Woman's Hour - SEND, Kate Burton, Yehudis Fletcher

Episode Date: June 26, 2025

The Department for Education has just released the latest figures that show another rise in the number of Education, Health and Care Plans, or EHCPs, in England. These are the legal documents that outline what support a child or young person with special educational needs and disabilities is entitled to. The BBC’s education reporter Kate McGough, Jane Harris, vice chair of the Disabled Children's Partnership, and Jacquie Russell from West Sussex County Council join Clare McDonnell. It's the UN's International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. At the moment, sexual violence is not treated as torture, which makes it harder to prosecute. Clare talks to the UN's special rapporteur on torture, Dr Alice Jill Edwards.Kate Burton features in a new version of Somerset Maugham’s 1926 drawing-room comedy The Constant Wife in Stratford. Kate is known for many stage roles - at least 14 on Broadway - and screen hits including ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal - as well as for coming from a very famous family. She joins Clare to discuss the new production.Clare also talks to LGBTQ+ trailblazer Yehudis Fletcher, whose memoir Chutzpah! opens with Yehudis, aged six, observing the sabbath with her orthodox Jewish family and all her unanswered questions about the world and her place in it. By age 16, she had been silenced, abused and lost within the care system. By 20, she had been married twice. By 25, she had three children. At 26, she found her voice and stands up in court against her abuser. And at 31, she fell in love for the first time.Presenter: Clare McDonnell Producer: Corinna Jones

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. BBC Sounds music radio podcasts. Hello, this is Clare MacDonald and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello and welcome to Woman's Hour. Today, we'll hear from the woman who spent over 30 years listening to survivors of torture and witnessing the damage it causes. Dr Alice Jill Evans is the UN Special Rapporteur on this and she'll tell us why she's campaigning to get sexual violence in armed

conflict recognised as a form of torture. It is a subversive feminist comedy written by a man, Somerset Morn, back in 1926, all about female liberation in the face of infidelity. The Constant Wife is on at the RSC in Stratford until the beginning of August. Today we'll hear from one of its stars, Kate Burton joins us live. Author and campaigner Yehuda Sfletcher joins us as well to talk about her new memoir, Chutzpah, the Glasgow-born daughter of a rabbi raised in an orthodox Jewish community documents her tumultuous and often traumatic childhood. So why, in spite of that abuse and neglect, has she decided to stay in that community? And controversial Amazon boss Jeff Bezos marries Laurence Sanchez in Venice this weekend.

Notable as much for the protesters it's drawing to the city as the opulence and wackiness of the pre-wedding events. So tell me today, what is the most unexpected out there or quirky wedding moment you've been involved in? Could have been your wedding of course, did you insist on line dancing lessons for the entire wedding party before the big reveal at the reception? Or maybe you were roped into bizarre pre-wedding build-up activities a la Bezos and Sanchez. Foam party on a super yacht? Anyone? Thought not. You can text the program. The number is 84844. Texts 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 or you can WhatsApp us a message or a voice note using this number, 03700 100 444. But we start this morning with this. The Department for Education has just released the latest figures that show another rise in the number of Education, Health and Care Plans or EHCPs in England. Now these

are the legal documents that outline what support a child or young person with special educational needs is entitled to. The BBC's education reporter Kate McGoff has been taking a look at the figures and joins me now. Kate, good morning. Good morning. Let's start off with what these new figures show. Yeah that's right we just had these figures through in the last few minutes and they show that over 638,000 children and young people in England had an education health and care plan as of January this year and that's a 10% increase on the same time last year and it's the highest ever number. The applications for these type of plans have

been rising every year since they were first introduced about a decade ago. They also show us that they're, so that's existing plans and kind of children and people that already have a plan. It showed there were also a big increase, a 10% increase in the number of new requests for plans, about 150,000 more new requests for this type of support. And crucially it also shows that fewer than half of these EHCPs were issued within the 20-week deadline. So we've got half of families who are waiting longer than they should for this type of support. Was it expected, we know the demand is growing, but that's quite a leap isn't it?

It is, it has been growing, it grew at a similar rate last year, so it is a massive jump this time, but I think what the government would say is that this is unsustainable in terms of the level of support. Previously, when EHCPs do require extra funding and schools and councils say that they are struggling to fulfil the obligations in these plans, the government are trying to emphasise that they would like to see more support within mainstream schools and potentially, you know, most support for special educational needs doesn't involve the HCP. We've got about 1.7 million children in schools who are getting send support and these figures show we've got about 600,000 DHCPs. So most, you know, pupils don't have an HCP but parents do find them a really valuable tool to get that support that they are legally entitled to, that these plans set out.

Does have a government said anything about this particular increase or what are they saying generally about the situation? We've not heard back this morning about this increase, but previously we had some special educational needs figures a couple of weeks ago and at that time they said that they are taking steps to identify and meet children's needs earlier in mainstream schools, and they've previously announced a 740 million investment to help mainstream schools adapt for children with special educational needs. But of course, not every child can be educated in a mainstream school and you know about 30% of children with the HCPs are in special schools and about 10% aren't in school at all. We know the government is planning to publish a white paper in the autumn.

