Woman's Hour - Naomi Klein, Thornaby FC, folk singer-songwriter Aoife O’Donovan, author Lucy Foley

Episode Date: June 11, 2024

Thornaby Football Club’s committee is facing criticism after they announced that the Teeside-based club would be dropping all of its women’s section. First team manager Abbey Lyle tells Clare McDonnell what this means for the women and girls in the club, the support they’ve received since, and what it says about grassroots women’s sport. Clare also discusses the issues with Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, former Paralympian and Chair of Sport Wales and the CEO of Women in Sport, Stephanie Hilborne.Clare talks to the Canadian writer and social activist Naomi Klein about her book Doppelganger, now out in the UK in paperback. The book is a result of her being mistaken for another Naomi – Wolf, for years. Naomi Klein uses her doppelganger as a metaphor to explain many of the issues facing the modern world, from climate change and politics, to obsession with wellness and the ways we parent our children. British writer Lucy Foley began her career writing historical fiction before making an extremely successful switch to crime and thrillers, and with New York Times bestsellers The Paris Apartment and The Guest List under her belt, Lucy has sold more than five and half million books. She joins Clare to discuss her latest novel, The Midnight Feast, which takes place during the opening of a luxury wellness retreat and explores the clash between the insta-ready super-rich and some very disgruntled locals.Grammy-award winning American folk singer/songwriter Aoife O’Donovan has released three critically-acclaimed solo albums, is co-founder and front woman of the string band, Crooked Still, and is also one third of the all-female group I’m With Her. Her latest album, All My Friends, is inspired by the passage of the 19th amendment and the evolving landscape of women’s rights in America over the past century. She joins Clare to discuss the themes and to perform live in the studio.Presented by Clare McDonnell Producer: Louise Corley

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, this is Claire Macdonald and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Thank you very much indeed. Hello and welcome to Woman's Hour. Now, we often celebrate how far women's football has come on so many fronts. Match attendances, TV ratings, the increasing number of games played in what have been known up to now as the men's stadiums. Sponsorship, investment. What we are talking about here, of course, though, is top flight women's football. Has anything really changed when it comes to the more grassroots game?

Judging by what has happened in the last 24 hours at Thornaby FC, maybe not. The committee there has voted to drop the entire women's team due to constrained budgets. Now six board members have stood down in revolt. We're going to be speaking to the women's first team manager shortly. I'd love to hear from you on this one this morning. Tell me what is the real picture out there for women and girls in football? Do you play?

Are you feeling that shift towards greater equality? Or is it all just lip service? You can text the programme. The number is 84844. Text will be charged at your standard message rate. On social media, we are at BBC Women's Hour and you can email us through our website. Also, come with me as we enter the doppelganger world

with author Naomi Klein. The paperback of her hugely successful book is out now. It's all about the double lives we increasingly lead these days with our online personal brands, or as Naomi calls them, the thumbnail versions of ourselves. So, how does this mirror world exploit and exaggerate our differences? And how can we stem this slide towards greater polarisation? Naomi will join me live.

It's been dubbed folk horror, Dark Archers, the new novel from author Lucy Foley, an upstairs downstairs tale of how a spa hotel in the West Country and oasis of wellness is anything but and it's opening floodlights the class rift in the local village as outsiders flood in and locals are priced out lucy will join me in the studio and Watch it all, the Tennessee dawn is lifting all the fields. Just beautiful. You're listening to the Grammy Award winning American folk singer-songwriter Aoife O'Donovan. She will join us to play live in the studio.

She's in the UK for forthcoming dates at the Barbican Hall and the Cambridge Folk Festival. She'll tell us about her latest album, All My Friends, inspired in part by the passage of the 19th Amendment that gave women the vote in the USA. So all of that on the way here on Woman's Hour. But let's start by talking about Thornaby FC. It's a football club in the northeast of england

that's come under fire after dropping its entire women and girls teams it means there's no girls teams from under sevens through to under 15s and the women's side as well it leaves 100 players without a club there's been a huge outcry locally and now nationally since the decision was made. Lioness Beth Mead says she's disgusted. Yesterday the entire board of Thornaby FC resigned leaving only two committee members who had originally voted to keep the women's team. Well joining me now is Abby Lyle who's team manager of the women's side. Abby good morning. morning thanks so much for joining us here on women's hour when did you first hear that the entire women and girls sides had been dropped um first of all thank you for having us on we really appreciate it um but yeah um i think we just lost the line

there to abby just one second to see if we can get sorry there you go we can hear you you carry on so first of all on Saturday we heard there was an emergency meeting uh going ahead um and the secretary for our women's section Rachel um she wormed her way in to get onto the committee meeting because they'd try to do the meeting without her. So she got herself in there because obviously she's the only female. And unfortunately, only three people voted to keep us. And then on Saturday evening, Rachel called us and told us the bad news. And unfortunately, it was hard to process.

We tried to digest it a little bit before we told the girls because we needed to do it correctly. But yeah, it's been a crazy 48 hours. We just needed to make sure we delivered the message correctly because obviously it's all different age groups. So we need to make sure that we didn't just outright say,

that's it, you're gone. We needed to obviously support them and see what we could do for them. Did you get any whiff of this before it happened i mean that the club has announced the decision on facebook they say it's been a difficult year did you have any heads up on this in regards to a difficult year what they mean is is some years set fire to the clubhouse um earlier at late last year sorry um so as a, we all rebuilt it. We've rebuilt the clubhouse.

