Woman's Hour - Politics, Dementia, Mary Lindell

Episode Date: September 27, 2019

A week is a long time in politics they say. At the moment, things are constantly changing. Today we try and make sense of it all from a woman's point of view. Lots to talk about including Paula Sheriff's powerful question in Parliament on Wednesday night and the PM's response to it; the next day's debate in the House about parliamentarians' choice of language; the use of Jo Cox's name in debate, as well as the women who've stood out this week.More children than ever before are surviving cancer but the effects of it can stay with them as they get older. A couple of weeks ago we heard about the impact having a child with cancer has on the family, particularly mum and dad. Today we hear from the children themselves about what it’s like growing up with cancer. We have Rosa Coker Burnett who was diagnosed with acute Myeloid Leukaemia at 11 and Niamh Hardy who was told that she had a neuroblastoma when she was 15. They're both in their twenties now.Mary Lindell was a secret agent whose story has been virtually forgotten. But today we get to know her better. She was twice decorated for bravery and she was a pioneer of the Resistance Movement. In the first days of the German occupation she set up an escape line. A book about her is out called Lindell’s List. The author, Peter Hore, talks about her actions in WWI and WWII, including a list she drew up in Ravensbruck Concentration Camp that almost certainly saved the lives of many women prisoners.

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. It's Friday the 27th of September 2019. Welcome to the Woman's Hour podcast. Today, the long-term impact of cancer when you have the illness as a child and what it was like for you when your mum and dad were desperately worried about you. We'll discover more about World War II secret agent Mary Lindell. And all week, of course, we've been looking at women, music and dementia. Today, Agnes from Lanarkshire, who's actually become very sensitive to certain sounds.

We start the podcast with a conversation between Helen Lewis, staff writer at The Atlantic, and Anne McElvoy, senior editor at The Economist, who joined us on a slightly dodgy phone line from Kiev in Ukraine, and she explains why she's there during the course of the conversation. This was essentially just all about the tumultuous scenes in the House of Commons this week, the general toxicity around British politics at the moment, how women are feeling, and what people think about the language being used by just about everybody involved. Here's Helen, who told me that she'd spent last night at an event where three prominent women all shared their disquiet. Yes, I hosted an

Intelligence Squared debate with Rachel Rees, the Labour MP, Sandy Verma, a Conservative parent, and Mary Beard. And it was really astonishing, the kind of level of fear in the audience, actually, about where things are going, and actually the level of disappointment among all of the panel, a cross-partisan feeling that this is not the kind of language that we could be using. I think the surrender bill is an interesting term because it falls into that rhetoric about death taxes, for example, about things that are designed to provoke an instinctive response,

designed to provoke the opposition to decry them. Yes, and we should say that all oppositions, Labour and Conservative, have adopted terms that would help them, haven't they? Absolutely, and what it does is it frames the debate in the way that you want to. So what the surrender bill is, it's the Benn Act. It's the idea that Boris Johnson, if he doesn't find a deal, has to go and ask for an extension. And you can frame that however you want. You can frame that as a sensible way of avoiding no deal,

or you can frame it as a capitulation to the, you know, the hated jackboot of Brussels. But I think that's a, you know, that is a kind of reasonable thing that is within the tramlines of normal political discourse. What isn't, I think, is the way that female MPs particularly stood up in the House over and over again and said, this is costing us our safety. This is, you know, this is leading to credible death threats against us.

And then Boris Johnson said that was, quote, humbug. Well, we're going to hear exactly that now. This is the clip that has actually become famous, infamous. It's the Labour MP for Dewsbury, Paula Sheriff. Here she is. Paula Sheriff. Thank you, Mr Speaker. I genuinely do not seek to stifle robust debate, but this evening the Prime Minister has continually used pejorative language to describe an Act of Parliament passed by this House.

And I'm sure that you would agree, Mr Speaker, that we should not resort to using offensive, dangerous or inflammatory language for legislation that we do not like. am ddeddfau nad ydym ni'n eu hoffi. Rydyn ni'n sefyll yma, yn y siald ein ffrindiau sydd wedi'u llwyddo, gyda llawer ohonom yn y lle hwn, yn ymwneud â ffyrdd diwethaf a chyfrifoedd bob dydd. A gadewch i mi ddweud wrth y Prif Weinidog fod yn aml yn cyfeirio ei geiriau ymddygiad, traeth, traeth, ac rwy'n sylweddol amdanyn nhw. Rhaid i ni gyfadreoli ein ddengar, ac mae'n rhaid i'r Prif Weinidog ddweud yn gyntaf. I, for one, am sick of it. We must moderate our language, and it has to come from the Prime Minister first. I would be interested in hearing his opinion. He should be absolutely ashamed of himself. The Prime Minister I have to say, Mr Speaker, I've never heard such humbug in all my life.