There's a pretty much a lot of concern about this from parents. So do we have any idea of what to expect? Why are people concerned about the changes that could be coming? I think parents are concerned because you know getting an EHCP, getting one of these plans is a real battle for a lot of parents and I spoke to a mum yesterday who had been waiting 72 weeks to get her EHCP, she's just got it, so she's really concerned that if the reforms come in in the autumn and we don't actually know yet what those reforms will be but they haven't ruled out making changes to EHCP, the schools minister in previous interviews hasn't ruled that out so there is a lot of concern that you know these EHCPs are hard fought and they do they do

set out legal entitlements. There's a bit of a worry that that support might not might be harder to obtain but obviously the government has previously said they would like to see that support and these ECHPs are a vehicle for it and they would like to see the support potentially given in other ways. Yes because you said the suggestion is the government wants to focus on support for children with ECHPs in mainstream schools but aren't really the majority of children already in mainstream schools who are being helped in this way? Well that's what is interesting about these stats. Yeah, so actually about 43% of young

people and children with EHPs are in the mainstream school already so that's the biggest proportion. I think there would be a lot of concern among parents about what would replace that if that was to change and also, I think that you know, a lot of schools do their best but I think that you know EHCPs do lay out a legal, if it's a legal document, it spells out the entitlement that children can expect. So I think parents would want similar levels of safeguards around what support their child could have. Just remind us of that figure, would you, of what the average should be if you apply for one of these EHCPs? Because I was just startled by that 72-week figure. What should

you be? What's the target? Should be 20 weeks, yes, but it does vary across the country for different local authorities. And yeah, this one I spoke to yesterday was well over that. And a lot of people, a lot of parents are forced to go to a tribunal, aren't they, because their application gets knocked back. How many of those are successful? The vast majority of tribunals are successful. I think it's in the region of, you know, it's over 90%.

And I think that that is the thing. Even when you get an EHCP, it could be that you might not agree with the support that's laid out in it, with the school that's named and so you can challenge it through a tribunal process but obviously they can be long, arduous and even though the vast majority of parents do win those tribunals I think it can be quite a tough process. Good to have you on the program Kate, thank you so much for kicking us off. There's the BBC's education reporter Kate McGoff. We have to say these figures are referring to England. In Scotland the system is known as ASN, Additional Supports Needs. In Wales it's ALN, Additional Learning Needs. And in Northern Ireland it's known as the SEN Register, that's the Special Educational Needs Register. Wherever you're

listening to us this morning, do get in touch with us with your experience. You can text 84844. Now we're going to bring in Jane Harris who is Vice Chair of the Disabled Children's Partnership and CEO of Speech and Language UK. Welcome Jane. No. I'm also going to be hearing from one particular council as well West Sussex Council. Jackie Russell is their cabinet member for children and young People and Learning because as we were just hearing councils are having a tough time of it meeting this need. Jackie good morning. Morning. Jay let's start with you. What do you make of these figures? 10% rise I guess that's no surprise to you. Absolutely not. It would be a massive surprise if these

numbers were going in the opposite direction. Of course this is happening because we know that schools, nurseries and colleges are really woefully equipped to support children with special education needs, whether that's children with speech and language problems, children with autism, children with ADHD, a whole range of conditions. And that's because the teachers and the earliest staff simply do not have the training to support this group of children and they tell us that over and over again. There's also a massive shortage of the specialists that really could help schools. There's a massive shortage of speech and language therapists, of occupational therapists, physiotherapists, educational psychologists.

And the other thing that's driving it like this, and I think Kate alluded to this a bit, is that children who don't have these legally guaranteed plans, the education, health and care plans, they're put on a package called SEND support, special education lead support, and those children really get very very little support. One of our members, the charity Contact, did some research on this which found that if children who are on SEND support are very very unlikely to get what they need and actually 60% of those children start to avoid school. So actually we really need to make sure there are legal guarantees for children to get support, whether they have an EHCP or whether they're on this lower form of support. And that is not just good for those children, it's good for their parents, because if those children start

to avoid school, those parents aren't able to work in the same way. But also it's good for our economy. And we really need to wake up and reform the system. But the way to do that is to put in more legal guarantees so that all children have the support they need not just the ones who get these plans. Are you worried then because we have this white paper coming down the line that that will be diluted you keep talking about legal guarantees do you fear that changes could be coming which means it's harder to get one of these or or not they might change the criteria uh the government by which you are entitled to one? There's a huge amount of fear about that and I think we need to remember that this system goes back to the Thatcher

government. So the Thatcher government recognized that children needed to have the children who are most vulnerable, the children with special education needs, whether that's a physical disability, learning disability, whatever it is, they need extra guarantees for that support in school and we are really worried about that. The government has said some positive things about making the system more inclusive, but we haven't seen those plans yet. I think one good way to think about this is to think, you know, if too many people are going to hospital, you don't cut off hospitals. You think, let's put in more GPs, let's put in more support at home, let's maybe put some more clinics in the community,

but you don't close the hospitals because some people need to go to hospital. And it's similar that some children have complex needs and they need a huge variety of support. We run two schools at Speech and Language UK, the children who are on education, health and care plans. They will have speech and language challenges, but they will all, some of them might need, for example,

technology to be able to express themselves because they couldn't have a conversation like we're having today. But they also sometimes have epilepsy, they might have autism, ADHD, attachment disorder, cerebral palsy. You need a plan to work out how to support a child with those needs.