We really rebuilt the whole stadium because it got set on fire. So that's what they mean to me in regards to a difficult 12 months. Financially-wise, it all got done for free. So we had lots of sponsors come in and do it all for them. Volunteers from in the community came

and everybody got spades out you know and got the drills out and all helped redo it so money's wise that's not what they're referring to um what are they referring to what do you think a little unsure it's definitely not money driven because women, on our own, we support ourselves. So we have some main sponsors who we go to who give us money. We don't ask for anything off the men, really. They said staffing issues. I mean, they've never come to us and said, can any of your parents do the cafe? Can they do the bar? So again, I think the statement that they put out didn't really help them

because they've actually left it in a bit of a cloud. So, yeah, I'm unsure what the issue is. Do you know whether they voted for the men to have cuts as well? Or do you know how that vote went? No, nothing. All the vote was, was do we get rid of the women's section so it wasn't on any agenda uh you know do we cut the men's budget and and see if we can keep you know the team on and we do x y and z with women's football it was do we keep women's

football in the club yes or no and that's ultimately the the decision they made it's a huge number of uh women and girls who are affected by this. How has this news gone down? Do you know what? We've took some real positives away from it. It's been sad because we got to a cup final last month. We had 800 children come and watch us, wanting their shirts signed, wanting to be the next Kirsty, Shauna and Harriet. So them little girls were, you know, whilst they do want to be Bethmead,

they want to play for Thornaby, you know, that's their club. And that's the sad thing is that, you know, they want to come and play for that club. So the girls, the younger generation, you know, it pulls on your heartstrings. But the women's side of it, from under-15s onwards, it's frustrating because they see all this on social media. They've come through a generation where they're really fighting

to play football, where women's football was questioned. So it's like we've took a step back. So the age groups are different of how they've reacted. And the women's section, I probably think, have took it the worst. But they're determined to take positives out of it and, you know, get that decision overturned. Because, yeah, we deserve it. We've worked really hard. And, yeah, it's frustrating, I suppose.

You have some allies. We did approach Thornaby FC for a response. We've heard from Philip Jennery who was one of the two board members who'd wanted to keep the women's team he remains on the board

he says this we just want Thornaby FC to be an open and encouraging environment for women we plan to build a new diverse wide-ranging board

alongside representatives from the women's team so this could be the phoenix that comes out of the flame here that you actually get better representation going forward yeah that's it and ultimately that's all we've ever wanted and

you know i've said on previous interviews it's not a witch hunt it's not a man versus woman if you want to play a fall if you want to say that again abby just because we missed it the line dropped again sorry if you want to play any sport you play sport it's not a man versus woman you know it it should be if you enjoy it's good for your mental health you make friends you know you go and play that sport whether it be cricket basketball football that's what we need to really shout about and you know them six members, they're all over the country. They're all over the world.

And we need to make sure that this doesn't happen again in any sport. We can't allow it to happen. And that's what's really come from it. And like you say, hopefully it's changed people's opinions and we can take a turn for positive reasons, you know. You clearly have decent progressive men on the board, but are you saying the rest of that board were all male?

All of them were men, yeah. As I say, Rachel, our secretary for the women's side, she was on the committee, but they tried to do the meeting without her. She forced a way in. But I think a diverse committee is what we need. You know, generations have changed. Things have progressed. And I think we need representatives

from, you know, outside of the club, you know, the likes of the FA and things like that, because they've got everybody's interest, you know, not just, you know, the local club. So, yeah, I think we really need to push on. Abi, thanks so much for joining us.

Abi Lyle, team manager at Thornaby FC of the women's side. Joining me now, Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, former Paralympian and Chair of Sports Wales and the CEO of Women in Sports, Stephanie Hilborn. Morning to both of you. Morning. Tanni Grey-Thompson, let's start with you. Your thoughts on what's happened at Thornaby?

I live about four miles from Thornaby and I was contacted by someone who said, we're hearing rumours that the women's team's been cut. So that's why I posted. And I'm speaking in my own capacity as opposed to Sport Wales. But for me, women's sports come so far and then just to cut the women's team, they could have done the same thing in a completely different way, leaving it as a really positive opportunity for the women's game, as opposed to just saying, actually, we're going to do without you anymore.

And I absolutely understand pressure of volunteers and community and cost of living, and it is really difficult to run a club. But actually, women and girls just deserve better. It's as simple as that. You know, when I was growing up, we weren't allowed to play rugby. We weren't, you know, there were all these sports that we weren't allowed to play because they weren't right for girls. And football is one of those sports that's breaking through that. And Abby's absolutely right.

You know, it's that inspiration for girls who are five and six years old that could be taken away. So I think there's a lot of positives that come out of this, even though it's been poorly handled. Does it concern you that we talk about this in the high profile, the lionesses, when we see women playing in traditionally men's stadiums, we see all of that and we see the TV viewing figures go up. But actually, when you hear stories like this, you realise there is a double standard further down. And how do we get rid of that? Yeah, there's absolutely a double standard.