And there we have it. I have to say, a really mixed reaction to that exchange. Some people absolutely outraged by the use of the word humbug. But to be honest with you, I have heard women on phone-ins this week saying that Paula Sherriff was, quotes, shrieking, and that Boris Johnson was the voice of reason. I know I talked to someone yesterday who said all the things about Boris, you know, he's just a naughty schoolboy, isn't he? And I think there is that register available to men that actually isn't available to women where you can kind of get, quote, get away with it. But to me, the really interesting thing was that it was an utterly cynical move.

You'd already had the Attorney General, Geoffrey Cox, sort of geeing everybody up in the morning. And actually, I've spoken to some people, even on the Labour benches, privately, who are worried that they slightly feel they took the bait from Boris Johnson. He wanted them to become emotional. And I think particularly Jo Cox, who was murdered by a white supremacist only around the time of the referendum, the invocation of her name is incredibly emotive, because those people are friends. You know, they had to make phone calls. Yvette Cooper had to phone her daughter on the day it happened and say there is a another Labour MP whose children are not going to see her tonight. Well we are I think able to talk to Anne in a moment in Kiev but we should say that Yvette Cooper's daughter has also been posting it's a

very important thread actually on Twitter about the impact on MPs children. I think that's true Jo Swinson said in the house this week that there have been credible threats against her very young children and unfortunately the only conclusion you can come to is that Boris Johnson and his chief strategist, Dominic Cummings, who yesterday said, you know, at an event, we're actually we're enjoying this, you know, bring it on. They are, they think that a few death threats are a price worth paying for having an election on the terms that they wanted to do it. Do they really? I mean, that's your assertion. We don't know that, do we? I mean, I find it very hard to think of another reading of this, that they are at the very least cavalier about this happening. I mean, as Boris Johnson himself said, he dismisses this as humbug, as merely politicking, not genuinely felt. Let's bring in Anne.

Anne, I know there's going to be a slight delay on the line as well, but what do you think about what Helen's just said? Well, the worry that I have about it it and i said let's take for granted that you know we're all reasonable people that we take any suggestion of death threats or indeed any threat of violence against politicians very seriously indeed but i do think that one thing that boris johnson was reacting to was a sense of emotive arguments, particularly to do with something as sensitive, as dreadful as the murder of Joe Cox, are pushed up to make a point, to make a point against him on Brexit or on the delivery of Brexit. And

stand where you may on that. There is a worry there, and you could hear it in the term that we heard in the chamber on both sides, is that it just drives the conversation to a really unhealthy level. It's not really passion. It's more something where I think people get very easily out of control, and then they say something which probably, if they were in a sort of calmer frame of mind, they would choose their words with more care. And I have to say, I do worry about that. And to use a sort of ugly word, I think the truth in it is kind of weaponising on both sides sensitivities

which really ought to be handled as such. But is Helen right in saying that perhaps some members of the Labour benches rather regret their reaction to Geoffrey Cox and indeed to the Prime Minister? Yes, I'm sure that is true. I think the mood was such that it was so reactive and Parliament recalled as it was. I think what's happening is that the foes, if you put it this way, Boris Johnson and particularly on the Labour benches in Parliament, they can't decide whether they're winning or whether they're going to lose in the long run. And so there is this sense that whenever they get a moment in Parliament, an advantage should be driven home by any means.

That, I think, then gets that slightly bluff tone and I think an ill-considered tone back from Boris Johnson, whose response on the Joe Cox point was not sensitive. But I do think that's the reason and it does make Parliament appear what it is, which is logjammed. It is not a Parliament in a healthy state and Jeffrey

Cox was perfectly right about that. Parliament may be able to block no deal, but it will not be able to simply block forever and it needs to decide really what it is prepared to agree to. That's the conversation that it needs to have but it's very easy to get distracted by this incredibly angry mood. Now it is relatively rare, it has to be said,

it's not completely unusual but it is relatively rare for Prime Ministerial siblings to enter the fray. This week, Rachel Johnson has talked about her brother, the prime minister's conduct. Here she is yesterday on The World at One on Radio 4. I love him very much. And, you know, he is a different person in the commons. I remember once I had a boss who said, put Rachel in front of a typewriter and she's a completely different person. And perhaps if you put a man in front of the dispatch box, he becomes a completely different person. It becomes a sort of bully pulpit. So do you not recognise your brother when you see him there?