And Jane, you have a personal experience of this, don't you? You have a child with SEND provision, and we've done this a lot on Women's Hour, our audience tell us the whole system is broken. How has it impacted on your family and have you got the help that you need? We're on the way to getting the help that we need. My child has mostly been out of school for over a year and I'm somebody, I've worked at this organisation, I've previously worked in National Autistic Society, you know, I know the system, but it's still extraordinarily difficult. And I would say even when you have a plan, it's sometimes really difficult to get schools to do what is in that plan. We met Bridget

Phillips a while ago and I ended up talking to her at length about the fact that it's taken me almost a year to get my child's school to put in a trampoline that costs £50 that an occupational therapist said he needed. Funnily enough his class teacher, Nana, says that actually all classrooms should have that because she's seen the benefits it's had to him. So those are the kind of simple changes that we need schools to make but we also need to make sure that the plans are there for the children with the really complex needs. Let's bring in then Jackie Russell from West Sussex County Council. Jackie you've been in touch with the government haven't you because of the crippling financial pressure that is

that this this whole provision for SEND is putting on your local authority. How bad has it got? Well yeah I mean I literally don't disagree with the broad consensus of the discussion that we've heard so far. You know, we are facing an exponential situation, it's just unsustainable for local authorities. You know, obviously, we are lobbying the government, and my discussion last week with my scrutiny committee, I urged all members to also lobby their MPs to join the debate on the 1st of July being run by F40, which represents the 40 lowest funded authorities in the country to discuss the pressures around both SEND and the National Funding Formula. But just to sort of give you an idea of the pressure that of the authorities,

all authorities are facing, but relating that to West Sussex, since March 2015 when the reforms came in on the SEND code of practice. West Sussex had 3423 children with an EHCP. Today we have 9986. And I'm actually quite amazed to hear that there's been an increase of 10% across the board. I'm guessing that is a national average because in the last 12 months we've seen a 72% increase in requests compared to 64% in the last 12 months and you know what that equates to so far this academic year for West Sussex is that we've received 1986 requests which is 19.9% higher than the same period in 2023, 23, 24 and although 60% have been agreed to proceed which is 32% increase on the same period last year. So that kind of gives you an idea of the increasing pressure against what are, as has already been outlined, extremely limited resources, putting massive

pressure on council budgets, you know, which you know the majority of us are are, as has already been outlined, extremely limited resources, putting massive pressure on council budgets, you know, which, you know, the majority of us are holding significant deficits that we need the government to address. I know that Jane's organisation has done significant research into the amount of money that councils are spending in tribunals. Jane, do you just want to come back in and tell us a little bit about that because there's a lot of challenge that goes on here, isn't there? Yes, so we know that 90s, I think the first thing that's really important to say is it's not parents who usually request these plans, it's usually schools and nurseries. But I think sometimes people think

that it's families putting pressure on the system. Families absolutely want the best outcomes for their child children, but it's schools and nurseries who are really saying, we're not able to cope with this child's needs, we need more support. But on the tribunal question, so we know that over 95% of cases in tribunal are won by the parents.

So basically, if the parents of the family thinks actually, the council have said, my child doesn't need this plan and I disagree, or they think we've got a plan that actually doesn't really explain what my child needs or if the plan says your child can go to this school and parents let out tax that's not the right school for them they can go through to tribunal that's a really important right

and that's the kind of legal guarantee we want to have in place but it should be a backstop fewer people should need to go to tribunal because the support should be there. Let me bring Jackie back in to answer that then Jackie. The allegation is a lot of money has been wasted or spent by local authorities challenging these decisions that are often made, these recommendations that come from schools, not from the parents themselves. Is that where some of the waste could be trimmed? I wouldn't say that it was waste. That is quite correct that the majority of referrals do come from schools and we obviously go through the assessment process and we get to the point where we need to finalise the plan and agree the needs that have been identified by the specialists

that have put the plan together and often with us it comes down to agreeing the placement and you know there will be parents that for whatever reason will want their child to go to a specific school. Now that school a may not be what the specialists consider meets the need of that child or actually as is the case in West Sussex in terms of special schools is already unbelievably oversubscribed because we simply do not have enough provision. So what happens is the parents will go to the tribunal and it's quite correct in West Sussex we have 97% of tribunal applications actually are successful. So it pretty much undermines the local

authority and it puts massive pressure again on the authorities' budgets, hence why we do need the Government now to step in and absolutely deal, do a thorough review of the reforms of 2015. They definitely need to deal with the unbelievable disparity of funding across the nation between a large Shire like West Sussex compared to a small London Borough where West Sussex get 30% per child that a London Borough will get. We will get £1,200 per head for a child with SEND compared to a small London Borough that will get £3,500. So you know that's just one area. As you touched on earlier we do need to work

towards more inclusivity in mainstream schools. Yeah, we're going to have to wrap it up now, but you put your argument very strongly and very clearly. Thank you so much for joining us. Jackie Russell there, West Sussex County Council. She's their Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Learning. And you also heard the voice there of Jane Harris, Vice Chair of the Disabled Children's Partnership and CEO of Speech and Language UK. Vice Chair of the Disabled Children's Partnership and CEO of Speech and Language UK. The government has previously told this program and the BBC that they are already investing £1 billion in SEND and providing access to

specialist mental health professionals in every school and in March the government announced £740 million allocated for 10,000 new places for children with SEND. Your views obviously always welcome. You can text the programme on this number 84844. Now today is the United Nations International Day in support of victims of torture. My next guest Dr Alice Jill Edwards has spent over 30 years listening to survivors and witnessing the damage torture causes to individuals and communities. She says this, I do remember the faces of most of the people I've met and in fact they keep me going in

this work and at the same time their stories haunt me. Now as the UN's expert on torture, she is urging governments and international bodies to recognise sexual violence in armed conflict as a form of torture. She believes this would not only change how perpetrators are prosecuted but also improve the support available to survivors. Delighted to say Dr Alice Jill Edwards joins me now. Good morning. Good morning Claire. You've been documenting accounts of sexual violence in conflicts for decades. When did this journey start for you? It started in 1997 in Mozambique but then later also I covered a lot of cases after the Bosnian and Rwandan conflicts and genocides. So I've been involved in this for a very long time and trying to push for reforms and changes in behaviour.

