sort of felt that all through my career is each book better or worse than the last so there is you know there is a certain amount of anxiety but I think you know you have to you have to feel anxious when you've got a book coming out you have to give the occasion

it's due. Are you feeling anxious now about it? Yes, yes. I mean, no more than is appropriate. You know, that sort of stage fright sort of feeling that is necessary for, you know, giving it its due, really. And we talked a bit about, you know, your life changing now that you're a bestselling author and, you know, your friends can see that you've achieved. And presumably you get to meet more of your readers now. Yes. and presumably you get to meet more of your readers now. Yes, I mean that's one of the really nice things is doing events where you meet readers and you're not just talking about your own books but you talk about other books and they recommend books and you recommend books

and the conversation is lovely bookish enthusiasm for reading in general and I think that is one of the great pleasures of having had a slight success is that you get to do that, you get to meet readers and have this kind of convivial public life which when you're just writing, you don't have, writing is a very solitary, very lonely job and most of the time it's just you and the desk and there is no kind of social life

but it's a really nice part of it when the writing's done and then you go out to publicise it, that's one of social life. But it's a really nice part of it when the writing's done and then you go out to publicise it. That's one of the pleasures. Yeah, and are you currently trawling newspapers, old archives, maybe old Woman's Hour episodes for inspiration for the next one? I certainly will be.

That's exactly what I'll be doing. It's been such a pleasure speaking to you. Thank you so much for coming in. The book is out and yeah, Shy Creatures. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming in. The book is out and yeah, Shy Creatures. Thank you. Thank you so much, Claire. Lots of you getting in touch with the program about making a heartless decision.

Kay in Brighton wrote to say, I left my husband, I'm 14 year old, for two weeks this summer to undertake an arts research trip to Northumberland in Scotland just for me. I traveled in our little camper van and absolutely loved my solo adventure. My first since meeting my husband and having a child, I embraced the fear and excitement and fell so very alive. I'm now looking forward to seeing what poetry and art ensues from my journey. Doing something just myself is soul food. Join me tomorrow for more Woman's Hour. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. Nature Bang. Hello. Hello. And welcome to Nature Hour. Join us again next time. complex mapping problems. And what can an octopus teach us about the relationship between mind and body? It really stretches your understanding of consciousness. With the help of evolutionary biologists.

I'm actually always very comfortable comparing us to other species. Philosophers. You never really know what it could be like to be another creature. And spongologists. Is that your job title? Are you a spongologist?

Well, I am in certain spheres. It's science meets storytelling with a philosophical twist. It really gets to the heart of free will and what it means to be you. So if you want to find out more about yourself via cockatoos that dance, frogs that freeze and single cell amoebas that design border policies, subscribe to Nature Bang from BBC Radio 4, available on BBC Sounds. 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.