Woman's Hour - Ukrainian children in Russia, Fanny Mendelssohn, Men designing clothes for women

Episode Date: October 23, 2023

Ukraine claims it has identified 20,000 children who it alleges have been abducted by Russia since the start of the war. Arrest warrants have been issued to President Putin and his Commissioner for Children's Rights. It's the subject of the latest work from film maker Shahida Tulaganova, whose documentary Ukraine's Stolen Children airs on ITV tonight. Now you may have heard of German composer Felix Mendelssohn but what about his sister, Fanny? A composer in her own right, Fanny was long ignored by the classical music world in favour of her brother. And despite being forbidden a musical career, Fanny persevered and composed 450 works. A new documentary, Fanny The Other Mendelssohn, explores her life and features never-before-heard or recorded pieces by her. Its director, BAFTA winner Sheila Hayman is also Fanny’s 3x great granddaughter and she joins Emma to discuss it.An extra course of chemotherapy could cut the risk of death from cervical cancer by up to two fifths, according to a new study by scientists. The drugs used are already licensed for use in the UK so those involved say it should be straightforward to roll out because the treatment is 'cheap and accessible'. GP Dr Phillipa Kaye who is also an ambassador for Jo's Cervical Cancer Trust and Comedian, Ambassador for Eve Appeal and cervical cancer survivor Karen Hobbs both join Emma Barnett to discuss it.Designer Sarah Burton has stepped down as Creative Director of the fashion brand Alexander McQueen, meaning that there are now only a tiny number of women designing clothes for the rest of us. So why are there so few female designers at the top fashion houses? And does it actually make a difference when the clothes women wear are designed by men? Presenter: Emma Barnett Producer: Emma Pearce

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme, peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Emma Barnett and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good morning and welcome to the programme. I hope you had a good weekend. I can confirm I should never be set free with a carving knife and a pumpkin. I hope yours was more successful, whatever you found yourself doing. Shortly, we're going to get an update and insight into what is happening in the Ukraine war, specifically to some of the country's children.

As the eyes of the world are turned towards Israel and Gaza, a brutal reality analysts say Russia's President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin think of as an opportunity to undermine and distract the West from its war. The award-winning filmmaker and war correspondent Shahida Tulaghanova will be here. With a huge breakthrough in women's health, I can't always say that to you, as scientists discover a new life-saving way to treat cervical cancer, we will bring you what you need to know. And why does it seem that so many luxury fashion businesses tend to trust men more than women when it comes to

designing our clothes and how we present ourselves? We'll get to that. But going back to what you may have done this weekend, perhaps you were researching some family history, or maybe that's something on that wish list, that never-ending to-do list you don't really get to because of the bigger to-do list. I ask because one of my guests today is the great, great, great granddaughter of an amazing composer. Not this man, though, who you'll probably know for this. It's, of course, Felix Mendelssohn's Wedding March, but I'm actually talking about his older sister, Fanny Mendelssohn, a hugely accomplished composer in her own right, who wrote Easter Sonata, believed to be the work of Felix Mendelssohn, but is actually his sister's creation.

I will be talking, as I say, to a member of the family about her latest documentary about the overlooked and perhaps undervalued, you would argue, Fanny Mendelssohn. But are there women in your family who have been similarly overlooked, may not be in a similar level or similar background at all? It might mean nothing to do with creativity. It might just be overlooked for what they actually did in the family, which maybe was just keeping it going and, I don't know, producing the family as well. Have you uncovered their true life stories, their experiences, their achievements? Please do get in touch about some of the women in your family that perhaps you've learned more about or maybe you know you should and you maybe don't know where to start.

Text me here on 84844. Text will be charged at your standard message rate on social media. We're at BBC Woman's Hour. Or email me these stories. I can already feel you thinking about it. There will be some brilliant ones in there and I hope I can get to them. Email through the Woman's Hour website or a WhatsApp message

or voice note using the number 03700 100 444. And of course, anything else you want to talk about that you hear on the programme, you know, I'm always in the market to hear from you. Just watch the data charges, all terms on our website. But first, while the world's attention has been on the war in the Middle East, and we will continue to bring you coverage of this for the latest, I should say, head to the BBC's News Live page on the website, we know other wars are continuing, including Russia's war in Ukraine, which has been going on for 607 days.

On Friday, a United Nations investigation has found further evidence that Russian forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine, including rape, sexual violence and the deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia. Regarding the sexual violence, the UN report said most of the incidents occurred after the perpetrators broke into the victims' homes and that victims reported rapes at gunpoint and threats of killing or of inflicting serious harm to the victims or their relatives. Whilst the details are hard to say, they're hard to hear, we do want to bring you more information on the use of children in this conflict today. Ukraine's government claims it has identified 20,000 children who it alleges have been abducted by Russian forces. However,

the numbers of those deported is expected to be much higher. Ukrainian officials say children were forcibly separated from their families in some cases, taken across the border into Russia, and have faced efforts to strip them of their Ukrainian identity. Just last week, it was announced that four children were returned to their families in Ukraine following a deal brokered by Qatar. But what of the other Ukrainian children still in Russia? It is the subject of a powerful new documentary made by the award-winning filmmaker and war correspondent, Shahida Tulaghanova, which airs tonight on ITV. It's called Ukraine's Stolen Children. Shahida, good morning. Good morning.