I mean, you look at the attendances at Arsenal and the big matches, and that's just so exciting, which people, you know, a few years ago would have said would never have happened. But the reality is the best maids of this world start off at places like Thornaby. And, you know, you need that encouragement. You need that support. You need to see people like you. And, you know, if we want to be successful on a world stage which i think we do but we also want women to be active 80 percent of women um are not fit enough to be healthy you know and and these are the sports that can help deliver that change so that what happens in your local community just just matters um and and it's been amazing that the traction it's had um because it's these

moments that show a highlight how far we've we've still got to go and the reality is how you change it it's hard you know that diverse board that they talked about is is a step towards making that happen you know we should just want people to play sport you know it it should just be that simple let's bring in stephanie hilburn now ceo of women in sports stephanie we heard there from the first team of the women sorry the team of the the coach of the first uh women's team abby basically saying you know we need maybe the fa to get involved we need to sort of stop these kind of localized decisions being made and she was saying across the country you know we're talking about all male committee here at thorna bfc

that is replicated is that part of the problem thank you yeah no it absolutely is i mean we've we've lived in a society where we've we've seen sport being something that men do and you historically, that was very much the case. We just need to put that attitude, which has relegated history. I mean, it's an absurd situation to be in. As Tani says, and as Abi said, we've got a crisis amongst teenage girls' mental health. We've got a crisis in the elderly population of Austria-Polish. It's both things which are addressed by sport.

There's a massive gap between girls and boys as to the amount of team sport they get to play. So like 22% more boys than girls get to play team sport. I think the backdrop to this is we must stop seeing this as a men versus women thing. There's nothing that women want to take away from men's joy of sport because we see our husbands, if we have them, our sons, et cetera, playing it and loving it. And, you know, no one wants to take that away. But the point is, it is utterly shocking that we are telling girls they don't deserve the joy, the learning of leadership skills, the teamwork, friendships, the boys.

Of course, they deserve the same. And it is heartbreaking to see these types of decisions. So when it comes back, as you said, to that point, who is making the decisions? I think these volunteer and community groups are amazing. We just need half and half men and women in them at every level. And as soon as we get to that 50-50, it starts to shift the dial. So does that need to come centrally? Does that need to come from the FA? Do we need a new kind of governance here? Because we've got a statement from the FA.

They told us this. In recent years, we've seen unprecedented growth across the women's and girls' game in this country, and we are fully committed to ensuring all women and girls can access and play the game, whether that be in schools or in their local community. We're currently supporting North Riding County FA, who are in contact with the club to see if a suitable resolution could be agreed.

And yet we know these stories because they hit the headlines and they go away. But don't we need fundamental change going forward? Yes. And I mean, Tanya knows better than I really. I mean, the major sports councils have had a code of governance for bodies which are funded by them for some time, which is about the balance of gender on the boards of the body safe fund. But obviously these are volunteer clubs. And football lags way behind in the private sector

because the Premier League clubs tend to be owned by men. It's very difficult to have the conditionality in terms of board makeup but at the community level we're very interested actually in why it is we can't get more women volunteers in sport there's clearly a backdrop that we're doing this in the unpaid work and so our time is very very constrained but if we can get more women volunteering and becoming coaches in sport that would start to shift the dial and if we can get more women volunteering and becoming coaches in sport that would start to shift the dial and if we can get more women feeling that it's a nice place to be to be involved in these community clubs that would shift the dial but actually that might mean changing the way the culture of a club because when we find women do join these communities as

we've just heard actually it doesn't feel a terribly inclusive place in many cases. But it's back down to stereotyping at the core of this. We need to bring our girls up to expect that they will enjoy and love sport. And we need to bring our boys up to stop thinking that sport is theirs and their entire masculinity depends on proving they're better at it than the girls. Great to have you on the programme, Stephanie. Thank you so much for joining us. Stephanie Hill, born there, CEO of Women in Sport.

You also heard from Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, former Paralympian and Chair of Sport Wales. Get in touch with the programme. Tell us what your experience is. Text 84844. Julia, Morning Julia, says, Heartbreaking news about Thornaby to so many girls and women. Football is so incredibly important.

I genuinely thought that as a society, we had woken up to this and I am shocked by what's happened in Thornaby today and that this is still happening. Thank you for your text, Julia. Get in touch with us, 84844. Maybe you play football or your daughter or son does. We'd love to hear your views on the programme this morning. Now, my next guest is the writer and activist and filmmaker Naomi Klein. Her latest book, Doppelganger, now out in paperback, was written as a response to years of being mistaken for another Naomi, Dr Naomi Wolf, who is well known for her acclaimed third wave feminist book, The Beauty Myth, and more recently from being suspended from Twitter

after spreading vaccine misinformation. Naomi Klein has used her book not just as an attempt to reclaim her identity, but also for a deep dive into the world of conspiracy theories, how they can be used to distort and exploit our legitimate fears and their impact on politics and culture more widely. She uses her doppelganger as a metaphor to explain many of the issues facing the modern world, from climate justice and politics to obsession with wellness and the ways we parent our children. Naomi Klein, welcome to Woman's Hour. Thank you.

