Woman's Hour - Lorna Cooper, Sarah Champion, Jane Sanderson

Episode Date: January 24, 2020

Lorna Cooper says she feeds her family of four on £20 a week. She's cut it down from £100. She offers her best tips for planning meals and stretching your grocery money.Churches, mosques and gurdwaras should be safe places for teenagers. Yet due to a loophole in the law adults in faith settings can have sexual relationships with 16 and 17 years old who are under their supervision. This would be illegal if it happened in a school. The MP Sarah Champion is leading a cross-party group of MPs looking into how teenagers can be better protected in faith settings and how this legal loophole can be closed. Why is the idea of connecting with past lovers so powerful? A new novel called Mix Tape by Jane Sanderson explores the power of music to bring soulmates back together. Radio 4 has a drama tomorrow which is about the famous novel, The Well of Loneliness. The drama is set in 1928 and is about the obscenity trial that led to the banning of the book. Written by Radclyffe Hall, the novel's about a love affair between two women. Shelley Silas is the writer of the Radio 4 drama and joins Jane to talk all about it.

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. Hi, this is Jane Garvey and thank you for downloading the Women's Hour podcast. It is currently Friday, January the 24th, 2020. Hello, it is. Good morning to you. Today on the programme, Lorna Cooper is here. She'll tell us how it is perfectly possible to feed a family of four well on 20 quid a week. Lorna, one of our guests today. We'll also talk to the author Jane Sanderson,

who's got a new novel out called Mixtape. And if you're a fan of 80s music, and indeed actually generally just music, and maybe you have a lost love, this is the novel for you. I really enjoyed it. It's called Mixtape, and Jane is with us on the programme today, as is the playwright Shelley Silas because her play about the trial of Radcliffe Hall is on Radio 4 tomorrow

afternoon at three o'clock and Radcliffe Hall of course wrote the lesbian novel, The Well of Loneliness, but some people would say not quite as simple as that, maybe not a lesbian novel at all. I've just said that because I've caught Shelley's eye and she had a look in her eye and seemed to be about to contradict me. Not going to let her, but we'll talk to Shelley

a little bit later. If you've read The Well of Loneliness, let us know what you think about it. Hugely controversial, of course. And you can email the programme via our website. Controversial, that is, at the time, not so much now. Now, the Labour MP for Rotherham, Sarah Champion, left the Labour front bench three years ago now, after she wrote an article in The Sun about grooming gangs. She's now leading a cross-party group of MPs looking into how teenagers can be more protected in faith settings. She says there is a legal loophole that means that adults in faith settings can have sexual relationships with 16 and 17 year old people. That of course would be illegal if it was happening in a school. So let's talk to Sarah. Good morning to you Sarah.

Good morning. Can we just narrow this down? What is a faith setting? Well broadly there is a power imbalance in many settings with children. So a faith setting could be a Sunday school, it could be a congregation, it could be a congregation, it could be a faith youth club, for example. But of course, this also can happen with sports coaches, music coaches, tutors, any situation where an adult is in a position of authority and power over a child. We want to make sure that that child when they're 16 and 17, particularly, is safe from abuse. And of course, we have very strict rules about how school teachers and people who work in schools have to conduct themselves, but not so here.

Absolutely, and that's the anomaly. Within the Sexual Offences Act, it defines positions of trust as someone who has a regular sort of caring, training or supervisionary role over and under 18. And they then go on to define that examples of that would be a teacher or a care worker. And what we are looking for is that rather than being specific about those roles, that it is anybody that has a regular caring, training or supervisory role over a child. There's a bit of confusion here. I suppose you might call it a grey area,

because the age of consent is 16. Does that not offer any protection, or does that not satisfy you? Well, that's why the government is pushing back on this, and it's saying that a 16-year-old is legally able to choose who they do and do not have sex with. But what that's ignoring is the power imbalance in the relationship. So your youth club worker, for example, if you met them in the park and they were 17,

you were 16 and you decided to have sex with them, then, you know, fine, there is no sort of abuse of power or potential coercion going on there. However, if you meet them in your youth club and they are the person who is saying whether or not you can go on the trips, they're the person that's saying whether or not you can be in the youth club band,

they have authority over you and they are, in your eyes, someone who is in a position of trust, in a position of power, in a position of authority. So that dynamic is very different, just as it would be with a school teacher, for example. of trust, in a position of power, in a position of authority. So that dynamic is very different, just as it would be with a school teacher, for example. So what we want to see is that the positions of trust is extended to anyone who has that authority over a child, regardless if you're 16 or 17, that power imbalance is still the potential that's there. You've worked with a lot,

as far as I can make out, a lot of Christian groups, any other faith groups taken part? Yes, we've also got an Islamic charity working with us, but also the NSPCC. And I sort of first became aware of the problem because of all the work that Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson did. She was actually commissioned by the DCMS to look into this with regards to sports coaches. And in 2017, the government agreed that the definition of position of trust should be extended to sports coaches and in 2017 the government agreed that the definition of position of trust should be extended to sports coaches but then they failed to implement it but it's not just sports coaches particularly it is faith leaders that have control over children and it's a very particular form of control isn't it we need to be i mean there is a real distinction between