Thank you for being here. When did you first come across this story of Ukrainian children being taken to Russia? I was in the middle of making my previous film Children of Ukraine. And as autumn last year, reports started coming that some children are being abducted by the Russian troops, especially the orphanages. And I didn't realize the scale of the problem, but it was alarming already at that stage. Then as soon as Ukraine was deoccupying the territories like Kherson region and Kharkov region, more and more reports started coming because parents were coming from the saying

like, we don't have our children. So it's a mixture of orphanages that have been what, attacked or? Orphanages were just taken to Russia. Okay. And then children taken from families as well. Exactly. And what's going on around, because just to be clear, some of our listeners may have read reports that certain families have sent their children to safety because there's also that element. Yes. About 4,000 children were sent to Russian holiday camps in October last year. What happened, Ukraine was conducting its counteroffensive in Kherson and Russians were losing the ground. So their parents were offered to send their children for rest for two weeks. And then two weeks after, they couldn't bring the children back because the front line has shifted. It was impossible to travel from Kherson

to Crimea. And that's how children were stuck there from six to nine months. There are individual stories that you focused on in this film, which I imagine was very difficult to make, you know, also getting access and managing to speak to people. But tell us about Daniel and his mum, Ala. That's exactly the story of Daniel and his mum because his mum didn't want to send him to the camp. But other kids who went before started sending photos and look how fun it is. And he persuaded his mom to let him go. He said, it's just two weeks, mom. Then what happened?

Two weeks turned into six months. She didn't know how to bring him back. She didn't know how to bring him back. She didn't have any money. Plus, you know, you can't you have to travel to Moscow from Ukraine and then from Moscow to the occupied Crimea. It's a very, very long journey. Sorry, how old are these children going on camps? Is it a range of ages? small, but some of them are small. Daniel was 14 at the time. So what happened, the Russian authorities never really offered the Ukrainian side to bring these children to a certain stage or the third country so the parents can pick them up. Instead, what was offered to the children, if you're not being picked up by your parents, you're going to be sent to the Russian foster care. Which means that you will have Russian nationality

and you'll be placed to Russian foster care maybe somewhere close to Ukrainian border or maybe somewhere in the Far East. And was she able to get her son back? She was able to get her son back because at the time volunteers from an organization called Save Ukraine they started helping mothers to do this difficult journey. So they paid for it and she brought him back.

He was lucky. These women, though, who've gone on these journeys, as you just described, not easy journeys to go on. I mean, what do you make of them having covered this? They are very courageous women because some of them never left their hometowns. Some of them never been even to Kiev, the capital. So they had to make the journey all the way from their home places to Poland, from Poland to Belarus, and from Belarus to Moscow, and then to Crimea.

So the journey takes about seven to ten days. But this is not the main difficulty. The main difficulty is they've been interrogated upon arrival to Belarus, and they interrogated upon arrival to Russia. And this takes from 7 to 14 hours. Depends. Some women didn't make it. And one of the godmothers who went to fetch her godson, she was actually sent back. And wasn't able to...

She wasn't able to see him. She wasn't able to... She wasn't able to see him. She wasn't able to speak to him. She was just deported from Moscow back to Belarus and then made her journey back. And for the children who weren't sent on a camp, who have just simply been taken, what do you find of them? Is there a particular story that can bring to light some of the work that you've seen and what's happening? There's a story of a woman called Halina. She's not in the film, unfortunately. But in August last year,

Russian soldiers just came to her house and said, we're going to take the son of yours. If not, we're going to kill you and your daughter. So the boy called Seryozha, he was 14, he just went with them. And the next thing, she didn't hear about her son for the whole year. Up until one Russian volunteer woman, she was scrolling the website for adoption in Russia,

and she saw the name of the boy and the region, Kherson region, so she started looking for the mom. She found the mom, and they managed to bring the boy back. But he was already in a boarding school, and he was already on the way to be fostered. And these children, I mean, what are they being told about why this is happening? Do you have any idea of the narrative on the Russian side? The narrative is that it's not safe to be in Ukraine. And when they're in Russia, they're intimidated. They're told that you're going to be persecuted in Ukraine.

You're going to be killed because you've been to Russia and you're a traitor. They are told that Ukraine is ruined. There is nothing safe in Ukraine and et cetera, et cetera. So one boy I interviewed called Kostya, he was also 14. He was also taken to Russia. He was scared to go back, really scared. On top of everything, children are being enticed. For example, they said, if you stay in Russia, you're going to have a housing voucher for 3 million rubles. You can buy a flat when you're a teen. You will get benefits like 30,000 rubles a month and you'll have a good life. If you go to Ukraine, you're not going to get anything.