It's not the brother I see at home. Sarah Montagu asking the questions there of Rachel Johnson on The World at One. Helen, your thoughts on that? I think what's interesting is it points up the journey that Boris Johnson has had politically He ran for London Mayor as a kind of social liberal I watched him make speeches as London Mayor where he'd say it's brilliant to live in a multicultural city it's wonderful He was at that point the Heineken Conservative

who was supposed to be the one who managed to reach out across party lines. And, you know, thanks to Brexit, he has junked that entirely, and he's pursuing an entirely different political strategy. So the question of who the real Boris Johnson is, is a really vexed one, you know, is, was that the real guy then? Or is this the real one now? Which one, which was the play acting? And is it harmful, Anne, for members of his own family to speak out against him like this? It's not the look that politicians would readily embrace. Of course, he's also had his brother Joe's resignation from the ministerial ranks. That said, I hear a lot of people saying, oh, this will cut through to the public.

And they'll realise that so far about two-thirds of his own family seem to have great doubts about his views. But I would slightly dial that down because I think a lot of families are very divided on Brexit. Boris Johnson, the Johnsons are just a bit more vocal than most and more in the news than almost any we do live in in the days of the johnson dynasty so i think it is i think the criticism of rachel johnson went on to make it his language as we've just discussed was right and proper quite a lot of voters will understand that certain things do divide on brexit and the public rather a lot of families sitting around sunday lunch table i mean barnstorming arguments about it and and people flouncing out who still in the end, as the Johnsons do, still do love each other very much, just cannot get along on this one.

A very quick word. You're in Kiev, what looking at partly an impact of Brexit at the Ukraine financial forum. But of course, the Donald Trump story is there very much front of mind as well. Ukraine has found itself in the news and I think wondering quite how it deals with that. Thank you very much, Anne. Have a safe trip back. You've actually just been to the States, haven't you, Helen? Yeah, I just landed back from being in Washington, DC, where it felt like kind of the split screen end of the world with the kind of apocalypticness of their news anchors over there. But a kind of version of the same story playing out over there with the questions about impeachment. So, and the same thing with our Supreme Court judgment saying it was unlawful to suspend

a parliament. Both of those are about whether or not an overmighty executive can be checked by other branches of government and what are the restraints on on power and interestingly enough you know that impeachment fight being led by a very high profile woman by nancy pelosi the speaker um so it was a kind of brilliant week of seeing a 74 year old woman in brenda hale being incredibly authoritative and then the 78 year old nancy pelosi so yeah a strong week for the older woman yes is it the gender split on the prime minister bor Boris Johnson, is significant. It's not enormous, but he polls rather differently between women and men. Yeah, it is statistically significant.

The YouGov latest figures that I saw from August show that his net favourability is lower among women. And that is both a headline figure and actually among, you would imagine, what his base would be, which is conservative leavers. There is still that gender split. And one of the reasons for that might be that women are generally more worried about a no-deal Brexit. They're more worried about interruption to food and medicine supplies. They don't regard it as quite a kind of either a clean break that we need or an adventure in some respects.

Another woman making newspaper headlines, certainly, the American businesswoman Jennifer Arcuri. She, I mean, it comes to something when a mayor of London just can't innocently go for technology lessons in a flat with a young woman. But apparently, there are all sorts of accusations flying around about this. What we do know is that her company, Hacker House, got a grant from the government's Cybersecurity Immediate Impact Fund, and that she went on trade missions with Mr. Johnson when he was mayor. I think this is the same thing. It reminds me a lot of the Liam Fox case, actually, where, you know, possibly slightly shady conflict of interest when there is one thing, but when there's a suggestion of a personal relationship, actually, that does really begin to have cuts through because that's something that people can kind of understand and intuitively grasp. I'm afraid I haven't been unable to read this story ever since I saw the joke on Twitter that what happened at the flat, maybe she turned him off and turned him on again.

Thank you, Helen. That was Helen Lewis who is a staff writer at The Atlantic and you also heard from Anne McElvoy a senior editor at The Economist. If you hear a better line than that this year then congratulations to you. Thank you very much, Helen. You're listening to Woman's Hour. Your thoughts on this or indeed anything

else you've heard on the programme or you'd like to hear on the programme, we'd love to hear from you if you've got an idea for us, at BBC Women's Hour on Twitter or Instagram of course and you can email us via our website whenever you like. Now relatively recently we heard from parents talking about what it was like when their child went through

cancer in their childhood. As you can imagine it has a pretty significant to put it mildly, impact on families and family life. The good news is that the survival rate for childhood cancer is increasing every year. But if you do move beyond that, life still has very significant challenges for you. I'm going to talk now to Rosa Cocabunnet, who is 23 and was diagnosed. You were 11, Rosa, is that right?