somebody who might help out in a netball club and somebody who's teaching you about the prospect of eternal life. Well, exactly. And I mean, we well, I first became aware of it in my casework with people coming to me from faith organisations who had really had a huge amount of pressure put on them, A, to have sex with the person, but B, when they try to report it, it's not like just leaving your local youth club. You are potentially leaving your faith, making your parents really in a compromised position. So the level of authority someone in a faith position has over you is immense, much more so, I would say, than a teacher. Yeah, I mean, obviously, you would have to question the conduct of anybody of any faith who thought it was all right to behave like that. It's awful. Well, unfortunately, as long as I've been an MP, I've been working in the field of child

protection. And there is nothing surprises me anymore. All I know is that abuse happens when there is a power imbalance. And so we, root and branch, need to close all of these loopholes to make sure that the law is very robust and just deals with the crime that happens and doesn't allow them a route to abuse our children. Now, I take your point that at least one Islamic organisation has taken part in your work,

but overwhelmingly, when you look at the details of what you've done it is Christian churches of various different kinds who have participated. Is it fair to say that other faiths have been more resistant to what you're doing? No, I mean I think that that's just the circumstance because the wonderful

safeguarding charity that helped us with this 31.8 is a Christian charity so I think that they just sort of reached out to sort of their safeguarding charity that helped us with this. 31.8 is a Christian charity. So I think that they just sort of reached out to sort of their partner organisations. I just cannot believe at all that any faith organisation would not be in support of this. Not least because at the moment, if they believe that there is an inappropriate relationship

happening with a 16, 17-year-old, it's up to them to make a judgement. Whereas if it was a crime, they could just hand it over to the police and not get involved in that at all. So that's what we're hearing from faith organisations across the board. Bearing in mind what happened to you when you had to resign from the Labour front bench three years ago, are you in any way nervous about involving yourself in these sorts of issues? I'm not really, partly because my view is child protection is child protection. And when people are abusing children, I actually have no interest in what their faith is, what

motorbike group they might associate with, whether or not they're sort of, sorry to be mean, but someone employed by the BBC. I mean, for me... Well, now you've done it, Sarah. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But because of that, I think that we should just act and the law should just act without any favouritism and just uphold it. And that's where I think problems are starting to come if any other issue is starting

to get in the way of protecting children. You did retain your seat in December. Yes. The share of the vote down by, what was it, 15%? Oh, dramatic. Yeah. So who are you backing in the Labour leadership race? Do you know, I'm actually not. I didn't nominate anyone. I think they're all really good, strong candidates. But I actually think I'm going to have to pick you up. They're all good,

strong. Come on, Sarah, you can do better than that. Who would you give your vote to? You've got to vote for someone. I genuinely haven't decided yet. The person that's sort of speaking most to where I'm coming from is Lisa Nandy. I really like that she understands Labour leave seats like mine.

That she understands that we as a party need to be reaching out and engaging with the North, to be blunt about it. And I don't think we've done that for quite a long time. As to who I will actually vote for, I genuinely haven't decided yet. OK, well, I'm going to have to pin you down on whether or not it really is time for Labour to have a female leader.

And actually, how significant do you believe that is? I mean, does anybody in Rotherham care, quite honestly, about the biological sex of the leader of the Labour Party? I mean, I think people care much more about how you deliver the policies, what the policies are and how that's going to impact on them. But I have to say, well, two things really. The only reason that I'm an MP is because I saw a woman MP who said, why don't you stand? Because I'd never even considered it before.

So I think that sort of visual thing is important. But then I also have to compare it with when Margaret Thatcher was there. And I didn't actually process that she was a woman. She didn't sort of reach out and engage with me on any level. So I want a female leader of the Labour Party. But more than that, I want someone who will fight for women's rights and equalities. That's the key for me. OK. In the interests of balance, Margaret Thatcher did, of course,

galvanise many a woman in her time. I'm sure she did. Sarah, thank you very much. That's the Labour MP for Rotherham, Sarah Champion. Now, January isn't the best time of year anyway, really, in any number of ways, not least because it can be trying financially with those credit card bills for the festive season rolling in. So it's a good time to talk to Lorna Cooper.

Lorna, good morning to you. Good morning. Now, your book is about feeding a family three meals a day, seven days a week for 20 quid. This is based on two adults, two children, is it? Yes, it is, yeah. OK, I'm bound to ask you, first of all, how you do it, but you're going to tell me it is possible to do it.

It is possible to do it, yes. It's not easy, or else everybody would do it um but you're going to tell me it is possible to do it it is possible to do it yes it's not it's not easy um or else everybody would do it um but once you've once you once you've worked out how to do it then it is possible yeah tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to all this what happened okay so there's there's a long version there's a short version the short version is i was spending too much money on a weekly shop. I had to stop work because I had injured my back and the finances didn't support spending 100 quid in the supermarket every week. So I started looking at the food budget and brought it down a wee bit and then brought it down a bit more and then sort of really got into it and thought, you know, this is great. This is a challenge.

You weren't someone unused to challenge because your mum died when you were very young. Yes, she did. And you and your sister ended up living together when you were still teenagers and you were doing all the managing. Yeah, well, we were cooking for ourselves. We were basically looking after ourselves. Our dad was still financially supporting us. But we weren't cooking meals. We were heating things up, really.