So he didn't know whether to go back with his family member. He was in two minds when his sister came to pick him up. Finally, he didn't want to go. It took her three days to persuade him to come back. And he was telling me when he was approaching Ukrainian border guards, he was so scared he couldn't speak. He thought they're going to kill him. You interview Putin's Commissioner for Children's Rights in this film. What's said? This is the woman who is allegedly responsible for illegal deportation of Ukrainian children. An international criminal court issued an arrest warrant for her and President Putin exactly on this matter.

And how does she explain what's happening? She says that they are actually saving children from the military actions and they give them safety in Russia. She claimed that whenever there is application of the relative, mother, father, blood relatives, then of course they do everything to reunite the families. Whereas we know it's very, very difficult. They used to be more lenient about it.

For example, when grandparents were coming, they were allowing them, grandparents, to get the children back. But now they insist on DNA test. So they prove that this is really blood relative of the child. Only then they give the children back. Are children still being stolen now from Ukraine? Yes, in the occupied territories, which is half of Zaporizhia region, eastern Ukraine. In all those areas which are still not under occupation, children are being taken away.

And do you know the total number? Does anyone? I think nobody knows the total number. We can only guess because we don't know what's happening in the occupied areas. And just in the last, you know, more than 600 days, though, is this a widespread practice? Is it going further across Ukraine? Because if so, or even if not, I'm just trying to understand, is the strategy of it a psychological thing?

Is it psychological warfare as well as the cruelty? It is. Maria Lvova Belova, the Putin's commissioner, she declined. She said, we don't have a state policy of abducting children. Of course, that's what she will say. But from my observations for the last nine years of the war, because this war really started in 2014, children were systematically taken away to Russian Federation from occupied Donetsk and Lugansk regions. So I think this is an endemic problem. Because otherwise, why would you come and take the whole orphanage to Russia? So no explanation given as to if this is, you know, denying that this is a policy and no explanation given of those who have been taken? What have happened? You've mentioned a few times here of people with family,

children with families. If you have no family, what has happened to those who are in the orphanages? That's the main problem, because Russia states very clearly that they're not going to give orphans back. And the reasons vary. Oh, why would they go to the country which is at war? It's not safe for them, provide safety. This is not Russia's problem. These children, the Ukrainian state is their legal guardian. So they have to be brought back either to Ukraine or to the third country, which will temporarily host these children while the war is going on.

What Russia is doing, they're placing these children into foster care. And she, Maria Lvova Belovos, herself confirmed that about 380 Ukrainian children are already fostered in Russia. And they're so far away from Ukraine, which is illegal by the international law. They place them in Far East, in Siberia, wherever the families are. And sometimes these families are huge, for example, 10 children, 12 children. And of course, nobody is going to take care about their Ukrainian identity. What do Ukrainian officials say about this? And what do you think needs to be done, having followed some of these stories? I think things are changing slowly.

I think Russians understand that they're in deep, deep trouble, even though they deny it. They're in deep trouble with these children. So Qatar is now involved in negotiations with Russia to bring them back. Vatican is involved. There are some things that happen. I mentioned those four children who have been returned. were involved in the process. The negotiations started in July this year, and the children were returned only in October. So you can imagine how long does it take. Russian Federation is doing everything possible to make this return of the children impossible. As many obstacles, as many documents, and only then you can bring your child back. So it's very hard. Ukrainian officials are trying very hard to speak to International Red Cross, to the UN, etc., etc., but they don't social orphans. Sometimes they have, their parents are deprived of parental rights, but they're still parents, they're still grandmothers. There's still some aunts and uncles. Yeah, we mustn't forget that. But I suppose I was just trying to draw that line

between those who've got somebody who's trying to go and get to them and some of those children who have no one who might be able to try and make that journey for them. And I suppose, I mean, does everyone who is connected to these children, does everyone have someone who knows that they've been taken, if that makes sense? Not necessarily. But Ukrainian government officials, they do know. Because there was a very famous case when the baby orphanage from Kherson

was taken, about 40 to 50 children to Crimea. And these are the children with disabilities. Russians were taking children from the hospitals as well. So then it takes a long time for parents to figure out where the children are because there is no communication. They can't call.

Some kids don't have mobile phones. So even if they have mobile phones, if they're in Russia, then they have to have Russian SIM card. And some children don't remember their parents' numbers. A variety of things are happening. Thank you for talking to us about it. The film is called Ukraine's Stolen Children. It's going to be on ITV this evening at 10.45

or you can catch up on ITV's catch-up service, ITVX. That was Shahida Tula-Ganova bringing us up to date with one element of the war in Ukraine, of Russia's war in Ukraine. And of course, anything you want to get in touch about, listening to that, do. I have asked you also to get in touch a bit about the women in your family.

Perhaps you didn't know very much about, maybe things you've discovered about them. And that conversation has been inspired by my next guest, because many will at least know the name of one of her male relatives, the German composer Felix Mendelssohn. Many more will recognise his compositions, chief amongst them, The Wedding March. We played it at the beginning of the programme. But today we are all about Fanny. Fanny Mendelssohn, that is, his older sister.