Thank you so much for dropping by. Now, your book, your hardback of this this was originally published just six months ago in 2023. Are you still being mistaken in the way that you have been, which is what kind of inspired your whole thought process for this book? Well, thanks for asking. It happens a little bit less. I wasn't sure if I was going to make it worse or better by writing about it, because one of the things that happens is you sort of train the algorithm so that it associates you even more with one another. Frankly, it couldn't have been worse. So I didn't have much to lose. And I do feel that, you know, it's much less interesting to me that I get confused with her and that she's sort of my doppelganger, than in many ways, she's a doppelganger of her former self. I mean, Women's Hour listeners probably remember her from the days when she was very much a liberal feminist, a Democrat. Now she is hanging around with Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson and

railing against immigration and sounds like a doppelganger of her former self. And I think we can all think of people who have changed in this sort of invasion of the body snatcher sort of way. So the more she changes, the less I'm confused with her, to be honest. So it doesn't happen as much as it used to. So the premise of the book is you see doubling everywhere. You started with your own personal experience and you looked out. So where did you see it? And why is that so troubling to you? Well, frankly, I saw it as a useful and productive literary tool to explore the ways that we create doubles of ourselves, kind of digital doppelgangers, if you will, every time we perform avatars into the ether, this sort of idealized version of us, of you and me, right?

We all sort of polish our online identities. And is that really us? Or is that what we want the world to see as us? And we know it's more the latter than the former. Other people also create doubles of us. They project their image of us, particularly if you're from a racialized identity group, people project a idea in their head of what your group represents. That's a kind of doppelganger. And of course, whole societies can have their sinister evil twins. And in literature and film, the figure of the doppel, the figure of the doppelganger is often used to explore the threat of a fascist flip. And in the end, that ends up being what the book is about, the way whole societies can have their evil twins. And I think we feel that many of us feel it

coming closer and closer in our peripheral vision. There's a polarization absolutely going on. But let's just remain on the personal for a second. You talk about it being, as you said, you know, the kind of social media versions of ourselves, this hyper individualistic approach to life. Where does that take us as individuals, first of all, and then as a society? Is it good for us? Yeah, I mean, this is really why I wanted to write the book, because I have been interested in the question of personal branding and what it is doing to our sense of self, to our relationships with one another for a long time. My first book, which was published a quarter of a century ago, No Logo, was about the rise of the lifestyle brand in the

corporate world. And when I wrote that book in the late 90s, the idea that everyday people could have personal brands was a sort of absurd proposition, even though there were people who were saying that we should, because we didn't yet have social media and iPhones. So it was only celebrities who could afford to create personal brands. But now, of course, we all have advertising agencies in our back pockets, and we can do that. So what does it do precisely when we're not sure if somebody really is our friend or we're a connection and a way for them to get followers and clout? Is the sort of virtuous version of ourselves that we project really us? Can we trust it?

Can we trust each other? So I think it's not very good for our relationships with each other. And I wanted to delve into that. I think it also has had real effects on our social movements when our social movements act more like brands online and are always like looking for the latest catchy slogan and are very proprietary about it. And there are all kinds of ways that we basically act like advertising agencies instead of individuals or members of social movements. And I wanted to explore that, but I wanted to explore it from inside my own branding crisis. Because of course, me being confused with her is me having a problem with my personal brand, which frankly is funny for somebody who's written about the problems of branding their whole life.

So you're saying what doesn't happen is we can kind of brand and project ourselves. But if we actually want to be a force for good, a force for change in the world, what we're paddling in the shallows, we're not really gathering together and doing anything. We're kind of opposites at the moment, you know, and then we're going even further in the opposite direction. Even the people on the same side aren't being, you know, organic in that sense. I think there is that. I think there is a way in which the logic of branding is always about repetition, reinforcement. You know, a good brand doesn't really evolve. This is something I know from studying corporate brands, right? A good disciplined brand repeats itself ad infinitum. Maybe it has a few brand extensions, but it never strays too far. Now, if you think about what we want as individuals, we want to grow, we want to

change as facts change. What we want from our social movements is a kind of a generosity of ideas. We don't want to be proprietary. We want them to spread. But of course, if you're interested in your brand, you're interested in ownership. You're interested in policing the boundaries of that brand. So I think that in a way, it keeps us small and niche. It keeps us from, as I said, I read about it from the inside, I'm implicated in, I'm not saying I am this virtuous person who never worries about any of these things. Of course I do. We all do. Because in many ways, this is a product of, you know, what is now called late capitalism. And the fact that we're basically our individualized, optimized selves are all that we have to protect us in these roiling capitalist seas. Because of course, we're told not to expect jobs and pensions and any kind of security from an increasingly austeritized state. So that is the real reason we're always optimizing

ourselves and perfecting our personal brands. Yeah. And one of the big issues in your life, you've been communicating on the climate emergency for over a decade now you're co-teaching an undergraduate course on the climate emergency um you talk about hurricane katrina and how that threw into sharp relief for you how we are you know polarized society the haves and the have-nots how does this doubling then feed into that theory of people being left behind? And how does getting on top of it help that? Well, I think first of all, we are facing so many of these huge collective crises that, and this is really the problem with seeing, with approaching the world through the lens of our personal brands or through the lens of the brand of our in-group that we've decided to associate ourselves with.