And that's being generous, you know. So take me into your world then. What would be an average two-time meal in those days? I would be, you know, a crispy chicken fillet with breadcrumbs in the oven with maybe some potato wedges and a tin of peas yeah well that was all you knew and that's that's what you did and of course by the way it would feed you and it would keep you warm and you'd be reasonably nourished

yes yeah fast forward then to today um and i want to know quite simply how much time you have to set aside to make this work because 20 quid over seven days three meals can't emphasize that enough for four people i don't know how you do it so tell me so the the hardest thing is is working it out it's writing the plan it's doing the shopping it's and that's what took me the longest to work out and that's what people ask when they come I've got a Facebook page I've been going for six years, it's called Feed Your Family for £20 a week and

when people find it, the first thing they say is, how do you feed your family for £20 a week? which is why we wrote the book it's planning and that does take time, the actual cooking itself, I'm not not you know i'm not

asking you to stand in the kitchen all weekend batch cooking and um although that there is a bit of that isn't it well there is but not not taking any extra time out so what i say is when you're batch cooking i mean you make a lasagna make two put one in the freezer it doesn't take any more time to do that and you know and it's the same with cottage pie or making a curry you know just just double it up and then put half in the freezer and then that's you get a meal for another night when you know things haven't gone right that day or you're running late or kids have got clubs and you don't have time to stand prepare something you just take it out the the freezer and the oven buying in bulk what about that yes

so if you can um buy in bulk uh look at other suppliers not just your standard supermarket so farm shops markets um online suppliers um if you can't afford to buy in bulk then consider asking your sister your mum your aunt your aunt, your cousin, your friend from work or the other mums at the school gate. Effectively form a kind of food collective or club. Yeah, do it together. Go to the farm, buy a £56 bag of potatoes for £3.50. And divvy it up. Yeah, basically.

I'm surprised more people don't do that. Now meat, because you recommend, I thought, an interesting source of meat supply. I'd never heard of this. Yeah, so I was browsing online one day, found an offer for an online, basically a company that butchers, basically they supply bodybuilders

and they sell five kilos of chicken breasts and you know six ten sort of rump steaks and it's all bargained it's all discounted because you're buying in bulk um and they obviously started for the the bodybuilders because they focus on protein in their diet but you know i've been using them for years now and I buy 10 kilos of chicken breasts and I divvy them up into twos and put them in the freezer and it lasts me months and months and months Fussy eaters

because kids can be a nightmare what are your tips there? Hide the vegetables or just by doing what? I make a I started making a pasta sauce that was, this is I call it my tomato base sauce now but it just started off I started making a pasta sauce. I call it my tomato base sauce now,

but it just started off as trying to replicate the branded pasta sauces for lasagna. And then I realised that it was a base and my kids liked creamy bacon and tomato pasta sauce. And I went to the supermarket and I turned it around and I looked and I read the ingredients and I thought I can do that just need to add some herbs or add a wee bit of bacon or add this and I started doing that but the base sauce is basically a couple of tins of tomatoes some tomato puree some stock and a ton of grated vegetables. And it gets all cooked up, cooked for a couple of hours slowly,

and then blended with a hand blender. And it looks like red tomato sauce, passata, basically, maybe a bit thicker. And that goes in everything now. So any recipe that calls for a tin of tomatoes or passata, it gets used, even gets used as a used as a tomato sauce on your pizza. Right, OK, as the base layer for a pizza. I'm interested in what you say about herbs

because actually it's a very useful guide in the book to the difference between dried herbs and fresh herbs. I was reading the other day about a woman who puts her dried herbs in alphabetical order, which I think, honestly, is my little tip. Yeah, that's good. Because I always find I've got any number of bits of one sort of herb and none of the other because I keep thinking I haven't got it is that what you do um no I don't actually I actually go to the Asian supermarkets for my spices and herbs yeah yeah so you know you get your small jars and

they're like a pound each um even if you buy the sort of supermarket zone ones you're looking at between 50 pence and a pound for i think it's 85 grams you get in those wee jars you can go to the asian supermarket and you get 200 grams for 1.60 in a bag in a big bag that's right yeah and i've got loads of kilner jars that i've bought over the years um and they get decanted into into them and do the Do the dried herbs last long enough? Yeah, they do. They do, okay. I've always wondered about that.

No, they don't go off. You're doing well as a result of your economy tips, I suppose. Are you still living on the 20 quid a week thing? Yes. So I don't sit down now and write myself a list. I don't do a shop in the way that I ask people to do it in the book because I feel like if you buy the book, you follow the eight weeks, you've changed, you've re-educated yourself

and now you're in a phase of you're buying, stocking up certain things at certain times. So if you were to add up all my shopping over maybe six months and then divided it up you would say yeah it comes to 20 pound a week probably less actually now but i see 10 tomatoes in a supermarket and they're half price i'll buy 24 yeah you know that's where I'm at now when I see something when I need chicken I'll go and buy 10 kilos and just fill the freezer back up again and that's you know if

people follow the plan you completely re-educate you change your thinking and it just becomes second nature Lorna thank you very much really interesting Lorna's book is available now. And she's also, she says, the founder of Feed Your Family for 20 quid a week. Interesting tweet here from Margaret regarding vegetables or hiding vegetables.