A composer in her own right, Fanny was long ignored by the classical music world in favour of her brother. And despite being forbidden a musical career as such, she persevered and composed hundreds of works. A new documentary, Fanny the Other Mendelssohn, explores her life and features never before heard or recorded pieces by her. Its director, the BAFTA winner Sheila Hayman, also happens to be Fanny's great, great, great granddaughter. I think I've got enough greats in there. She joins me in the studio now. Good morning, Sheila. Hi, thanks for being here. It's, well, thank you. No, no, I'm happy you're here. If I'm here as well, it's a bonus. We're all happy. Or not, depending on your view. Fanny Mendelsohn, though, is a name that you found, actually quite a lot of people out there,

if they were interested in this, were interested in her because there were Twitter accounts set up in her name. There was a bit of an interest, and I wonder what you made of that, first of all. Yeah, well, so, I mean, when I started looking at, I found out about Fanny, really, I mean, I knew about her, but I started to find her interesting when I was making a film about her brother Felix, some years ago for the BBC. And I started, as soon as I started reading her letters and diary entries, you know, she's so funny, she's so unguarded. She's so spontaneous. But above all, she lived with this kind of lifelong paradox, this terrible struggle between the desire to express her enormous creative genius and the dislike or fear or horror of seeming conceited or pushy or upsetting her family or upsetting convention. And that seemed, that struggle seemed to be something that many women even today really experience.

And so I was sort of hooked on that. And then when I started looking, I discovered she had nine Twitter accounts, which is quite unusual for somebody who's been dead for 175 years. So I thought there must be other people out there. And actually, it became a film as much about the excavation of her life as about the life, because for about 140 years after she died, nobody knew anything about her except that she was Felix's sister. And then in the 1970s, some very brave and dauntless women started sort of storming the archives where her papers were.

But unfortunately, they were at that point guarded by some very intransigent male archivists who basically said, oh, she was just a woman. She was just a housewife. Nobody's interested. And actually said in terms that they were waiting for the right man to come along. But nevertheless, these women persevered. And what they discovered incredibly was that she had written over 450 pieces of music in between running a household, keeping track of 240 napkins, cooking lunch for an unknown number of her husband's artist student guests who might turn up, and nursing the family through a cholera epidemic, and

having a late miscarriage, a stillbirth, and barely, her only surviving child barely surviving. Between all of that, she manages to write 450 pieces of music in 25 years. So that is pretty stupendous life. It is. That seemed to be worth recording. I mean, you talk about the contents of the archive. Is that because there's archive of her because she's part of the Mendelssohn family and that's kept, you know, in general trusteeship. It's just fascinating to me that you as a great, great granddaughter, sorry, three times, has to go to an archive. I always imagine maybe it's handed down through the family in some way. How is she talked about in your family?

Well, I mean, she wasn't really talked about. The family, the official family history, which was written by her son, Sebastian, in the 1870s. Essentially, I mean, he was her son. He wrote this absolutely beautiful account of her personality. He was her son. He knew her pretty much as well as anybody could. And yet he doesn't even mention her as a composer. You know, it's absolutely extraordinary. So she wasn't really known that much as a composer, even within the family. But in terms of the papers, Felix was very aware that he was a celebrity, that he was a public intellectual, a figure of note, and that posterity would be interested in him.

And so he collected all the letters that were ever sent to him and many of his own letters. And they were bound in these 17 famous green volumes in the Bodleian Library. But the papers of the rest of the family were sort of pretty much scattered. And then they came together in the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin in the 1960s and the 1970s. But there's a story about that, which is central to the story of the film, which is that one of these volumes, which didn't appear when all the others appeared,

and then turned up in a book dealer about 10 years later, but without a particular set of pages. And that set of pages turned out to be this lost masterpiece, the Easter Sonata, which is the central thread of the excavation story of the film. Let's hear more about that, but let's hear it first. We can hear a bit more of the Easter Sonata. I played a bit at the beginning, we played a bit,

being performed by the pianist Isita Kanna-Mason. What do we need to know about this piece of music? Well, first of all, that's not really the most barnstorming or spectacular bit of it, but it is an amazing piece of music. It's half an hour. I should say, for rights reasons, we'd love to play a lot more, but we are limited. So I'm going to defend piece of music. It's half an hour. I should say for rights reasons, we'd love to play a lot more, but we are limited.

So I'm going to defend some of that. We did play a different bit earlier, but yeah, go on. Absolutely fine. No, no, it's actually a brand new edition that only Issa Takana Mason has access to in the world at the moment that hasn't been published yet. But anyway, that's a part of the story.