If we're thinking about the climate crisis or the inequality crisis or endless wars or any of the mass social crises that we face and that intersect and overlap with each other, these are things we're only going to address if we are going to address them together. And it's going to be through collective action, not individual optimized consumer choices and things like this. So there is an imperative that we organize with one another beyond our individual selves. And I'm not arguing for ego death, but I am arguing for sort of getting ourselves into some kind of proper perspective. But I think beyond that, you know, a lot of the ways in which we're seeing politics being rewritten, it is very much along these lines of the in-group and the out-group. And this sort of broader, this brings us back to what I was talking about around this sort of feeling of the way as whole society can flip into its doppelganger, into its evil twin. And in many ways, I think this is how we're responding to the climate crisis of just protect our own, divide the world into them and us, and we can only afford to care about us and not them. And so the ways in which we're increasingly fortressing our borders,

accepting a kind of a normalized mass death around the world, and just kind of getting used to it, or expected to get used to it. You know, that can't be our response to the climate crisis. And I do believe that getting beyond our police selves is the first step to building the kind of politics we need. Because you focus very much on migration as well, and more and more people are going to be living on less and less land. So how do we change that perception? You talk about, you know, the evil twin of an alternate society and fascism stepping in. Right. Who's making space for that? Well, I mean, this is the stakes of our political moment. Because this is, and you mentioned Hurricane Katrina.

I have been writing about the climate crisis really since then. That hurricane was in October of 2025. So it's been a long time and I've covered a lot of disasters since. And disasters are really, I think I'm fascinated by these moments of extremity, in part because you see the best and the worst of what humans are capable of. I mean, I remember being in New Orleans after Katrina, and just, you know, neighbors, there were blackouts, prolonged blackouts, loss of power, people emptied their fridges, cooked food for everybody on their block, took care of each other, checked in on each other.

But you also had the private security companies descending. You had real estate developers coming in and saying, this is a great opportunity to get rid of all this public housing and build condominiums. And so that original solidarity really comes under siege from a feeling of scarcity, like we really just have to protect ourselves and take care of ourselves. So policy matters. You know, it often seems so abstract when we're having these political debates, but it matters if we invest in social housing. It matters if we invest in the NHS in this country, because what that produces is a little bit of slack in the system, so that when we face the shocks that are inevitable at this point, right, we are going to face more disasters, economic shocks, climate shocks, migration shocks, frankly. And if everything is cut to the bone, then what I think we can count on is that we will respond with a feeling of scarcity of us and them, and we won't be proud of who we are in that future.

So doppelgangers are often used as a way. Freud talked about how doppelgangers, this is in the interwar period, he talked about how as a society people are fascinated with the idea that there's another them walking around in the world, because it speaks to the fact that we know we could be other. We know that who we are is not just because of who we are innately. It's a series of choices that was made by us, by our parents, by our societies. So we can be that ugly person who turns on our neighbors in a moment of crisis or turns on the stranger. Or we also can be this generous, solidaristic person.

We have, we're a mass as human beings. We can be both of these things. So policy, good policy encourages our better angels is the way I tend to think about it. We need saving from ourselves. A little bit. Yeah. And also you talk about the wellness industry. Talk about different versions of yourself. A little bit. of the segment before this one about the importance of sport, right, of the importance

of investing in recreation infrastructure and really from a collective public policy point of view, which is very different from the kind of Instagram glowing influencer wellness guru world that I write about, which is not about looking at this in any kind of systemic way. How do we invest in the public infrastructure that encourages this in a society and make sure that no one is excluded? It's really, how can you be the absolute best you? How can you create an optimized version of yourself that is you only better,

that will compete with all the other me's and you's out there who are also trying to optimize themselves? It's hyper-individualistic, and it's really the opposite of that sense of raising the floor, really, to give everyone access to preventive health care and the healthiest bodies we can have. It's really about a culture of competition and scarcity. So there's a difference between that Instagram wellness world

and the kind of approach to equal access to sport that you were referring to earlier. Yeah, you are a parent. You're a parent to a neurodivergent child as well. How does that whole concept feed into your vision of him for the future and what kind of society you want him to live in. Yeah, I realize people who haven't read the book might be listening to this conversation going, this sounds like a very strange book. It is indeed the strangest book I've written. Comes a lot of ground. It uses the figure of the double to look at these different ways that we do create, try to double ourselves in order to get an edge. We've talked about wellness and

branding, but another way that some of us do it is by treating our own offspring, our own children, as a double of us, as an extension of our very mortality. Of course, you know, in the upper classes, they give their kids their own names and just call them Junior, right? The second. We have a presidential candidate in the U.S., RFK Jr.,

who's trying to be a doppelganger of Kennedys before him, and a lot of voters are buying it. I am a parent of a child who is very different from me. All kids are different from their parents, but my child is unmoldable. There was no chance he was going to play that game with me. And it really did challenge me because I realized that there was a part of me that thought about parenting as having a little mini me. And that was not going to be in the cards for me. And it made me realize that I don't think children should be our property or our doubles. And what we need is a world that allows for their beautiful diversity. And the feelings that I've had of panic and scarcity around my own child have been less about him and more about a world that is not built for him, that is not open to him, that isn't taking him into consideration. And I don't talk about the specifics of his disability,