My friend had a kid who refused to eat anything if he'd heard the blender going. There you go. They're ahead of you. Dirt mailies at school. Yeah, exactly. They're out the house sometimes. Then get the blender on. Really nice to meet you, Lorna.

Thank you very much. Now, you're listening to Woman's Hour, and we're going to talk now about the idea of connecting with past lovers. There was always a rumour, wasn't there, that Friends Reunited, when it first came out, was causing havoc across the land. Never actually knew whether it was true, but it was certainly something that everybody believed to be true.

A new novel called Mixtape by Jane Sanderson explores the idea of music bringing long lost loves back together. There are consequences, of course, not least for their current partners. Jane is here. Jane, good morning to you. Good morning. So Mixtape is the novel and it's on the cover. There's a there's a cassette with tape on spooling. Yeah. And actually one of my daughters said, what is that? Which aged me horribly.

And then we had a conversation about music. It is about, essentially, about the power of music, isn't it? It is. It is, yes. It's not a manifesto for finding your old boyfriend or girlfriend. Well, except the Friends Reunited thing, the idea that it did cause havoc. It did, yeah. Did it really?

Well, maybe it's anecdotal. I don't know. I don't know. But there's something, I suppose, too easy really now about just sort of quietly stalking an ex online. And I avoided that in mixtape. I mean, I didn't want... You might have to suspend your disbelief a little

bit, but they hadn't actually looked for each other. It was an accidental kind of meeting online that kicked things off. Yes. We want to explain, this is two characters, Dan and Ali, Alison, who meet as teenagers. And I want to play this piece of music because this is all about music and a love of music, a shared love of music love of music really this novel i think it's one of the reasons i enjoyed it so much this track was playing at a very important teenage party here we go pump it up and allison alley was dancing to that, wasn't she? Yeah, she was. And it caught the eye of Dan.

Dan, yeah. Well, they'd arrived at the party together and he'd been waylaid by someone else. Yeah. But yeah, that made a big impact on him. She was dancing alone to Pump It Up, on a crowded dance floor, but just alone in her head. And yes, that had a big impact on Dan.

So what is very clear, we don't want to do too many spoilers or any spoilers, but when two people meet each other again, whatever the circumstances, there's clearly a massive attraction between these two who had to break up for reasons I won't explain, meet again in later life through a whole, as you say, suspend your disbelief, just enjoy the ride. Yeah. But other people are hurting all that, aren't they? They are. Yeah. Yeah, they are. They are. And I wanted it to be that's what I wanted.

I wanted it to be a grown up love story in which, you know, difficult decisions are made and you may or may not approve of them because that's what happens in real life, you know, people are hurt and a love affair can be painful and messy as well as transcendent the two of them are communicating only online and only through song that's where the sort of mixtape playlist comes from

and to an extent I tried to create the idea that that gives that that gave them a license to continue doing something that perhaps they wouldn't have done if they'd been face to face in the local boozer you know they were they they were 10,000 miles apart she's in Adelaide South Australia he's in Edinburgh and a couple of times one or other of them will think to themselves well where's the harm you know so far away it actually gives them as you say the opportunity to be more intimate than they would be well that's that's right yeah because regular messages probably would have fizzled out actually and the music is something that they always had as kids and that neither of them really have with

their present partners uh i think that's that's significant as well. And also it was a special relationship as kids. I mean, they were very connected and Alison had all sorts of secrets that she certainly should have shared with Dan and his family and things would have been very different for them. But yeah, so I hope people believe in that kind of renting apart of what should have been an ideal partnership. There is darkness in Alison's story, isn't there?

There is, yeah. Did you... Because it is, I should say, it's a happy novel. It's something you could really enjoy on holiday, for example. Yeah. But it's not without its really dark side. No, no, no, because Alison had to... Things happened to Alison that caused her to leave Sheffield in a hurry and without telling anyone.

Only her brother knows that she's gone. And he doesn't really know why. And he doesn't know why. He doesn't know the reason why, but he's glad that she has. You've written historical novels, haven't you, in the past? Is this your first contemporary one? No, I've written four novels and my first three were historical. And the fourth was a contemporary novel. And why did you want to weave music so much into this one? I just, working alone as a writer, you quite often have to look for diversion online.

So whenever anybody on Twitter or on Facebook shares a link to a song, I'm always really happy to click onto it and just listen to it for three minutes, whatever it is. And it always takes you somewhere. If it's a song you're familiar with, it takes you to a particular place. Or it's just, you know, it's just really cool to hear what somebody else is listening to. And I started to think about this as an idea of a means of communication between people who aren't in the same room. And I did have a kind of waking thought. I must have dreamt something.

But I thought, how amazing would it be if two people completely reconnect, communicating only through music, only through song? What is interesting now is that younger people enjoy a range of music, actually thanks to the streaming services. They are not confined to the music of their own era. I often hear songs playing from elsewhere in the house and I think, well, how do they know about Dusty Springfield? And I'm not even sure they know they are listening to Dusty Springfield, but it is something that's now,

it's actually much more open, the world of music, somehow. Yeah, it is, yeah. And do you not find that your kids say, how do you know tainted love no i was recommended calling the gang the other day i said well i was there calling the gang back in i actually didn't like calling the gang but i know plenty of other people they've all been kind of reworked for the dance floor for the for the kids and uh my my one of my sons said to me how do you know blue monday when i was singing heaven's sake it's our music but But you did, I think you took advice from your offspring, didn't you, about which tracks to include?