So this is a piece of music that Fanny wrote when she was 22, right? So she's a 22-year-old girl. She's already writing her own cadenzas for Beethoven piano concertos, which is a pretty extraordinary thing for anybody to dare to do, since Beethoven was the unquestioned god of music. A year after Beethoven dies, Fanny rolls up her sleeve and writes this extraordinary piece of music. But it wasn't known about. And the only mention of it was her mention in her diary on the day that Felix left actually for his grand tour and to become a celebrity. She writes, I played my Easter sonata. And that was the last anybody knew about it. But that diary wasn't published or known about. That was just sitting lost in archives in several different sections. And so when this lost masterpiece surfaced in 1970,

it was assumed to be by Felix. And in fact, I was lucky enough to be able to film the man who bought the masterpiece and say it's on camera. Well, it can't possibly be by a woman because it's an extraordinary masterpiece. It's very masculine. It's very violent. No woman could possibly have written it. Anyway, that's what he said. I must have had a nice moment between you. Yeah, I mean, it was I was pretty pleased. I don't think he really understood the significance. But anyway, so anyway, so this this it was surfaced in the 1970s, but then sort of forgotten about until about 12 years ago, a young woman barely older than Fanny was when she wrote it, heard a bootleg cassette of this unknown recording of this piece of piano music and decided that it wasn't by Felix and it was by Fanny. And she had at that point been able, she was one of the few people who'd

been able to study Fanny's music in the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, which by then had been slightly opened up to the public. And so she knew that there was this one mention of Maista Sonata. So the rest of the detective story sort of unfolds from there. But it was a great gift to be able to find that because if you're making a documentary film about an old dead German person who died long before film or photography or any recorded sound or picture of any kind, there is a slight difficulty about what to point the camera at. And so when I discovered this ongoing detective story, I realised that that could become the central contemporary thread. What do you think Queen Victoria would have made of the fact that apparently when Felix Mendelssohn went to the palace, he played some music and it wasn't his own, it was actually his sister's. Do you think she would have enjoyed that? I'm asking you now to speculate on a deceased monarch. But it's quite a striking bit and it's part of how you open the film.

I think it's always, there's always a sort of bit of schadenfreude in seeing somebody who's enormously celebrated having to eat humble pie. I think even if you're the Queen of England, you can probably enjoy that. But he did confess at the time, actually, because she said, I love this song, this is my favourite song of yours. And he did have to confess to her at that point, as he writes in his letter home, that it was in fact written by Fanny. But I begged her to play it, to sing one of mine as well, he says, which she duly did. It's fascinating as well, though, because, you know, you can always look back at some of these stories of women who,

you know, and there are many of them. We don't always know the detail. And you've done the work to bring us the detail. You've been overlooked by history, not been able to fulfill their potential, not been able to have some of the success that those around them have been able to it's it's tempting isn't it to say well why didn't they do this or why didn't they but she actually had a huge duty she felt very duty-bound from what you're saying and and have said in the film to her family to do the right thing um and she also she still did it but it wasn't necessarily acclaimed at the time or known about. She was a woman of her time.

She was a woman of her time. And the particular difficulty she faced was that she was, they were not only very rich and therefore very visible, but also recently converted Jews in an increasingly anti-Semitic Berlin. And so there was no... Recently converted to Christianity. To Christianity. But everybody knew that they were Jewish you know and so they were particularly visible they were sort of unique in that sense so unlike Clara

Schumann for instance whose father was a piano teacher and therefore sort of middle class and so it was okay for her to have a career it was definitely not okay for Fanny to have a career. A bit of an irony I suppose about how secure she the background and couldn't be free to do it. It was a gilded cage. And actually, in the end, she was able to, you know, the gilded cage was large enough to accommodate a concert. So she was able to start running concerts.

But so, I mean, it was partly, it was so she was allowed to have, she was allowed to be cultivated. She was allowed to be, to write her music. She was allowed to play her music. She was allowed to be an absolutely brilliant pianist. I mean, she was considered to have a greater talent than Felix when they were children, but she had to do it behind closed doors. And you might have thought, oh, well, that was then. But actually, what's extraordinary that I think even in my mother's

generation, and even for some women now, it's okay to be a sort of brilliant companion to your highly educated husband. And therefore, it's a good thing if you've read things or if you're educated in some way or talented even. But God forbid you should actually show off about it or be known for it or be celebrated for it. And I think women have a real horror of seeming pushy or arrogant or conceited that makes a lot of them feel that this is their story too. You want to express yourself. You want to say the things that it seems important to say, but you don't want to seem pushy and you don't want to alienate people. And a lot of people have said to me, this really feels familiar.

And I think going back to the Twitter accounts, that's probably one of the reasons why she has those nine Twitter accounts, because there's something about her story that feels incredibly resonant even today. that she was free of what a composer could be or do and just went for it. You know, in a way that kind of allowed her to be what people would say, brave, bold, but with her music. I think that's absolutely true. I mean, the piano in particular was an absolute godsend because up until that point, young ladies were not allowed to express any kind of emotion or any kind of physical or emotional energy at all. You know, they couldn't run, they couldn't jump,

they couldn't skip, they couldn't shout, they couldn't stamp their feet, they couldn't get across, they couldn't, you know, talk over people. No, at all. I mean, it just wasn't done. Oh, come on. In that mansion, she must have had a room where she would have gone and screamed.