but I think this is the general theory of disability rights, is that we need to be thinking, when we're thinking about how we build this world, that it isn't just for this very narrow version of what a human being is, and anybody who is outside of that is made to feel unwelcome. You thought, just in conclusion,

you made me think about how we know, how we go through life. And as you say, our double self, the one that we are and the one that we'd like to be, and maybe the kind of more unsavory part of ourselves as well, that most of us are just are not honest about. You talk about understanding, essentially being more generous with one another, building a better society from the ground up. So for people listening to Women's Hour today, what would be your advice that is good for them, for their kind of spiritual, mental, social health, and also for the rest of society? Well, thank you for that question. I'll just quote the great Iris Murdoch,

who talked about the challenge of unselfing, even for a moment, that our transcendent moments, whether we're looking at, I mean, I live on the west coast of Canada, so I'll talk about a moment recently where I heard an orca breathing at night. I completely forgot myself.

I unselfed totally. But also when you could see a beautiful work of art or listen to beautiful music, you forget yourself. And I think we should reach for that. It'll be fleeting, but it'll be our best moments. What a thought to end on. Thank you so much for coming in to the Woman's Hour studio. Naomi Klein there and the paperback version of Doppelganger is out now. Do share your thoughts of Naomi's interview. You can text 84844. Lovely to meet you.

Lots of you still getting in touch on the football issue. Tom in Essex says one real positive about the women and girls sports issue. My football mad teenage foster sons will happily watch women's football and don't see it as different to watching the men's game. I don't think this would be happening 10 years ago and it's extremely encouraging to see.

But this text, the Thornaby, absolute disgrace. There should be a judicial review of the board's decision under the Equality Act. Then maybe we'll see where the club went wrong and stop it happening again. As ever, your thoughts on anything you hear on Woman's Hour, the text number 84844. Now, British writer Lucy Foley began her career writing historical fiction

before making an extremely successful switch to crime and thrillers. And with the New York Times bestsellers, The Paris Apartment and The Guest List under her belt, Lucy has sold more than five and a half million books. Her latest novel, The Midnight Feast, which takes place during the opening of a luxury wellness retreat and explores the clash between the instant-ready super-rich and some very disgruntled locals, shining a light on class difference, blow-ins to local communities,

and what one of her characters in the book describes as the cynical, monetised wellness of that whole industry. Lucy Fairley joins us now. Hello. Hi, thanks for having me. Interesting timing coming off the back of Naomi Klein because that's one of the issues she talks about in her book Doppelganger, the wellness industry. So this is for people who haven't read the book yet because it's just out. Tell us where this is set. This is all about part of the backdrop is the wellness industry isn't it it is yes um so it's all set at the opening of this swanky new countryside retreat built on old secrets beside an ancient wood in the west country and it all takes place over the summer solstice

during this kind of wonderful celebration they've got um you know kind of tapping into this kind of wonderful celebration they've got, you know, kind of tapping into this sort of pagan chic thing they've got going on. And tensions and temperatures are rising. And some unexpected guests have come to stay. And yes, there is this whole wellness thing that I don't think I really knew I was going to explore when I started writing the book. But it really came out, I suppose, in the character of Francesca Meadows, who is the owner of this hotel. And she is this sort of wellness goddess. She floats around in a lot of white linen and she waves crystals and she sort of does sage cleanses. And through that, it was a way of sort of exploring, I suppose, all things wellness.

You know, I think there's a sort of rather evil side of me that always wants to kind of look for the dark side of something. You know, it's not that I think wellness is a bad thing at all. I've benefited from wellness myself in many ways. But, you know, I'm always suspicious of something that is making a lot of people a lot of money and seems perhaps to be only for you if you've got a particular level of bank balance. Yes because you had your own your own health issue didn't you and and you have delved into alternative therapies if we want to call them that and they've worked for you haven't they?

Absolutely so yes I had this sort of chronic pain condition for oh my goodness years it was three years um i think all told um and doctors didn't really know what to do with me i was sort of told um perhaps it's all in your head at times effectively um and you know while i was sort of searching for for something that would make me feel better i did delve into acupuncture, Reiki, I did hypnotherapy and all were sort of hugely helpful they gave me hope they were all actually practiced by brilliant women and you know I really did feel like I benefited from that and they gave me hope in a time where it wasn't coming from sort of other angles I think So it's not really about that. I think it's about, you know, as soon as something it's the cynical monetize aspect of it, I suppose. Yes, which is which is exploited fully in this, this brilliant, this brilliant fiction.