Oh, absolutely, yeah. No, absolutely. I mean, I'm always guided by the kids to try and keep my listening current so that I'm not constantly in the past, but yeah, there are a couple of top tips from the kids there. Now you also, I think you have a houseboat, don't you? Yeah. And the

characters, some characters in this book have a houseboat. Can you just explain to me the appeal of houseboat living? Well, do you know, I'm off it now. I ran out of water this morning when my head was covered in shampoo. So you stayed there last night? Yeah, I did, yeah. Okay. Well, to be honest, it was an economic decision.

It's cheaper. It's much, much cheaper than buying a flat. And we needed a base in London. So I just saw a sale sign on the side of this little boat and neither of us are boaters, although we're becoming boaters. Are you? I mean, it's quite...

Tell me about that community. What's it like? It's very alternative. It's very quiet at this time of year, but come spring and summer, people come back from wherever it is they've been. A certain amount of disdain for the Johnny-come-latelys, like us. Is that what you're regarded as?

Yeah, I think so. Probably ever will be. You know, the ones who don't know the way around a diesel engine. What, they don't want to know you? No, that's right. But, I mean, presumably, does your houseboat go anywhere or am i being really stupid it's a it's a it's a it's called a wide beam narrowboat and it definitely go i mean i don't i i wanted it as a sort of studio flat just happens to be on water uh but my husband likes to sail it right okay hand on the tiller well i'm not going to make any no comments at all no judgments okay and i'm bound to ask whether or not there is some old love lurking in your past that you'd like to reconnect with. No, it's all made up.

Your husband won't be listening. No, absolutely not. It's not a story about me, although there's a lot of me in it. What does that mean? Well, you know, inevitably when you write a novel, you kind of put little bits of your own personality. I do remember lyrics like Ali does. She's got a lyric retentive memory. Yeah.

And so do I. Yes. Name your favourite song lyric. Oh, my favourite song lyric? My favourite song or actual lyric? My worst song lyric of the 1980s, and I love Spandau Ballet, is she used to be a diplomat and now she's down the laundromat, which is from a Spandau so i can't

remember which one i'm sure someone will tell me and that i'm sorry and i love mr kemp and the other mr kemp yeah that's not any good is it no it's not it's a bit rubbish yeah but i can't think of anything off the top of my head i'm afraid all right well we'll let it go if you start singing i'll join in um well i don't think the audience needs that. Thank you very much. Stay where you are. By the way, have you read The Well of Loneliness? No. Oh, right. Okay. Well, out and proud. Well, you're not, are you? Because you haven't read The Well

of Loneliness. I asked earlier whether anybody listening had a view on The Well of Loneliness and Jill says, when I was 16 in 1989, I asked the town library to order The Well of Loneliness, but they refused. And this is actually interesting, isn't it? Isn't that terrible? We should say we're about to discuss with Shelley Silas, who's here, the play that Shelley has written, which is on Radio 4 tomorrow afternoon, about the trial.

But I'll just go on with Jill's email. So I ordered it from the one town bookshop and it was excruciating. I thought the book would be a Bible and help me relax into myself and give me hope. In fact, it made me sad and then defiant. I was determined not to be as unhappy as Stephen, who I mostly related to. But I didn't want to be with a Stephen. That was the issue for me, the idea that there were probably thousands of tomboys out there competing for love. I like the part where she meets other women at the salon. I wish there was more of that.

It was fascinating. And in only a few years, it was the kind of world I would happily discover. I'm 48 now, and I have never been a lonely lesbian, thankfully. Jill, thank you for writing to us. We appreciate it. And Leslie says, I'm on a day off. I'm walking in the Yorkshire Dales, but I'm listening to you. The Well of Loneliness is one of my favourite books. I first read it when I was about 17 back in the 80s and several times since. I also recommended it to my son, who's currently studying English at university in Exeter and Hong Kong. He also really enjoyed it. Personally, I consider it a great work of literature. Well, there you go. I did say there were mixed feelings about The Well of Loneliness. So Shelley Silas is here, who she has written The Trial of The Well of Loneliness, which is the afternoon play on Radio 4 Tomorrow. I didn't know there'd been a trial, Shelley. So tell me about that. Yes. Well, the book was published in 1928 and it was Radcliffe Hall, Marguerite Radcliffe Hall, as she was named when she was born,

had had a very successful book called Adam's Breed, which had been published in 1926 and had won a couple of awards. And she was very, very popular. But this was a groundbreaking novel. It was dealing with lesbians. It was a very public book. And Radcliffe Hall wrote the book because she wanted it to be a book for the public, kind of a medical text, but not with all the medical words in it. She wanted the public to realise that women like herself existed.

OK, before you go on, let's just hear a quick clip from the play. In this extract, Radcliffe Hall, who was known as John, by the way, just to explain, is having a conversation with her lover, Una. What did Cape hope to achieve by sending a copy to the Express? He knew full well that James Douglas would generate such grave disapproval

and abhor it, ensuring everyone else does too. Thankfully, Vera Britain sees the book for what it is. It is a plea, passionate yet admirably restrained and never offensive. Through there, Mrs Gilchrist-Hopson. Joe, what's happened? I'm so sorry, John. Has the Home Secretary come to a decision?