Yeah, I was 11. And what form of cancer did you have? So I had AML leukaemia. Which is? It's kind of a blood cancer. Right, OK. And Niamh Hardy joins us from our studio in Sheffield. Niamh, you were 15 when you got your diagnosis.

Yeah, that's right. I had neuroblastoma in my abdomen. Now, I gather that you two were both treated. You don't know each other, but you were both treated at the Sheffield Children's Hospital. Rosa, that's right. Yeah, and it's such a fantastic place. I can't talk greatly enough about it.

Well, that's fantastic. And a big shout out to them and to everybody, I'm sure, who worked so hard at Sheffield Children's Hospital. So we'll acknowledge their brilliance this morning. Niamh, I want you just to take us back to what happened because you were an athlete weren't you yeah so um i was 14 um at the time and i was competing um i just competed for yorkshire actually in the javelin but i was competing in multi-events um and at the age 15 um i just felt something not quite right i thought i'd pulled it, thrown the javelin. Within 10 days, I was in hospital

and A&E and it was 50-50. It was something not quite right. And within two weeks, I started treatment and that was October 2012. Now, your parents were obviously, well, they must have been distraught, but I guess they had to hide it from you to a large extent. Yeah, they sort of put a front up. Well, both me and my parents, we sort of looked to the next step. We didn't look at what was in, you know, six months, a year's time. You're always looking at sort of the next little bit of treatment and a barrier comes up and you just go, right, we've got to face this. And you just go with it. You go with it? Well, you don't have any choice, do you?

Yeah, exactly. I know you had a little sister too. Yeah, so she's 15 at the minute. She was quite young at the time and she matured so much. So she had to, you know, even from just making her own pack-up lunch in the morning for school, you know, that's something that my parents would normally do on me as an older sister. So just the little things like that, that she really had to mature and see, obviously me as her older sister that she looks up to in hospital and, you know, really not nice for her at all.

You had at one point an operation that went on for well really it was 13 hours yeah that's right and you of course wouldn't know about it happening but have your parents talked about what that was like for them yeah they they sort of put they just just sort of blocked they didn't know what to think um they just i remember my parents saying that they just went around saying spritz they just walked around saying my parents saying that they just went round Sainsbury's. They just walked round Sainsbury's thinking, right, that's it. I just need to get on with my day. And 13 hours, there's no point sat in the hospital.

We've just got to look towards the next stage. And Rosa, what about your treatment? Yeah, so I had lots of rounds of chemotherapy and then I relapsed. So it was followed by more chemotherapy and then a stem cell transplant, which actually came from an umbilical cord in Belgium because there's not enough people donating at the moment in the UK. Okay, sorry, it came from an umbilical cord found in Belgium? Yeah, so someone in the UK had to pull out and there was no other matches,

so they did a worldwide search and found something in Belgium. So what a fantastic fluke for you that it was found. Yeah, I mean, it was great. And my family, some of my family actually live in Belgium, so it was a very weird coincidence. But yeah, to be able to find such a good match and have it flown over so quickly and it to work as well, there was quite a high chance it wouldn't because it's an umbilical cord and they're kind of overreactive.

Yeah, so yeah, I was very fortunate. Now you were younger than Niamh when you were diagnosed. So you were 11, you are, I certainly was, a little girl with very little understanding of what was happening. How much did you fully comprehend? So the first time around when I was 11, I literally just started year seven. And so and then I got taken ill. And so I didn't really know any different because I hadn't really been at secondary school. So to me, this was just like, oh, this is just what people do. It was the second time around when I'd actually gone back to school for a few months and then realised actually I got cancer again and I'd have to take another year out. And that was probably the harder time and the harder year because

I knew what my friends were up to at that point and I knew what I was supposed to be doing at that point. I was going to ask you about your friends because they were obviously, of course, also very young. How did they treat you? They've all been great we're still friends now we made friends on the first day in year seven and I only did three weeks of year seven and then spent the next six months in hospital but they all stayed in contact they still invited me to parties um yeah we're such a good uh and strong friendship group now well that's fantastic to hear because it's not easy is it to know what to do or say in those circumstances so completely they were great and it was kind of, they were normal. It wasn't like, oh, how are you feeling? Like asking questions that sometimes can actually, you just don't want people to ask you, you want to just get on with life. Yeah, they were great. And Niamh, you actually, well, it was GCSE year or heading that way, wasn't it? Yeah, it was. I was in year 10, so I missed the whole of year 10,