And it also touches on issues that are very current. You know, you have local communities, and we read about it all the time, that are priced out of their local area, you know, you have local communities and we read about it all the time that are priced out of their local area. You know, they can only get jobs in a particular sector. You explore all of that in this book and the divisions that, you know, a luxury hotel. Isn't that great? Is it? Because it kind of shows up the inequality in society. Why did you want to look at that again i'm not sure i think um the first kind of germ of this book came from um learning about hotel relatively local to me you have to be careful what i say um and uh the local community were up in arms about it you know it's this really sort of

vitriolic online campaign um and and that was the sort of spark and i feel i feel a sort of like i'm a little bit in both camps because i grew up in the countryside, very much was sort of dirt under my fingernails and running wild. Moved to London for 10 years. I've now come back to the countryside. And, you know, there is a part of me that rather likes the fact that the local farm shop now has sort of kefir in the dairy section and, you know, very lovely sourdough bread and things. But I also feel sort of deeply uncomfortable. So I think, you know, in the way that the books are always sort of a little bit about me and what I'm going through at the time,

that I think there's that funny dichotomy sort of explored. And there's a dark undertone in this. It's called, somebody, I think it might have been your publishing house, called it The Dark Archers, essentially. Yes, that was my lovely literary agent and that from her is the absolute highest compliment because she's a huge archers fan as she should be um yep so there's the dark archers thing the kind of local community the rural community there's also apparently i have to call it folk horror adjacent rather than folk horror

because apparently horror, you know, scares people a little bit. Puts people off, yeah. Puts people off. So really sort of... Folklore paganism. Folklore paganism, got really into all of that. And it was pulling a thread, you know,

I mean, obviously you've got this West Country setting, so there's so much there already. You've got kind of Arthurian legend, Neolithic burial mounds. Did you know there's a portal to the underworld under Glastonbury Tor? Didn't know that. No, no. I've been up Glastonbury Tor as well.

I know. Should have been more careful. The fairy king. You know, so all of that. And it was just such fun sort of watching all those kind of 70s folk horror films, The Wicker Man, Blood on Satan's Claw, Witchfinder General. So really wanted to sort of imbue it with all of that. But I also felt in the way that you sometimes do when writing a book that, you know, I tapped into something I

hadn't realized I was tapping into. There is this, I think, sort of folk revival going on in the country at the moment, spearheaded in a great deal by young people, you know, Gen Zers. There's a sort of return to Morris dancing. They're rediscovering Morris dancing. Who knew? I did not know that. I did not know that. But I do know that a recent episode of Doctor Who was very much in the Straw Dogs kind of folk horror mould. So you certainly hit on something. It feels like it. It does it it does and you just down the

road for me they burn a wicker man at beltane um couldn't get tickets it was sold out this year it's a whole new movement that we thank you uh for drawing our attention to you were you know historical novelist and this is a kind of new direction for you but i'm interested to know um about what you think about how publishers gender books and I know your husband had a view on one of your book covers and you said what do you think of that and he said well I'm not sure I'd read that on the tube because people might think um you know it's very gendered so what tell us about that particular story and what you think about how you get pigeonholed is it helpful oh my Oh, my goodness. Yes, great.

Yeah, great. He's a great person to ask, actually, because I had been sent this cover, loved it. The whole team loved it. We were almost entirely women, I think. And then I showed it to my husband and he said, but I read your books and I just wouldn't pick this up. And it did kind of blow my mind because I hadn't sort of considered the male perspective at all. You know, I mean, I think it is, it is kind of tragic, you know, this, everything that's come out about men not

reading women, you know, fiction by women in particular. My husband isn't one of them. You know, I sent him on a sort of Curtis Sittenfeld binge recently because he read romantic comedy after me, loved it, went and read everything she'd ever written um and is now her biggest fan um but you know I do find it really depressing even having worked in the publishing industry before I started writing it still blew my mind and this is no slight against my publisher they knew exactly what they were doing and who they were selling to but when I wrote this these historicals, you know, they were inspired by writers like William Boyd and Sebastian Fawkes, male writers that I really admired as well as women. But they published them in a very feminine way because that's how they had to sell them.

And that was a strange thing. What needs to change then, do you think? Because as you say, I don't, I never define what I pick up by the gender of the person writing it so what needs to change I think just men being educated about the fact that women write really brilliant books um you know I've got two little boys myself um and you know their kind of queen is Julia Donaldson they're the sort of empress of books as she should be and so you know gonna start there and go on. Yes start as you mean to go on and also tell me about the fact that this has been optioned for television is that correct? Yes really excited

about it I think it'll be a wonderful way to explore you know the wider world of the book that doesn't actually necessarily make it onto the the kind of published page because there's so much there that i actually couldn't put into the book so we can really sort of get into that in in a sort of the wider canvas of a tv series i think um uh it's brilliant production company making it they're called called Dinner Party, which I just love. I love their name. They're American, but they really want to set it in the UK, in Dorset. So it's got this sort of really strong sense of place. And what I'm really excited about is that I will get to have a seat at the table in the writer's room and kind of learn on the job because it's definitely something I'd be interested in doing in the future. I'm really inspired by the screen in my writing. As you can tell, I've already talked about these sort of folk horror films that I watched in my research. Also, there's a lot of Hitchcock in there,

sort of homage to the birds, etc. So, yeah, just thrilled. It's a brilliant thriller. Briefly, who would be your cast wish list? Oh, my goodness. I, you know, really hard to say. I love hearing people fan cast, though, the characters. And someone said Vanessa Kirby for Francesca Meadows.

She would be brilliant. If I say it enough, perhaps you'll hear it. Say it enough. And say Paul Mescal as well. Paul Mescal, yeah. That might happen. So lovely to meet you. Thank you so much for dropping by. You too.