He has. In only two days? Put her out of her misery for all our sakes. I suggested that if he felt it necessary, he should forward your book to the Director of Public Prosecutions. And what did he have to say? Absolutely nothing. He was away. So it was sent to his deputy, Sir George Stevenson,

and on his recommendation, Jonathan Cape, as your publisher, has been asked to withdraw the book because it is gravely detrimental to the public interest. There we go. They didn't like it. They did not like it. No. Let me just outline. It's 1928. So this is universal suffrage. I think women, every woman and every man now had the vote in 1928. So a significant year. Why did this book then cause so much controversy? Because it was a very explicit book, well, reading it now with, you know, we're in 2020, about lesbians. And this was really one of the first novels to be written that was outlining women behaving in this way. And it has to be said that it was mainly middle aged white men who protested and didn't like it. Some quite famous names. Quite famous names. But it was James Douglas who wrote for the Sunday Express. His words were actually,

I would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of prussic acid than this novel. And that was the feature that actually had the book sent to the Home Secretary. Cape sent it to the Home Secretary, said, read it for yourself. And, of course, that was it. The book was, he said, told Cape and the publishers, this book cannot be sold anymore.

Well, to answer the question that Radcliffe Hall is asking in that clip from the play, why did they involve, why did Cape behave in that way? Because he honestly thought that it would be OK, that if the Home Secretary read the book for himself, he would see that it was a work of literature, a work of art so this whole thing about, is literature

art, is it commercial all of that, he assumed the Home Secretary would approve it. But lesbianism has never been illegal, has it? Well, it's never been illegal because allegedly myth says that Queen Victoria said, well, well you know women couldn't

do things like that so no it wasn't illegal but it was it was to do with i mean when the book was was banned cape you stopped publishing it but then the publishers took paper mache molds to france to paris and had an english publisher over there reprint it send it back to the uk and the laws in the uk allowed the police to go and look through bookshops and stop things at customs at the ports. And this is what happened. That's intriguing. And it makes it just depressing to read about Jill back in 1989,

trying to get the book from a library. And it really does make you angry, doesn't it? It's heartbreaking. But I read the book when I was a teenager. The book found me. I have no idea how I knew about it. And I reread it when I was writing the play. And I found it absolutely heartbreaking. It's not a brilliant work of art, in my opinion. Well, I was going to ask you, is that it might be an important book, but is it a good book?

Well, in my opinion, it's a very important book. It's a vital book. It's still being published and read today. Virago Modern Classics publishes it. I think it's vital. I think everybody should read it. My 91-year-old mother had read it. She'd heard about it. Her friends had heard about it. So I think it's a very important read. But the fact that it was banned and didn't kind of really come out again until about 1948, I think, five years after Radcliffe Hall, who was called John to her friends, five years after she died, Una, her lover, wanted a collection of her work and she was told, be careful, this might cause problems. It never did, but it was banned for a very long time.

What kind of a writer was she? I mean, she'd had success of a sort, hadn't she, before she came up with this one? She was very, very successful and very well liked and was part of, you know, Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West, who were actually not very kind to her. Witnesses were not allowed into the trial at all. The trial lasted just for a week. But there was one person who was allowed to speak, but the magistrate did not want to hear about a people's opinion it was all to do with is this book obscene is it going to influence the young and the weak-willed person is it going to cause young people or anybody to change how they are and it was really to do with that it was to do with the

content of the book it was not to do with whether it was high art or not. At the very beginning of the programme, I said that you'd pulled a bit of a face when I said it was a lesbian novel. Well, there is some controversy about that now, isn't there? People aren't absolutely certain. Well, I'll probably get into a lot of trouble for saying it. I know these are difficult areas.

I'm going to say it. No, rereading it last year, I read it as a book about a trans man, because there's a lot in the book about the young character, Stephen Gordon. It very much reflects Radcliffe Hall's

life. They're very similar lives. They both came from immense privilege. I mean, this is another thing in the book. They could swan off to Canberra Sands and Rye. There's a lot of swanning off. There's a lot of swanning off. And they came from immense privilege and it always makes me wonder, well, what would somebody who had no money do? Where would they go?

What would they do? How would they cope? Well, I mean, there hasn't been a novel about lesbianism amongst the working classes of that time. I mean, I know Sarah Waters may well have written about it since, but around the time, there'd be nothing like it, would there? No, nothing at all. Just interested in some of the emails we've got. Here's one from Andrew. I think it's a beautiful book, he says.

I read it having seen a passing reference in a newspaper and found it deeply moving. The First World War parts are so typical of the time and the ending is ineffably sad. It is sad. It's heartbreaking. I mean, I urge everybody, including you, Jane, reread it. Well, I haven't quite

finished the first reading yet, but I'll get on to it. Dave says, I urge everybody, including you, Jane, re-read it. Well, I haven't quite finished the first reading yet, but I'll get on to it. Dave says, I read The Well of Loneliness last year out of curiosity. It's a rather sad and old-fashioned story about love that seems very innocent, but also with its heroine called Stephen, oddly current. My mother, now in her 80s,

recalled getting hold of a copy as a teenager, only to have it confiscated by her mother, who said it wasn't suitable. There you go. And confiscated by her mother, who said it wasn't suitable. There you go. And that's why it was banned, because it wasn't suitable. And it would influence the young and the weak-willed and those people that were open to new ideas. When you read the transcripts of the trial, what did you think? I was horrified. I was absolutely horrified.