I mentioned there that you said the faces of those you've met have stayed with you and the personal stories. Could you give us just one? I was recently in northern Iraq and met with some of the Yazidi women as well as Christian and Tabak women who've also been subjected to sexual enslavement and rape during the terrible crimes of ISIS. And those women, such courage they have. In fact, some of them want to be known now as human rights defenders. They don't want that label of victim and survivor to follow them through their whole lives and have become incredible advocates for their own futures. You mentioned men there. So what percentage in your work do you see are women who have

been tortured and sexual violence used against them and men? Women still bear the greatest brunt of these crimes. This is partly because women are more likely to be civilians, unarmed and living in their own locations and therefore at risk of armed violence being perpetrated upon them. We're also seeing a new phenomenon where there are more female fighters. And so that also puts women today in a different position, but also at risk. There have been inquiries, in fact, in Australia and the United States about even those soldiers being at risk from their own militaries.

So being a woman per se is a vulnerable and at risk position. But then you look and I've been receiving many reports of men having been subjected to sexual torture and just in the Ukraine context, at least 36% of all of the cases that are reporting sexual torture, they are men. So we are seeing a change in the way in which this is being, the information has been collected and reported upon. So here we get to the nub of this, you want to sort of change the definition in this particular case. I mean you say that women experience sexual violence,

whereas men experience sexual torture. So explain to us the difference and why you think it's important to change that definition. The first point is that sexual violence and the term as it is used is not a crime per se. There are crimes within it such as rape or sexual assault. But it is more a description of a phenomenon that has been going on for many, many decades. Torture, on the other hand, is a universally prohibited crime. It is accepted by all countries in the world that torture is prohibited and that no circumstances permit such torture. In fact, 110 countries currently have crimes of torture in their national laws,

and also 175 countries have ratified the Convention Against Torture, which requires them to investigate and prosecute torture. Now, there are no comparisons in the context of sexual violence, and especially sexual violence against women. The second point, still a legal point, but you know, it's clear in international law that there are no amnesties or immunities can be granted for people who have committed this crime. There are no statutes of limitations. That's very, very important. In many

jurisdictions, rape and other ordinary crimes are limited by say three years after which no claims can be brought. That's very problematic in the context of armed conflict when usually these investigations really start taking effect after the conflict is over and these days we have many, many protracted conflicts. There's also a protection against superior orders. The law is clear at international law that there's no defence of superior orders. In fact, soldiers are required to speak up, stand up, and it is their duty to do so against these crimes. And maybe then also just to mention, you know, we struggle at the domestic level with prosecutions

for rape. That's the case in the United Kingdom, but it's also the case across the world. And in fact, that question of consent is a very, very complicated one. There is no requirement of consent in the definition of torture. No one asks a man who's been beaten by public officials whether they consented to that beating. It will also make sure that we understand what's going on in these contexts in the right frame because many of these rapes or other sexual assaults of terrible proportions are taking

place within another context of torture, within an armed conflict and where other forms of torture are being perpetrated. And then if I could just add one more thing, Claire, because it's really important for the victims and survivors who tell me that they want to reclaim their dignity. And I think the torture framework allows them to be able to do that in different ways than, say, claiming their other crimes. And that is because we welcome home torture survivors. We welcome them home, we embrace them.

Many cultures see them as heroes in the community, and they are entitled to an enforceable right to compensation and rehabilitation for what has gone on for them. They may even obtain a legal status in which they can claim health and medical and economic care. So what I want to see is some equalizing between what is available generally to men when a man claims to have been subjected to violence. It's a torture case and when women claim that something has happened to them sexually,

it is put in a different bucket. They laid out brilliantly because as you say you get to the consent issue and whether there was some kind of maybe participation on the woman's part which is quite incredible really. How far away are we from this reclassification then being applied in international law in criminal courts? It can't come soon enough can it? That's absolutely right. There's been great interest in the outcomes of my report since first publishing. The

International Criminal Court has a very particular role to play. They are well behind in doing so. They have a poor track record of prosecuting rape and other sexual offenses, but also prosecuting them as torture. In fact, they've only had one prosecution for rape in their history, of which was subsequently overturned. But also the United Nations Commissions of Inquiry need to really start looking at how they are categorising and framing, but also interviewing and documenting victims and survivors and allowing those victims and survivors to tell the full extent of what has happened to them. And most importantly at the national level. We always seem to talk about this international level,

but the scale of crimes is such that only with really robust national investigations and prosecutions, will anything change? You are the first woman to hold the role of special rapporteur on torture. How significant is it that you are a woman doing this job? And how many more women should be involved do you think? What kind of different perspective and push do you bring to it? Look I think as a woman in this role I do bring my lived experience to this position but also a sense of duty, that as a woman, that I should take care to understand what is going on, not only for women, but women, especially in this discussion, but also other minority and marginalized communities,

as well as what is happening to men and boys. However, that burden of responsibility that many female leaders has is not ours alone. And in fact, you know, we would all like to see women in leadership positions. In this area, of course, the importance of leaders as legislators, leaders in government, but leaders in the military is absolutely crucial. Leaders as investigators, prosecutors and judges is all incredibly important, but we can't do it alone. Men also need to play a role. Everybody must be trained. They must internalise these values as their own and only then will we really be able to make a difference I think. Thank you so much for joining us. Great to have you on

the program Dr. Alice Jill Edwards there. It's United Nations International Day in support of victims of torture and she is the UN expert, the special rapporteur on torture. And just to say if you have been affected by anything you've heard over the last few minutes here on Woman's Hour you can go to the BBC action line where you will find links to support. I'm Andini and I'm looking back on the life of a Hollywood icon whose legacy lives on through more than just her film roles. She was someone who was interested in invention all her life. She wasn't that interested in the film that she was supposed to be starring in.