There was no roller skating in those days, unfortunately. I mean, possibly, yeah. But I mean, that was... Yeah, but the demean, you know. And so what do you do with all your energies, you know? And so up until that point, the only instrument that young women were allowed to play was the harpsichord, which is kind of, well, the harp,

little tinkly thing you sit at, you know, making little tinkly noises. And then suddenly the piano comes along and it's this barnstorming, enormous beast that can be incredibly loud and can express any kind of energy or joy or sorrow. And so she absolutely poured herself into the piano. And she did have, I think, as a composer, a freedom that her brother didn't. And so her music is, in a way, more ambitious, more adventurous, more, you know, in some cases, more unfinished. Well, I've got to ask you before our time is up.

The film is called The Other Mendelssohn. It's going to be released in UK cinemas on Friday, 27th of October. As a descendant of the Mendelssohns, are you any good at the piano? I'm a bit rubbish, really. I used to play for my daughter when she had singing lessons, but when she stopped doing that, I sort of stopped playing, unfortunately, because I used to play for my daughter when she had singing lessons but when she stopped doing that I sort of stopped playing unfortunately because I used to love it. There's not there's not a pressure when you are linked? Absolutely no pressure I'm that dreaded thing an amateur I'm

afraid. Well I had to I was just thinking what is it like to be in that family? We're all geniuses. Yeah great okay good I only like to be in the company of I guess. Thank you so much to to tell us that and to share all of that with us this morning for doing so. Sheila Hayman, all the best with it. Some of your messages coming in about women in your family. I just want to read this one. My late mother, the older of two siblings, should have gone to university. She was academically good and regretted it all of her life. Her father wanted to save the money for her younger brother as he was the boy. Her brother, as it turned out, did not want to go to university. He was only interested in music. But by then it was too late for my ma and her father

would never have changed his mind. A woman's place was in the home. But in spite of it, she did turn in to a successful writer. And so it carries on. There are more like it and I'll come back to them if I can. But it's your chance to shine a light today on Woman's Army. We always like to do it anyway. On some of the women in your family, you may have found something out about that wasn't quite what you or the world around them thought. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered.

There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this?

From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now. Big news today though and i can't often say it in this way but good news regarding women's health particularly cervical cancer a new way of it's in the news today and it's a new way of treating the cancer which cuts risk of death from this particular type of cancer by up to two-fifths it comes from research which took place over a decade with 500 patients by scientists at University College London and the University College London Hospital. The drugs used are already licensed for use in the UK so those involved say it should be

straightforward to roll out because the treatment is quote cheap and accessible. The GP Dr Philippa Kaye is on the line. She's an ambassador for joe's cervical cancer trust and karen hobbs comedian and ambassador for the eve appeal who's been through cervical cancer herself good morning to all of you dr philip okay i don't get to say as i say um lots of times it's good news for women's health in this on this front what do you make of this absolutely so this is really um exciting news because it talks about a condition, cervical cancer, which affects just over 3,000, 3,200 women every year in the UK. And unfortunately, about 850 women in the UK die every year from cervical cancer. And the treatment can involve surgery and often involves what we call chemo radiation where you use chemotherapy and radiation at the same time and this new study says that if you use chemotherapy on its own

for a period of about six weeks before you do the chemo radiation you can reduce the risk of dying by about 35 percent and these are drugs that we already have and they're old drugs that we know a lot about which is of course really helpful we they're old drugs that we know a lot about, which is, of course, really helpful. We know about the side effects. We know about the risks. So this is something that we really should be able to put into place and reduce the risks of dying for these people. Karen, what's your response? Good morning. Good morning. Thanks for having me. Hi, Cedric for as well. I think any advancement that means fewer people have to suffer longer term and fewer lives are lost, even though I hate saying the word lost when it comes to cancer, is amazing. I think, you know, gynecological health gets overlooked a lot of the time. So any spotlight we can shine and any improvement that can be made to people affected is just,

I'm waving the flag and it's brilliant news. How was your experience of being diagnosed and treated? Of course, so I, it's very odd to say I was lucky because it's never, you know, lucky to have a cancer diagnosis. And I was unlucky in the sense that I was very young, I was 24. So I was too old for the HPV vaccine, too young for a cervical screening. So I was symptom based because I didn't, you know, have a screening appointment to attend. I had a bit of bleeding between periods and after sex. And I thought, you know, it could be many different things. But I googled what it was. And Dr. Google was sometimes a good thing, sometimes a bad thing. In my case, it saved my life because I didn't feel unwell. And that's what I really want to stress. I think people often think, oh, if I had cancer, I would know about it. Or if you have cancer, you feel poorly.