I mean, I went to the National Archive and I had to go through 500 JPEGs, which were just called JPEG. I had no idea what was in any of them. When I eventually, at the end of three days, with my eyes bulging out of my head, got to the judgment, it's 16 pages long. And the word horrible, which is in the play... Yes, you use the term horrible acts,

crops up quite a lot. It's in the judgment. I mean, use the term horrible acts, it crops up quite a lot. It's in the judgment. I mean, every other line is horrible, horrible, these horrible women, these horrible acts. The whole thing is horrendous. But I got the impression that the magistrate, James Douglas, a lot of other, you know, of the white middle-aged men

were all sitting in the Garrett Club kind of going, we know this is going to be banned. From the start, you know it's going to be banned um but the the judgment itself was i was shocked but it was 1928 remind me when was lady chatty chatty's lover a controversial book sorry i know i didn't why did you have to ask i'm sorry i'm just trying to work out what the time scale would be whether it was around the same time or slightly later? I think it was later. I think it was later. I know The Rainbow was banned in 1915. Okay, there was a lot

of book banning going on. A lot of book banning, but it was this obscenities act. They were allowed to do it and it was about the content of the book. It wasn't about the author's intention. Would there ever be, I mean, as far as I'm aware, there's never been a television version of this or a film. Could there be? I don't know. Yes, I'd love to write the film of it.

But I think there's so much more. There's such a lot of rich material around it, how they lived their lives. They loved dogs. They owned kennels as well. So Una and John, wonderful, wonderful characters. Very rich. I have to say, some people say wonderful, you say rich. Also difficult.

It's an adjective often applied to women. But they were difficult. I think Radcliffe Hall was incredibly difficult. Very, very stubborn. Exactly what she wanted. And yeah, I think they but they could because they came from that privilege in the education that allowed them to have it. They knew that they had a choice. They knew that they could do it. Here's another email from Caroline. This is the other side of it. Nearly 40 years ago, when I was 17, I bought a copy of The Well of Loneliness, not realising actually what the content was. My lovely dad, though, did know and thought I was trying to tell him that I was a lesbian and tied himself up in knots trying to talk to me about it. It still makes me smile. So there you go. This book has been causing confusion the length and breadth of the land for some time.

I would urge everybody to read it and form your own opinion. It's not a great work of art, but it is a very important book, and it was very important at its time. And it's interesting, when you tried to find the transcripts, are you suggesting in some way that there's still a sense of embarrassment about all this? I mean, the fact that they were just JPEGs and they weren't marked properly? No, I just think that's the National Archive not having the time and the money to pay someone to do it.

But I've got it all. I've had to rename everything, so... It's in your hands. So I know what's in there, yep. All right, Shelley, thank you very much. The book was eventually published in America, and of course it is now widely available in Britain. So as Shelley says, not the perfect novel,

but a really significant one. So make your own mind up. Have a look yourself. The Trial of the Well of Loneliness is on Saturday, three o'clock here on Radio 4. It is part of something called the Riot Girls series.

This is writing by women and it continues on Monday on Radio 4 with Trumpet and then Dykes. So that's all happening next week. Shelley, thank you very much indeed for coming on. We appreciate it.

That was Shelley, Silas and that play is at three o'clock tomorrow afternoon here on Radio 4. Controversy is now raging about all sorts of things, not least my own ignorance about Lady Chatterley's lover and that trial. As far as we know, the trial of the Lady Chatterley book was in 1960. We do know that. That was because Penguin had released the unexpurgated paperback version of that D.H. Lawrence novel. And people were horrified. And certainly I've never looked at Daisies in quite the same way again after I did get hold of a copy of that from Crosby Library in, I think, about 19, possibly 1980. I was actually, I really was horrified by Lady Chatterley's Lover. We do also think it was published in 1928, at least in Italy. So there we go. Any Italian listeners who were around in 1928 can confirm that if they hear this. The song with the terrible lyric that I referenced by Spandau Ballet was highly strong. So got that right. And in fairness

to Siobhan, who's producing today, she did ball in my headphones highly strong. And I thought she was just commenting on my performance or on my general demeanour. I did ignore her and I shouldn't have done. Now, to your emails about the rest of the material in the programme today. Listening to Sarah Champion

says Stella, I'm a Methodist local preacher. We've all done regular and mandatory safeguarding and advanced safeguarding training. It applies to anyone who may have contact with children or vulnerable adults and we also insist that anybody using our premises is

sufficiently trained as well. Thank you for that. Another email, Sarah Champion was absolutely right about the imbalance of power being a very significant factor. Between the ages of about 14 to 17, I was groomed and under pressure to have a sexual relationship with a man who ran the church choir I sang in. I didn't have a sexual relationship with him. And until my own children reached the age I was at the time, I honestly didn't recognize that relationship a listener who says, I read that book about two years ago and I thought the pain and the anguish of Stephen in those days was beautifully written.