She was much more interested in the latest invention that she was working on. Who developed an idea so revolutionary that it's still being used today. Frequency hopping. It was used for secure military communications. It's in GPS, it's in secure military communications. It's in GPS. It's in Wi-Fi. It's in Bluetooth. From the BBC World Service, untold legends, Hedy Lamarr.

Available now wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Here's a question. Are you part of a unique oremale team or do you have an unusual or interesting job that you think our listeners should hear about? Well, last year one of our listeners suggested we cover women working in heritage crafts and specifically told us we should talk to Rachel Rag, Heritage Stonemason at Lincoln Cathedral, so we went to meet her. I think when you tell people you're a Heritage Stonemason, you work on a cathedral, they have this fanciful view that you're on the roof tippy-tapping delicate gargoyles and flowers all day,

but sometimes we're just building walls and lifting heavy stones. So you've taken all of your measurements for the stone that you're going to replace, you've got all of your measurements for the stone that you're going to replace, you've got all of the angles and the shapes. What's next? I take everything up to the drawing room which is in the roof of the cathedral. Can we go there now? We can, yeah, we can go and have a look. I will start to plot the shapes and the size of that stone fully to scale so if we have

an arch that we need to set out and the center of the arch is eight meters, then we have an eight meter compass and we draw it to size to scale. You have an eight meter compass? Yes. That is why. It's down here, it's that big stick

and it's the stick that says, don't bin this stick, this is a really important stick. There is so much maths involved in this. Yeah, it's maths, but it's art. When I was at school doing all of my like geometry, There is so much maths involved in this. Yeah, it's maths, but it's art. When I was at school doing all of my geometry, like any 13, 14 year old kid, you'll say, I'm never gonna use this in real life, Pythagoras, who?

But now, in my 30s, I'm like, I really need to know. Like, I need to know Pythagoras. I need to know how to find the radius of a circle just using compasses. So it's that really pleasing practical Euclidean geometry and it's really beautiful. There we go Rachel Rag, Heritage Stonemason at Lincoln Cathedral. So if you know a woman we should visit or maybe that's you, you can contact us now, we'd love to hear from you.

You can text WOMENS HOUR 84844 on social media, we are at BBC Women's Hour or you can email us through your website, our website, not your website. You are getting in touch with us this morning in light of Jeff Bezos' wedding in Venice this weekend. There's some quite outlandish out there activities people are involved in. What is the most unusual thing you've been asked to participate in at a wedding? Carrie from Chorley has been in touch. At my niece's wedding, her new father-in-law invited guests to drink ale out of his false leg. Surprisingly, he didn't get many takers. 84844, keep those texts coming in. The most unusual thing you've asked to be involved in at a wedding. Now, affairs, reactions, mothers, all good ingredients for a decent stage show plot.

There's a new version of Somerset Mourn's 1926 drawing room comedy, The Constant Wife. It's all at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. It's directed by RSC co-artistic director Tamara Harvey and features an absolutely beautiful original score by jazz artist Jamie Cullum. Constance is a very unhappy woman. Nonsense. She eats well, sleeps well, dresses well and she's losing weight. No woman can be unhappy in those circumstances. Are you prepared to sit there quietly and let her husband deceive her with her most intimate friend?

He's made her perfectly ridiculous. They say it's been going on for months. Has Constance never suspected? Never. We've only got to look at her. Sounds absolutely beautiful, doesn't it? The actor Kate Burton is playing Mrs Culver, Constance's mother. Kate, of course, known for many stage roles, at least 14 on Broadway, and screen hits including ABC's Grey's Anatomy and Scandal, as well as coming from an incredibly famous acting dynasty. Rachel Burton's her dad. Kate joins us now. Welcome to Woman's Hour. Hello there. How are you?

Very, very well. Great to have you on the program. Now, for those that don't know, give us a super quick summary of The Constant Wife. The Constant Wife is about a young woman, Constance Middleton, who discovers that her husband is having an affair. And basically, we spend most of the play figuring out who knows, what does she know, what do we know? We share all their information. It's brilliantly crafted by Somerset Mom with a staggeringly fantastic adaptation by Laura Wade. So it's a corker, the audience is going mad for it,

they laugh their heads off and it's just been an utter joy to perform. You play Constance's mother, which it is a linchpin role. Interestingly though, you played the part Constance's, Constance's, the daughter 20 years ago on Broadway. So how much do you compare and contrast Rose Leslie, who's taking the role of Constance with your own? Well, I didn't watch myself, but I spend quite a bit of time. I mean, Rose is absolutely delectable in the role and has found an extraordinary journey throughout it.