unfortunately. So I had to do year 10 and 11 in the one year, which was pretty tough. Yeah, but you still passed some GCSEs. Yeah, I still managed to get what I needed through into college and then to progress into university. Well, you've both done fantastically well. Niamh, the truth is you're not going to know whether life or you would have been any different without cancer, but do you think you've become a more adventurous person, maybe a more cautious person, what would you say? I think I've become a better person because of the cancer,

which sounds really odd, but I look at life in a different perspective, really, as, for example, exercise. I used to exercise for sport and being able to compete as a multi-event athlete. Now I do it for health, being able to just be outside, going out, running, walking, just being able to appreciate everything. So yeah. You feel the same Rosa? Yeah I think it definitely gives you a different perspective on lifestyle and health as well. Do your parents treat you in I don't know are they

particularly protective of you would you say? I wouldn't say so I'd say as an only child then maybe a bit because I am their only child who's been very ill but actually we're a very competitive family so it's very normal it's like no I'm gonna beat you at tennis I'm gonna beat you at badminton like um we're very competitive so it's kind of helped normalize everything I guess well I know you're about to start a new job with the police aren't you on Monday yes I'm just in awe of both of you actually I wish you all the very best with that and I know Niamh you're in the fitness world aren't you a fitness instructor yeah I'm currently working awe of both of you, actually. I wish you all the very best with that. And I know, Niamh, you're in the fitness world, aren't you? You're a fitness instructor.

Yeah, I'm currently working as a fitness instructor and actually hoping to be a cancer rehab specialist, working with people that was in the same situation as to what I was. Fantastic. Congratulations to you both. A real pleasure to speak to you. Thank you very much. You heard that from Rosa Coco Burnett, 23, and Niamh Hardy,

and both recovered and doing so fantastically well. So that's absolutely brilliant. Now we're hoping for some more brilliance at the World Athletics Championships which start today. Actually, all Britain's top medical medal prospects are women. Heptathlete Katerina Johnson-Thompson, 1500m runner Laura Muir, and the sprinter Dina Asher-Smith. Now here is Dina on Women's Hour in 2016.

Have you any idea how proud your parents are of you? I've got a fairly good idea, but honestly I feel like it's one of those things with that parental pride that I'm never going to be able to truly gauge it myself. mean I know that they're incredibly proud I mean they show it in their different ways there are every single major race that I that I do and I think my mum to this day has only missed like one or two competitions anywhere in the world since I was about 15 so I know and that's very it's very very expensive time consuming so I am eternally grateful for

their support could anyone do as well as you've done actually without that level of commitment from parents it's hard to imagine it'll be hard to imagine but I'm not I'm not going to say no because it's been done before it's been you know in different sports different ways it's been done before everybody has their own path to where they want to go but for me personally the support of my parents and how they've had me had my back from the start and really really been supportive not pushy but they've just been supportive making sure that mentally I'm in a good place and that I'm just happy and that I think is the key to success especially in sport you have to be happy and you have to be mentally strong and that resilience and that work ethic that I've got from my parents is just invaluable.

Don't want to heap more pressure on, but she is a real gold medal prospect at the World Athletics Championships. That's Dina Asher-Smith. And of course, there's coverage across the weekend on Five Live and on the telly as well, BBC Television. It was the BBC's Music Day yesterday. This is the annual celebration across the BBC of the power of music to change lives.

And on this programme this week, we've been listening to people living with dementia about how music helps them cope and enhances their lives. But it's not always that simple. Today, you can meet Agnes, who's from Cotebridge in North Lanarkshire. She was diagnosed with dementia 13 years ago when she was 57. Woman's Hour first spoke to her at a Dementia Diaries event in Birmingham. This group record their experiences about living with dementia and then post on dementiadiaries.org. Now, Agnes has become sensitive to sound.

She has a condition called hyperacusis, which has a big impact on her life and on her relationship with her husband, who also has dementia. Henrietta Harrison went to Agnes's home. You know, they say three in a bed and it's normally another woman. Well, it was dementia with us and we didn't realise that. It was before any of us was diagnosed because there was lots of symptoms looking back and that was the third person in our marital bed. So you said dementia was the other woman but then music was the trigger? Yes. Oh my husband's into all kinds of music, but especially country and western.