I think it's a classic indeed. I am 59 and I've been in a very happy lesbian relationship for 21 years. When I was a child, I dressed as a boy with short hair and a cheeky face and I called myself Jack. It allowed me to play football with the boys to climb and be as rough as they were. My mum said that tomboy girls always grow up more

feminine as teenagers. Well I tried. I got married. I had two children and in my 30s I had a relationship with my children's godmother. It caused havoc. Everyone said, I knew you were a lesbian. Well, I wish they told me I hadn't got a clue. I love that. Thank you very much for that. She goes on. It was difficult in my day. I cannot imagine how Stephen braved her freakish image from others or how the book even got published. Stephen's pain, feelings and problems do transfer to the modern day. That is from a listener called Jackie. All the best to you, Jackie. Thank you very much for that. Linda says,

my mother gave this book to me in 1970 when I was 18 and her mother gave it to her at the same age. I thought it was moving and I still remember that story very well. My friend who's 84 was also given the book by her mother. I wonder how common this is. Interesting. Tracy says, I only how common this is. Interesting. Tracy says,

I only recently picked this book up in a charity shop and I devoured it. I loved it. I think it's beautifully written and it needs to be more widely promoted. I know it's many years since publication, but my goodness, it can apply to contemporary women's minds.

And I would have thought an essential read, especially for anyone doing A-level English literature. The history surrounding its publication gives the novel an intrigue for any reader however I read it first then looked up the author. The story is what drew me in and I liked the way it was written, the emotion, the description, the tenderness and the struggle. It's all in there. It is now my favourite novel of all time. And just by way of contrast, this is Lucy who says, oh, what a bleak read. The cover didn't look at all like me. There weren't many classic lesbian books to read when I was a teenager.

A couple of pages in Women in Love until happily oranges are not the only fruit appeared, says Lucy. Thank you for that. Clive, me and my wife Sally were both reading while on a beach in Sicily. When we took a look at the titles of the books, she was reading The Well of Loneliness and I was reading Senseless Acts of Random Violence. Well, I hope it wasn't your honeymoon, Clive. Right, let's move on. Jane, this is from, is it Pauline or Paul? I don't know. But anyway, whoever it was, and I don't blame them. They are shocked by my chronicological ignorance. The trial of Lady Chatterley was in 1960. And that's in bold. I'm sorry about that. It was ignorant. I shouldn't have shouldn't have referenced it at all. Also,

while I'm on, I'm always irritated by young adults of 16 and 17 being referred to as children, simply because I remember what I was like at 14 and 15, never mind 16 and 17. And a couple of people take issue with the fact that Lorna Cooper was talking about meat in her budget diets for families. Well, I mean, I know that vegetarianism and veganism are a thing, but nevertheless, the majority of the British public continue to eat meat. Flick says, no criticism of just offer support to Lorna. She says, I think it's a good idea. I used to do a food co-op with friends.

The issue for me is storage these days. And I do take Caroline's point because Lorna was talking about buying 24 tins of tinned tomatoes I think it was and yes I get that we all use tinned tomatoes but where do you put the things when you've got them Maggie says listening to your guests talking about feeding your family I just had the lovely memory of the 70s when I and my friend Shirley next door shared a chest freezer for bulk buying it It was kept in my house and she paid me 50p a week for the electricity. We carried this on for years, good times, and I encourage anyone to seriously consider it. Yeah, that is a really good idea. Eleanor says, Jane just mentioned organising dried herbs in alphabetical order. My mother used to do this. She kept them in three ice cream cartons.

In order to remember what was in each carton, she used JR. Dallas was on television when she started doing this. So the first carton contained herbs beginning with AI, the second JQ, and the third R onwards. Has everybody got that? A lot of you won't understand the JR reference, but if you're me, you certainly do. And Richard... Yeah, Siobhan's on fire. She's just reminding me that Stacey Solomon did have that uber-organised store cupboard

where she had her crisps on pegs. And I think, I don't know, were they in alphabetical order? We don't know, but they were certainly on pegs and possibly color coordinated yeah um have you i don't know if anybody else has discovered the m&s prosquito and parmesan crisps but as somebody rather crudely pointed out to me the other day that's ham and cheese um yeah but they are very nice just a little tip there other crisps are widely available and cassie says we're a family of five and I've got ours down to 30 quid. I see it as a mini challenge each week to get it as low as possible. Also, we eat healthier because everything is made from scratch.

I did enjoy listening to your conversation with Lorna. Thank you for that, Cassie. Yes, Lorna was excellent. I mean, I just I always say, look, I've got vegetarian children. I do a lot of chopping of vegetables. Definitely my food bills have gone down because I'm not buying meat. It's just the time. I've got time.

Not everybody has got that time for the chopping and the prep or the space either. That's the other thing that you need, of course. Really enjoyed today. Thank you very much for listening and taking part. We're back with the highlights of the week tomorrow afternoon, two minutes past four on Radio 4 and, of course, in in podcast form and back live Monday morning, two minutes past ten. investments for a project in New York. She was very confident in her words. And yet, it was all a lie. She's a con artist. Join journalist Vicky Baker

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