My experience 20 years ago was, you know, a little bit different. Mostly we did the original script, which is by Mom, Somerset Mom. And the biggest thing that I'm dealing with right now is trying to honour the genius that is Lynn Redgrave, who played my mother. So when I played Constance Middleton, Mrs. Culver was played by Lynn Redgrave and what was deeply sweet for both of us is that our own dads, Michael Redgrave and Richard Burton, appeared in Henry IV Part I at the Royal Shakespeare Company and Lynn grew up in Stratford with her parents, Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson and her wonderful sister Vanessa. And so, you know,

she talked to me all the time about seeing my dad as a young actor, knowing my mother. So it's really, this play has meant a great deal to me in my life. And I love Lynn Redgrave, I love Rose Leslie, and it's just been a dream. What a wonderful legacy. You mentioned, well, your mother, Sybil Williams, your father, Richard Burton, they've both basically performed in Stratford upon Avon with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. So how personal has this journey been for you retracing their steps? Well hugely personal. They both, they came to Stratford in 1951 with a lot of other Welsh actors, including Rachel Roberts and Hugh Griffiths. It was when the Welsh came to Stratford and it was I mean, it changed my father's life.

In fact, there's a film that's just come out called Mr. Burton, which documents him coming to Stratford to play Prince Al. And it really was very consequential for my father and he got, you know, one of the greatest reviews you could ever get from Kenneth Tynan and it sort of launched him. And it was also very, very life-changing for my mother. She loved acting. She loved rehearsal. She loved backstage, but she didn't love being on stage. So she discovered in after her summer at Stratford that she preferred to be behind the scenes stage manager, though she did go to the West End and did Harvey with Sid Field. So it's, there's so much history, theatrical history in my

family. So yeah, it changed dad's life to come here at this time in my life is thrilling. And it is also particularly poignant because this is my father's centenary year. So dad would have turned a hundred on November the 10th. So it's a huge thing for me, for my daughter Charlotte, for my family. It's a huge, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful confluence of events. All the stars aligning. Let's go back to the play. It was originally staged a hundred years ago.

In 1926, the same year women won the right to own and dispose of property. The first steps to being economically independent and this theme of female independence in Central to the play. Doing it again, does it still feel incredibly modern to you? It does. I mean, and what happens is that actually it feels even more modern to me now. Seeing it from a different vantage point. When I was playing Constance, I was experiencing her journey, but watching this sort of this wonderful young English woman who realizes, oh my goodness, I get to make my own choices.

And it is, we have talked a lot, not a lot in rehearsal, but we've certainly touched upon the idea of they're getting the vote, you know, and America as well, you know, it was happening. So, you know, but the whole notion of the economic independence and it's, she brings it up three very sort of significant times in the show where she says,

I didn't work so hard to gain my economic independence. And then I won't finish it up, so there's no spoilers. Because it's very, very important to Constance to make her own money. And that is a huge, it changes her life. Do you see it as a feminist play then? Written by a man. I do actually.

I mean, the character of Martha played by Amy Morgan, who's my younger daughter, is in fact an economically independent woman and has her own business. And so that was really unusual in 1926. So I do see it as, and my character is a little bit stuck in the mud, but I've been discussing with our brilliant director Tamara Harvey, how I morph

and how I change as the play goes on. And I do change. And they, my daughters affect me hugely, which is such a wonderful thing. Yes. I've heard one of your cast members say all the female characters are kind of go on their own journey of liberation by the end of the play. It's true. Yes, all of those four, there's four of us and we all do. Yeah, absolutely. The playwright, the brilliant playwright Laura Wade has reimagined this and she says those elements that we've just been discussing, she said they're all there, you know, the feminist aspects, the independent aspects. And she said we've just polished those up for a modern audience. So how has she done that?

You know what? I'm going to be totally truthful with you. However she's done it was with magical sleight of hand because I very much chose not to look at the original script when I started this one. It's been 20 years, let's face it. The memory is a different thing at this point in our lives. And I chose very much to stay in her script and her adaptation because I wanted

to be delivering her voice. And what I think she's done so artfully is to guide it, to guide the story. And she's changed a few little things, not one significant thing. And I'm not gonna say what they are, spoiler alert, but, or no spoiler alert. And so it's been very exciting to watch

how the story unfolds. What I love about Somerset Mom, what I love about Laura Wade, is you allow the audience to participate in the journey. And I've worked on, I've been very blessed to work on Present Laughter by Noel Coward twice on Broadway. And I find these writers of this time of the 20s and 30s, Emlyn Williams, Terence Radegan,

they wrote such fascinating stories that were not obvious. And, you know, the great sort of theatrical innovators, the great change artists, Chekhov, Ibsen and Strindberg, they started a sort of revolution in how women were perceived. And what these playwrights have done, including Somerset Maugham and Laura Wade, is to extend that journey. To finish that point then, and thank you so much for sort of filling us in on what a poignant year this is for you and your family. How have you managed to carve out a career? Because it's one thing to be inspired and come from such an incredible acting dynasty, but then you can

often feel, I can imagine, coming from that background overwhelmed by it, defined by it, always associated with it. You're a professor yourself, a college professor. Congratulations on that. You've very much worked very hard to enrich your life. Would you say the legacy of your parents has been a blessing or a not my not my mother ever never. I mean, the thing is, you know, to be honest, I grew up, you know, in the 60s and 70s and in those times, my father was one of the most famous people in the world, never mind the actor. So, you know, I kind

of grew up with this knowledge of, you know, of that reality. I mean, that's what it was. But I didn't know anything different, you know. So, I mean, I was what it was, but I didn't know anything different, you know. So, I mean, I was like, oh, okay. But I led a very kind of wonderful, you know, sort of solid life in New York City. Obviously, I speak with an American accent, but I am British with my incredible mother, Sybil. And I will say that the biggest thing I can say to anybody who's growing up with very fabled

humans being your parents is in the end of the day, you're going to have to find your own voice. And that's really what happened to me. So I went, you know, I didn't even decide to be an actor until I was late into my college career. And then, you know, and then I went to drama school for three years at the Yale School of Drama. And I sort of evolved into it and I created my own path. And then one day I auditioned for a medical show in my mid-40s, and little did I know it would turn into Grey's Anatomy, which is still on television. And that changed my life in a way that my theatre work had always been a huge part of my life. But that puts you in a different conversation. Well, listen, we are thrilled to have you on as a guest.