And Dwayne Eddy, he used to love all that kind of music, he still does. Once I got my diagnosis, I no longer worked. It wasn't safe for me to be working. And I then discovered that I had a sensitivity to noise, certain tones and pitches and it was causing me pain. So I get labelled that I didn't like music and oh don't do that, she doesn't like music and I couldn't find the words to explain that's not true and it interfered with my marriage. It was causing distress and arguments. Some people say a man is made out of mud A poor man's made out of muscle and blood

My husband loves music and he plays music all the time. Morning to night, most people can just turn off from the music and carry on. I no longer can do that and it just penetrates and then it becomes unbearable. I owe my soul to the company store You were at home and he was at home and the music was driving you to distraction it was causing pain Yes, yes and it's so much so that that calming person

and that person that would say, oh, that's a bit loud, could you turn it down? It came out like a battle axe. Will you shut that bloody noise off? That's awful. And, you know, and he's looking, where is this person coming from? And I could hear the grass grow. So even if I was in another room, I could hear the grass grow so even if I was in another room

I could hear his music I was born one morning it was drizzling rain fighting and trouble and this got worse because of your dementia oh yes yes I think what it was

it's not the hyperacusis becomes worse, it was my tolerance level and my ability to handle it the way you would, the way most people would, you know, either remove themselves or find a solution. I didn't have that. Because of Alan's dementia, see, I thought he was just being awkward. But he wouldn't turn the music down. Or he wouldn't even try to soothe it the way he would have maybe normally. He just thought, no, and he dug his heels in.

And I think that was part of his dementia coming out as well, you know. So there was no solution. So we decided, well, I decided, because I was always the fixer. And I just said to him, you know, Alan, I think we're going to have to have a six-month separation just for me to get myself together. And he thought this was a wonderful idea because I was definitely broken, you know. So I'll go away and you fix it, you know.

So that was it. So that happened and we've never got back together again. But we've never really separated. It's really quite strange because you know you don't be married all the years that we were married and the connection is there was it positive you living separately once we came to terms with it, and once we realised that it wasn't a separation, it wasn't a break of our marriage, it was a way of coping with our marriage. that we spent long times apart. So I suppose we just adapted just like that. But I see my husband every day or we contact each other by phone

and it just works for us. It just works. So in a way, moving into different houses meant your marriage could continue. You have no idea. And Alan's just moved into a new flat and I helped him move in and all this stuff. And he's surrounded by his vinyl and his books and various things like that. He very rarely watches the television.

Now, music is what soothes him and what helps him. One day, my daughter was putting these books in these bookcases and that. Recently, I was sitting, and he was sitting, and he was playing patients and listening to his music, and he just looked at me, and I looked at him, and there was that connection. Only you can make all this world seem right

And then he just used his eyes and I got up and he got up and we just started to dance you know and it was just that beautiful heartfelt moment but it was priceless you know and my daughter just looked up and you could see tears in her eyes. I don't think she ever thought that would happen, you know. Music is the language of love, and I think that's what's happening with Alan and I. Music has become our language of love,

and it's hard to believe, because it actually was what was pulling us apart as a couple and suddenly it's bringing us together in lots of different ways. Because when you're married a long time and you've been about, you know everything about one another. I mean, how can you, you know, spark that again? And I think the music's going to be our language. You're my dream come true My one and only you

That was fantastic. Another of those fantastic features from Henrietta Harrison about living with dementia and the impact of music. That was Agnes from Coatbridge in North Lanarkshire. As I say, if you missed any of those features, you can listen again to all the Woman's Hour podcasts of the week via BBC Sounds. And we also have some helpful links for you

and other information on the Woman's Hour website, bbc.co.uk slash womanshour. Now to another woman from history whose name we all ought to know but who has been largely forgotten, although a new book about her is trying to put that right and the author Peter Hoare is here, the man who's written Lindell's List, which is a biography of World War II agent Mary Lindell. Get it right, Mary Lyndale.

Mary Lyndale, yes. We're going to hear her voice in a minute or two because it's very important that we do actually hear her speaking. She also actually served in World War I as well, didn't she? Yes. Mary Lyndale served in the First World War. Not only did she serve, but actually in 1914, at a stage when as a woman you had to be 23 years old before the Red Cross would let you go abroad to work for them, she actually ran away, aged only 18, to join the French Red Cross instead of the British Red Cross. And she worked for them right through the war until 1918. And actually that was a measured woman,

and she continued to behave in that way, putting herself in danger when she didn't need to. Yes, very much so. And in 1918, when the Germans advanced, they made their last advance in Western Europe, and the French retreated from a field hospital, she stayed in charge and ran the field hospital for several days on her own.

And that was the first occasion on which she was awarded the Croix de Guerre. She got it again? She won the Croix de Guerre again in the Second World War, yes. OK, we need to hear more about this woman's family. So where did she come from? She came from Surrey. She came from a middle-class family, quite a wealthy family. She was a scion of the Trollope and Coles family.