Not necessarily. I felt absolutely fine. I just had a little bit of bleeding when I wasn't expecting it. I went to the doctor and they did an examination with a speculum, as they would with a screening. It just wasn't a screening appointment. And then referred me to hospital, etc. And escalated from there because I could see that something was the matter. And I always want to stress when I speak about my experience that I am very lucky in that I was able to be diagnosed at a late stage one. So I didn't have to have the chemotherapy or the chemo radiation that Philippa was just talking about I had you know a big operation but it was just in air quotes an operation and I was able to get diagnosed early because I was able to go to the doctors because

I felt comfortable speaking about all of these things and I'm aware that not everybody has that same kind of privilege and I always want to to stress that I'm aware I'm lucky to have an early diagnosis yes and and well thank you for sharing that and coming back to you uh Dr Philippa Kay with with people hearing this of course you'd have to be in the situation uh just to say again you know this is this is a new way of treating it with drugs that are already available and giving uh this extra course of chemo before other treatments but you have to be diagnosed in the first place and do you think where we need to we are, where we need to be in terms of those who do get the vaccine now still thinking they need to go for smear tests and those who are going to get smear tests going

when they're meant to? Unfortunately not. So cervical cancer is a condition which we have the chance to eradicate entirely, but unfortunately we are a long way from that. And in order to eradicate cervical cancer, and that would're a long way from that. And in order to eradicate cervical cancer, and that would mean preventing those 850 deaths every year, we need the combination of complete uptake of the HPV vaccine, which is offered to all genders in secondary school in the UK, and that people still attend the cervical screening program and are aware of the symptoms. And we know from this year that only about two-thirds of women and people with cervixes are attending the screening program

and there's lots and lots of different reasons for that there is still so much shame and stigma and embarrassment associated with women's health and there are groups which are hardly reached there are languages which don't have a word for the female genitals. And there's lots of people who don't use the anatomical words, which we do have. So there's lots and lots of reasons why people aren't attending. But the combination of the vaccination, attending screening and knowing the symptoms, which include bleeding after sex, bleeding and in between your periods, a change to your discharge, perhaps it is bloodstained or offensive smell or changes in some way, and pelvic pain, and presenting to the doctor if you have those, that if we were to have all of that in combination,

that potentially we could make cervical cancer a thing of the past. Well, on that, because I know you're an ambassador Karen having been through this you're an ambassador for the for the eve appeal do you feel that those around you your peer group your friends I mean it might be slightly different because you're in their group but what's your reading of of women's awareness and and you know being aware of what they need to go and do well Emma as much as I love my friends dearly and love people that come and watch comedy shows it often takes me to say oh I'm going for my annual checkup or to do a bit of comedy about having cervical cancer for people to say oh right that's reminded me I must begin my smear

it often comedy about cervical cancer we need to return to okay fine why not you know if I didn't die in hospital who cares if I die on stage who cares um but just got a nice nice flavor of it there god exactly exactly come on everyone uh I think it often takes people to see somebody that's had that experience you know we talk about the Jade Goody effect in 2009 when she sadly passed away it takes people to speak about their own experience of something to remind people oh that also applies to, I can go and get that appointment. So I love my friends dearly, but they often need to be nudged. But I also think because there isn't that much clear communication from the invite letters about what it's for, what it's about, what it does and doesn't do, because people think, oh, I probably don't have cervical cancer, they might not feel they need to go for the screening,

you know, we really want to push that message that it's preventative and it's not a cancer test it's a test to try and prevent any abnormal changes you know to catch HPV before it develops into abnormal cells um so yeah there's not enough of an uptake as Philippa stated well yeah I also have to say um coming back to you Philippa I just read a lovely message and we just did from Catherine, who says, I was part of this trial and I had the extra chemotherapy. I had no idea the results were out today. I cannot believe how positive they are. I'm seven years on and completely cancer free with an exclamation point. Oh, absolutely delighted to hear that. And so lovely. And thank you for bringing in and saying that to really hopefully encourage other people to come forward. Yeah, well, I think also if you've been part of a trial and you don't necessarily always know what's happened, you know, and how it's going to be used. And it is quite an amazing moment in that sense to react and feel like that. The vaccine, just a question on that, you know, it only came in for, you know, only certain people of a certain age, certain number of women who've got it because of when it came in what are the numbers like for that

so unfortunately the numbers aren't as perfect as we would like them to be and there's lots and lots of reasons but importantly although all boys and girls are offered it in year eight if for some reason you didn't get it and perhaps there might have been involvement of your parents or somebody saying that they didn't want you to have it that you can go and have it until the age of 25 um so you can still catch up later and even if you think well maybe i've been exposed already that's okay you can still go and have your vaccine later and this applies to all genders because hpV is linked to not only cervical cancer, but some head and neck cancers,

penile cancer and anal cancer. And so men who have sex with men are actually able to get it from a local social health clinic until the age of 40. Dr. Philippa Kay, thank you to you. Karen Hobbs, thank you for that, for sharing your story

and also one of the gags that you share about having cervical cancer on stage. So we got a bit of a taste of that, but also for once, as I say, a bit of a smile about something that has been a breakthrough in women's health. So of course, to bring that to you today is important as ever. Some of the stories coming in about the women in your family, we were just hearing about the other Mendelssohn, Fanny Mendelssohn, not Felix, when it comes to composing, we were just hearing about her life. And I've been asking some of the women in your family. We were just hearing about the other Mendelssohn, Fanny Mendelssohn, not Felix, when it comes to composing. We were just hearing about her life and I've been asking some of the women in your family,

maybe you didn't know something about what you found out. Hannah says, I wanted to tell you about my grandmother who was selected to work at Bletchley Park in B-Watch Intercepting and Code Breaking with the Enigma Machine. She was very proud that her and her colleagues' work reduced the war by two years. Go Nan, says that message from Hannah.