Thank you so much for joining us on Woman's Hour. Dr. Ellis Gray, of course, it's changed all of our lives, that role. Thank you so much for joining us. And just a reminder, The Constant Wife is on at the Swan Theatre in Stratford until the 2nd of August. Kate Burton, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you. You are listening to Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4. Now I'm going to tell you about a quite incredible autobiography, shall we call it. My next guest describes herself as a disruptor and author and campaigner, Yehudis Fletcher. She has never been shy of speaking out, even from a young age. And her new, quite incredible memoir is called Hutzpah, a memoir of faith, sexuality and daring to stay. She's the Glasgow-born daughter of a rabbi, raised in an orthodox Jewish community. She records how she endured a tumultuous and often incredibly

traumatic childhood involving prolonged sexual abuse, parental neglect and almost no formal education. Eventually, her sexuality came to blows with the expectations of her family and her community, but Yudis decided to stay and delighted to say she joins me now in the Womens' Hour Studio. Welcome. Hi. Would you just move a little bit closer to the microphone? That'd be absolutely brilliant. Now, it's a fantastic title, Chutzpah, a member of faith, sexuality and daring to stay grabs the attention. Let's start with Chutzpah. What does it mean and why choose that word? So Chutzpah means to be audacious. And it's a reclaimed word. It's what I was called as

a little girl in Yiddish and Hebrew. It means to answer back, to speak out of turn, and also to say things that are a bit cheeky, I suppose. And I am a bit cheeky, a bit bolshy. I speak out on the whole time. Now what's so brilliant in this book is that you were always that child and you document it from childhood but you were just being curious, that's how I read it and yet it didn't go down well within this ultra conservative upbringing that you had. So give our listeners an idea of where from quite early on you would come to blow with your parents. Yeah, I think I always had a certain natural curiosity that in some families or communities would be welcomed, but

the expectations particularly on me as a girl were to be covered, to be polite, to be not necessarily quiet in every space but certainly in spaces where there were men I was expected to you know from the age of 12 you're not meant to sing in front of men. The Talmud says a woman's voice is her nakedness and I just you know I didn't think that was very fair also it's not. And you've been missing out on a lot of fun, I suppose,

when you were like six year old looking at this, thinking, well, I want to join in where the fun is. It wasn't so much I wanted to join in where the fun is. It was I wanted to be taken seriously as a person. And in Judaism, in Orthodox interpretation of Jewish law, a woman or a girl is not considered to be a legal person. And I found that out very quickly.

Right. And you tested, didn't you? These kind of examples you give in the book where you're told if you do that, God will disapprove or you found your own ways of testing that to see whether that was the case. Yes. And I also found out very, very quickly that it really wasn't God that I was afraid of, it was my mother. Because, you know, I did these naughty things and I nothing's, you know, I didn't get smitten down. So there's a, you know, there's a ritual around hand washing. Before we eat bread, you're supposed to wash your hands in a certain way. And I hated washing my hands because the water was really cold and you had to dry them afterwards with these like sludgy green paper towels. And I just hated doing it. So I wanted to try and avoid

doing it, but I knew I'd be asked if I'd done it. And so I didn't want to tell a lie. I didn't want to say that I had washed my hands when I hadn't. So I came up with a kind of compromise and I went to wash my hands in the little toy kitchen under the toy water that was going to come out the toy tap and then sat down with the rest of the family on a Friday night to eat challah, to eat the bread and without, with my impure hands and nothing happened because that's not how religion works, right? I'm a person of faith, I'm a religious woman, and I understand now that that kind of dogmatic, threatening approach to not just educating children, but running a community, I think, is harmful. And I found

out very quickly that what I was being taught wasn't actually true. Like, nothing, there wasn't some great biblical hole going to open out underneath me to swallow me for having sinned. But what did happen when I sinned was I got into trouble for my parents. Right. And just to kind of give people a broad brush here, I mean, your family emigrated to Israel when you were 14, unable to settle there, you were sent to Manchester to study, you were put into a kinship care arrangement, and that's when things turned horribly dark, didn't they? Yeah, so I lived in, you know, they weren't friends of my family, but the community is very close-knit, so it was people who had actually advertised in the community free

sheets that they were looking for a female lodger. But I was only 15, I was a child. And that period of time was interesting because it was the really the only six months that I had formal schooling. I had some schooling in Israel, but it was a bit chaotic. But I was registered at school when I was in Manchester and this family that I lived with were known to my parents and trusted. And I was sexually abused within that family home by the father. And part of his abuse, besides for the sexual abuse, was he pulled me out of school quite quickly. And it was dressed up as, you know, that school isn't religious enough and you're a nice Jewish girl and we want you to go to a much more suitable school, but the more suitable school didn't materialise. And so, yeah, I think I often talk about the sexual abuse that I enjoyed there, but there were other abuses that occurred as well. There were sympathetic voices that you could speak up and did listen to you, but ultimately it was still kept within the community, wasn't it? The story of your abuse.