She actually inherited a lot of money herself when she was 14. So she didn't have to do work at all if she didn't want to. Right. But she did. But she did. She was driven, I say, to run away in 1914. And she was driven in the Second World War to work for what she saw was the cause of truth and decency and honesty. What is interesting, and it tells you something about the woman, is that she took the Germans arriving in Paris actually as a personal insult. Yes, very much so.

When she had fought the Germans, or rather she'd been nursing people who'd been wounded by the Germans in the First World War, and in 1940 when the Germans arrived in Paris, she very much thought that was an invasion of her personal space. And she started immediately, without any startup, she started immediately to organize an escape line for Allied soldiers who'd not got away at Dunkirk, and for young Frenchmen who wanted to get to London to join de Gaulle and the Free French. But how was she able to do it at all?

Through her energy, her determination, her ambition and her naked patriotism. Some people speak very well of her. Others describe her as, well, or hint at the fact that she had a somewhat difficult personality. What do you say? She had a very imperious nature. There's no doubt about that. Her own brother said about her that she wasn't just difficult with the Gestapo. She was difficult with everybody else. The Germans, when they put her into Ravensbrück, called her the arrogant Englishwoman. And she took pride in that epithet. But it was this determination, this self-confidence by Mary Lindell, which actually enabled her to achieve so much. She had married a French count, hadn't she? Did that give her a sort of role in polite society? Yes, she had married a French count in Warsaw in 1920.

She was the Comtesse de Meville. As it turned out later, the count was not free to marry under French law. He may have been free under Polish law. But she lived in Paris as a Comtesse de Meville and she was known by that title until her death. I rather like that she steadfastly stuck to the title

because it suited her no doubt to have it. Yes, I think there was a certain cachet from that, not just in French society but actually also in the prison camp when she was locked up there. Well, we'll talk about that in a moment. I think people will now be really keen to hear her voice. So here she is reacting to the idea that she was some sort of heroic figure. Oh, when they say I'm a heroine, I'm most embarrassed. And I think it's ridiculous. I would say, after all's said and done, one does a job, it is a job.

A lot of people say, oh, how courageous, how brave. I say, no, luck. I was lucky. I was wounded three times and they all said you never recover. Luck. My number wasn't up. But a heroine's all tittle-rot. Tittle-rot is not an expression you hear enough of.

That's fantastic. So in the end, you say that she was in Ravensbrück, which was not a concentration camp, but was a labour camp. It was a labour camp 50 miles north of Berlin where the Germans didn't set out to exterminate people, but if you weren't selected for labour, then you were a useless mouth and you were sent off to be shot or to be gassed

or to be starved to death. We don't know how many women died there, but at least 60,000 women died there and maybe as many as 100,000 women died at Ravensbrück, not because it was an extermination camp, but because the Germans didn't care for their prisoners. Why was she captured in the first place? Did somebody tell on her or would dob her into the authority? She was running, by 1943, Mary Lindell was running an escape line from a place called Rufek across the Pyrenees. The Germans were slowly closing down on these escape lines

and she was caught entirely at random by a police control, a German police control in the town of Pau in southwest France. Now, she wasn't a lone British woman in Ravensbrück, was she? No, she wasn't the only British woman there. There were several SOE agents. There were Violet Zabo, Lillian Rolfe, Denise Block, Yvonne Baysden,

and a number of other SOE agents. Some of the French Pierrettes were, sorry, some of the French Merlinettes were also in Ravensbrück. And from her position, she was employed in the camp hospital because she was a nurse. And from her position in the camp hospital, she was able to draw up a list of about two dozen British and American women who were in the camp. And she then allowed them to escape through a method I knew nothing about, the fact that the Swedish Red Cross were busing some people out of German camps towards the end of the war. Towards the end of the war,

there was one of the greatest humanitarian acts in history. A volunteer group of Swedes driving white buses, white painted buses, drove into Germany Germany and snatched several thousand people from the camps. First of all, they rescued Scandinavians from the camps. Then they began to rescue French people and Belgians and Poles and Lithuanians. And finally, almost at the end of April 1945, the Swedes asked if there were any British and American prisoners. At that stage, the Germans denied they had any prisoners. The thought was they probably wanted to keep the British and demanded which bus they were going to get on. And they did. The good news is that some of them did get out and they escaped a death march, which would have been their fate.