That is Lucy Foley and her new novel, as you heard, is called The Midnight Feast. It is out now. Lovely to meet you. Thanks for having me. Now time for some soul soothing on Woman's Hour as we take a dive into the world of Grammy Award winning American

folk singer-songwriter Aoife O'Donovan. Aoife has released three critically acclaimed solo albums, is co-founder and frontwoman of the string band Crooked Still, and is also one third of the all-female group I'm With Her. She's in the UK for forthcoming dates at the Barbican Hall and the Cambridge Folk Festival. Her latest album is All My Friends. It's inspired by the passage of the 19th Amendment and the evolving landscape of women's rights in America over the past century. The theme of your new album and one of the major themes, the work of the suffragists in America. were the women who raised these powerful women who went on to really overcome so much to fight

for something that we now a lot of times take for granted. Yes. And you've done a deep dive, haven't you, into the history of the movement in America and specifically the peace activist Carrie Chapman Catt, who founded the League of Women Voters in 1920. What a woman. Tell us a little bit about her. Carrie Chapman Catt was one of the founders of the League of Women Voters in 1920. What a woman. Tell us a little bit about her. Carrie Chapman Catt was one of the founders of the League of Women Voters and also the president of the National Women's Suffrage Association and one of many really very important suffragists. I kind of focused on Carrie specifically for this project because I stumbled upon a bunch of letters and speeches that she had written

and was just really moved by her words, her language, the way that she was able to communicate these ideas, her sort of fervor, and I just wanted to put it into song. And you use a lot of her words, don't you? I do. I really do. And I also sort of paraphrased some of one of my favorite parts about making an album like this was to sort of go into these old archaic texts and these old speeches, but find these sentences that you could pull out and sort of reframe to sound normal coming from a folk singer with a guitar. Yeah, she could be sitting beside you now, though, couldn't she really? When you think about it, what a progressive she was. She really was. And she had to compromise. She knew sort of what it took.

She was from the Midwest and she lived in the West Coast for a while and came back to the Midwest, but then finished her life in New York. So she was really, really inspiring. Yeah. I mean, the landscape of women's rights in America now, I don't know whether any of that what's happening, for example, the rolling back of Roe v. Wade, did any of that feed into your inspiration for this album? Or is it just coincidence that you're writing about this at a time where there's lots of concern about all of that? It was a coincidence. And actually that overturn of Roe v. Wade happened after I had really written the majority of this album.

But I think that it's a food for thought. And I think it is important while we are faced with so many challenges as women in not just America, but really in the world. We also have to recognize that people have been fighting this fight for a long time and will continue to fight this fight. And I always want to sort of acknowledge that great strides have been made. It's easy to sort of think we're back in the dark ages, but what we aren't. We have a lot of tools at our disposal, and I just hope that we can find our voices and the will to use them. The most important of which being the vote.

Exactly. So Carrie Chapman Catt was incredible on that count, wasn't she? She was. And I think that we as citizens, you know, American citizens, and I know the UK has a big election coming up as well, but I think it's really important to remember that it is our civic duty and to ourselves, to our families, to our mothers, to our children, to everybody that we share this planet with to vote

and really know that you can use your vote to make a difference. You're performing here tomorrow in Bristol, 18th at the Barbican Hall in London, where your husband's conducting. Fantastic. Cambridge Folk Festival as well. Most importantly, you're over here to perform and it coincides with Taylor Swift performing in the UK as well. Most importantly. You're going, aren't you? It's true. I said to my manager, please book me a show three days before Taylor Swift plays Wembley.

And I will be there taking my daughter. And I can't wait. I got my friendship bracelet on, ready to go. What do you think of her and what she's done for women in your industry?

I mean, she's phenomenal. I think she's such an inspiring songwriter and performer. As a writer myself, I am just constantly looking to her for inspiration. And as a performer, I there's what can what even say, I say that hasn't been said, she's unbelievable. She's on top of the world. Yeah. Which album are you going dressed as? I'm going dressed as

Midnight's because Midnight Rain, I'm going to wear kind of a copy of her Midnight Rain dress. That's one of my favorite songs for Midnight's. Excellent choice. Thank you. Send us pictures. I will. Aoife, lovely to meet you and good luck with the new album All My Friends. It is out now and you can check out

Aoife in Bristol tomorrow. Barbican Hall in London and 27th July at the Cambridge Folk Festival. Thank you so much for dropping by. More music tomorrow on Woman's Hour.

I'll be speaking to award-winning singer-songwriter and actor Paloma Faith. She's got a new book in which she delves deep into the issues from puberty to sexual awakenings to motherhood. All on Woman's Hour tomorrow. Join me then. That's all from today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. Can you just tell me who he is? No.

Has he got any distinguishing features? His anonymity. What's his name? Banksy. I'm James Peake, and I'm on a mission to find out how Banksy became the world's most famous and infamous living artist. He could literally be anyone. Banksy essentially humiliates the art world. With dealers, critics, and someone who once worked deep

inside Banksy's secret team. Do you wish you didn't know he was? Sometimes I wish I'd never heard of Banksy. The Banksy Story, with me, James Peake, on Radio 4. Listen now on BBC Sounds. How does he smell? Like paint.

I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy.

And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.