Yes. So what happened was one night his wife burst into my bedroom and found him in there, and she was the one that sounded the alarm. And she went to the rabbi and the Beth-dim, which is the Jewish court, got involved. And I got a phone call from them to say, sort of, we know what's been going on. And I really thought, you know, they would help me. And, you know, the abuse did stop. I was taken out of that family home and I was sent to live with another family. But they didn't, it wasn't that they didn't believe me. They, and they didn't try and challenge that that had happened either, but it was dressed up as well, you know, you shouldn't have tempted him. We all know that he's a man with a problem

like this. What were you doing? You know, not, not keeping yourself modest or something like that that might have brought this situation about. Yeah, and also people kind of knew, didn't they? Everybody knew. Everybody knew the history of this man, even some before you went there. At 17, you told your mother that you were a lesbian. And what was her reaction?

She just said, no, you're not. And how did you follow that one up? Well, I didn't bring it up with her again. I went to see a rabbi and I told him, I think I'm a lesbian. And he said, yeah, sure, like a lot of girls are sleeping with each other and it goes away when you get married. Right. Okay. Well, you married a man the next year. In fact, you were married twice. Yeah. When did you say, you know what, I really

need to live my authentic, true self, and I want to do it in this community? How have you managed to pull that off? I mean, there's lots of questions there. Yeah, take it bit by bit. I had three children already, and I'd been using Mumsnet for quite a while. So once baby number two was born, I started using Mumsnet and at

this point I already had baby number three. And I started to engage much more and to rely on Mumsnetters to educate me really about things that I didn't understand and to kind of use it as a bit of a proxy real world, rather than engaging with the real world properly outside my community. I found this online world of women that I could engage with and I posted a thread and I said, does anybody else feel like sex is a duty? And people came on and said, well, what do you mean by that? And I wrote this awful sentence. I said, well, you know, when one of the children steps in dog dirt and you have to clean it off their shoe,

but you're not going to enjoy it, are you? Now, I now know that that's not what sex should feel like. But that was my reality. And Mumsnet has very gently explained to me that there were two different things going on here. One was I didn't need to have sex that felt like that to me. And two, that there was a possibility of living a different life.

And it took a long time. And there was a long process in between being able to actually live this life. We don't have much time left, I'm sorry to say. But you want to stay in the community to change it from within. How is life now? I think life is exactly what I want it to be. It's challenging, it's disruptive, but I don't see why I should leave.

It's my community and I get to change it just by existing. My existence is resistance and I have changed the topography of my community by staying within it. It now contains lesbians. Well it's a fantastic read and I must say you have an amazing reading voice as well. The audiobook is fantastic. Thank you so much for dropping by the studio. You heard his lecture there. Her memoir Chutzpah, a memoir of faith, sexuality and daring to stay is out now. Lovely to meet you. Thank you. Now we're going to end Women's Hour this morning

with a topic we refer to a lot, violence against women and girls, a story that will be on the BBC tonight, BBC One. For the first time the BBC Racing commentator John Hunt and his eldest daughter Amy have spoken about the murder of his wife Carol and two of his daughters Hannah and Louise by Louise's former boyfriend. In March, Kyle Clifford was given three life sentences for the triple murder a year after the attack. John and Amy have been talking about the legacy of love that they left behind and how we need to think differently about these crimes. We've got a serious issue on our hands and I think we perhaps all

don't give it the attention it deserves, I suppose, until it forces its way into your life like it has ours, you know, violence against women and girls in all its forms, you know, it doesn't have to be as catastrophic as this because it happens in small ways every single day. We've got a serious obligation as a society to change men's behaviour because this is a man's issue. If this was a woman's issue, we'd have fixed it already. It's an epidemic and it has the most horrific, devastating consequences.

Those in power, those behind the social media platforms, schools, and every single one of us we all have a responsibility and we need to accept that and do something with it. That is the voice of Amy Hunt sitting alongside her father, Five Live commentator John Hunt. You can watch the full interview, Standing Strong, the John and Amy Hunt interview with Victoria Derbyshire. It's on at nine o'clock tonight on BBC One and the iPlayer. That is it from me for today on Woman's Hour. You can join Anita tomorrow. She'll be presenting live from Glastonbury. Her special guests will include the musician, songwriter and

actress Rebecca Lucy Taylor, aka Self Esteem ahead of her performance on the Park stage. Anita will meet three generations of Woman's Hour listeners aged between 7 and 76 and she'll also learn Brazilian funk from the choreographer and dancer Erika da Silva and there'll be live music from the American singer-songwriter Tift Merritt. Woman's Hour tomorrow from 10. That's all from today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. Hello, I'm Nick Robinson. You might be tired of switching on the news, hearing those pre-rehearsed sound bites, the lines to take from those who shape our lives. When politics is as fragmented,

as unpredictable, as fraught as it is now, it can be hard to cut through the noise. That is precisely my aim on Political Thinking, my podcast from BBC Radio 4. I have extended conversations with those who shape our political thinking. I try to get to the heart of what makes these people tick, what lies behind what you're seeing or hearing on the news. That's Political Thinking with me, Nick Robinson. You can listen on BBC Sounds. with me, Nick Robinson, you can listen on BBC Sounds. I'm Andini and I'm looking back on the life of a Hollywood icon whose legacy lives on through more than just her film roles. She was someone who was interested in invention all her life.

She wasn't that interested in the film that she was supposed to be starring in. She was much more interested in the latest invention that she was working on. Who developed an idea so revolutionary that it's still being used today. Frequency hopping. It was used for secure military communications. It's in GPS, it's in Wi-Fi, it's in Bluetooth. From the BBC World Service, Untold Legends, Hedy Lamarr. Available now wherever you get your BBC podcasts.