The women who were left in the camp went on a death march or when the camp was overrun by the Soviet army there was rape and pillage. It was a ghastly scene. So on top of everything else Mary Lindell had done in her career she actually got this group of women away from the camp, 24 of them, and they were actually rescued and taken to Sweden, yes. So after the war, I want her to have had a life of reflection and recognition. It never seems to end that way for these women, unfortunately. No, Mary, as I said, was a very difficult character. She took against the establishment. Even in her 70s and 80s, if you were an establishment figure, she'd let you know if you were being pompous or difficult or if you were being inefficient or ineffective.

Her views about some of the heroines and heroes we otherwise know about were, let's say, unconventional. And her role wasn't – Odette Hallows, for instance, her role was played in a film by Anna Neagle. And Mary was, by that stage, she wasn't young, she wasn't beautiful anymore. She was 55, 60 years old, which was old by the... I'm glad you said that quickly. Yes, Karim. By the standards of the time. Excellent, yes. And she remained in exile, in self-imposed exile, in France.

That was Peter Hoare on the programme today, talking about Mary Lindell. she remained in exile, in self-imposed exile in France. That was Peter Hoare on the programme today talking about Mary Lindell. And actually, I picked him up on what he said about older women. And here's one listener who didn't like something else he said. I should say he was a very nice bloke. But anyway, Jackie says, I heard the last part of your male guest on today's programme discussing Mary Lindell. Whilst describing her in later years, he said that when she was older, she wasn't beautiful anymore. That was a sexist remark. It passed without comment and I must object.

I presume he's referring to a physical quality judged in terms of what men find attractive. This really ought to have been addressed by the presenter. Well, you're right, Jackie, taking me to task. And I addressed his ageism, but not his sexism. So what do I get for that? I get half a mark for that, I think. And from Deborah, horrified by the woman called Helen, who's just said that Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings think a few death threats are worth it. Talk about ramping up the toxic atmosphere. Disgraceful. Actually, I did take her up on that, to be fair to me for once.

And because I'm not entirely sure you're wrong there, Deborah, I don't think it did help. And I think, to be fair, Anne McElvoy also tackled that comment by Helen. Trevor liked Helen Lewis a lot, turned him off and turned him on again. Give that woman a high commendation for rapier wit. She's got my vote. Well, Helen is a witty woman. She's actually a regular guest on the News Quiz, as many of you will know, where she also shines. She really is irritatingly talented. Phil says, in general, the bias of the BBC towards the political stance of Labour is outrageous enough,

but to bring it onto Woman's Hour is disgraceful. Politics should be kept out of Woman's Hour. But if it's necessary to have a political discussion, which is pertinent to women, then do so, but without such clear bias as you've done on this morning's programme. Phil, I hate to say this, Phil, I'm assuming you're a man. So I'm going to tell you gently, it's not up to you what Woman's Hour talks about. So we'll get that out there.

And also, I don't think Anne McElvoy would ever be described by Anne McElvoy or anybody else as a leading left winger. So that's enough of that. From Angela, the vile and aggressive language used by Boris Johnson is sadly typical of a certain kind of middle aged white man who has grown up in privilege, And from another listener, oh, this is going back to the feature about dementia and music and noise. The listener says, bear any household machinery noise since her dementia started. I have to run the washing machine, vacuum cleaner and radio when she visits our neighbour. That sounds like a tough going for everybody involved. I'm sorry to hear

about that and I hope your mum and you are reasonably okay. Thank you to everybody who's contacted the programme this week, throughout the week and we're back of course on Monday. Don't forget the highlights of the week in Weekend Woman's Hour, and that comes in handy podcast form as well. But if you want to listen to the radio, it's two minutes past four tomorrow afternoon.

I find quantum mechanics confusing today. Well, we hope you've enjoyed that podcast. I don't know why, actually. I don't even know what the podcast was. This whole thing has been recorded in the 1940s. But anyway, if you didn't enjoy that podcast, another podcast you can also not enjoy is the one that I do with Professor Brian Cox,

The Infinite Monkey Cage. There are well over 100 of them now. We cover all scientific subjects, from dreams to dinosaurs to the end of the universe. We even did quantum gravity and the end of the universe at the Glastonbury Festival. And ravens. We did one on ravens. And there was a raven.

We actually had a live raven that outstared you. And I think even the radio listeners, or the podcast listeners, you have to say now, watch radio, watch radio. Look, it's on BBC Sounds as well, and that's enough, isn't it? Just say that. It's on BBC Sounds. Download them on BBC Sounds, all of them. They're fantastic, and I mean, everything's brilliant, isn't it? Is it really?

Not everything. I'm Sarah Treleaven. And for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy.

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