Good morning to you. Thank you for that and go indeed. The amazing woman in my family I've researched is the artist Kate Perugini. I wrote her biography. She was very famous and super talented, says Lucinda. But today no one ever knows about her, despite knowing the works of her less talented male peers. Another one here, I sing with the Bradford Festival Choral Society and our musical director is committed to including works by female composers

so we have sung some of Fanny Mendelsohn's lovely songs. And another one, my grandmother, Doris Horton, a butcher's daughter from Preston, was a brilliant violinist as a child because of World War I and so many young men going off to war as she was offered a place at the Royal College of Music in 1915 so she did get that spot and from there she became one of the first women to play in the BBC Symphony Orchestra an example of how much changed women in the 20th century I was lucky enough to find on YouTube a film by of her playing Land of Hope and Glory in 1932 with Sir Adrian Bolt conducting I felt so by of her playing land of hope and glory in 1932 with sir adrian bult conducting i

felt so proud of her no message or no name rather on that message but what a wonderful message and kate says um my mother died earlier this year i spent four months clearing the house she had lived in since 1978 i have learned more about her in death than i ever knew when she was alive she was quite remarkable in many ways. I know hindsight is redundant, but I wish now that I had known or thought to ask so much more than I did. Well, maybe that'll be an inspiration to someone else listening this morning. Thank you for those messages. Keep them coming in. But let's talk about how we look, how we present ourselves, because she's dressed everyone from Beyonce to the Princess of Wales, most famously

designing Kate Middleton's, as she was then, wedding dress in 2011. But the designer Sarah Burton has stepped down as creative director of the brand Alexander McQueen after 13 years in charge and has been replaced by a man. This means now that all six fashion directors at the luxury group Kering are now men. And that includes, if you don't know your luxury fashion brands, that's all right. If you don't, Gucci, Balenciaga and Yves Saint Laurent. And things are not much different over at LVMH, the other mega luxury group which owns Prada and Louis Vuitton. Only three of their 14 lead designers are apparently women.

Why? And does it make a difference when women's clothes are designed by men? Remember, where the luxury brands lead, the high street often follows. So it will trickle down perhaps if you're thinking, well, I don't shop at those brands. Fiona Bailey is a senior lecturer in fashion management at De Montfort University and spent 13 years as a buyer for Next. And Anna Murphy is the fashion director at The Times newspaper. Warm welcome to you both.

Anna, just to come to you first of all, why so few female creative directors do you think? Well, I think fashion is a very strange industry because obviously it's predicated on being future facing. It's all about the new. It's telling us every season, wear this, not that. But actually at its core, it's quite a conventional and traditional place. And I think one symptom of that and one of the most problematic symptoms of that, is it's still pretty much men in charge on the one hand in the creative roles, like this new position, Alexander McQueen, as you say, Sarah Burton being replaced by someone

called Sean McGeer, but also in the business roles, it is mainly, with some marked exceptions men in charge and and I think that is a problem I think the way women design it's it is woman focused I mean one of the exceptions is Maria Grazia Curie she's the female creative director at Dior which is one of the LVMH houses and when you talk to her she's very interested in how women live their lives now and what kind of clothes they need to live them in and Christian Dior who founded the brand he always used to talk about Dior woman you know and every season he'd dictate who Dior woman was and what Dior woman would wear and Maria Garazzi-Curi always says I'm thinking about Dior women and that could be one person you know one day you're wearing a one day you're wearing jeans we're sort of manifold and we need women in those jobs for that to be reflected.

It's interesting to think about what we're actually doing, Fiona, and how we live. What's your read on why this has ended up like this? I think I agree. I think a lot of it's to do with the historical formation of these private luxury companies. They have men at the helm and they work on a formula which has been very successful in the past where the majority of creative directors are male and people like John Galliano for Dior and Alexander McQueen for example example, brought profits in. And that, at the end of the day, is what these luxury fashion houses like Kering and LVMH are mainly focused on. But are there more women going into design when you look at university? You obviously work in that field.

What are the numbers like when they go in and who gets the attention? Goodness me, it's overwhelmingly female. And I've worked in industry for many years. And at a retail head office, it's overwhelmingly female as well, up until the point. And that's, it's really interesting, because I would say that mainly on women's word departments, you've got buyers, buying directors who are female. But you look at the upper echelons, the C-suite executives, they're mainly male. Now, change is coming, but it's coming too slowly for the industry and for my liking personally. And going back to your question about universities, again, it's overwhelmingly female as well.

But fashion is a difficult industry to break into. It's a very expensive industry because most of the opportunities are London-based and internships and graduate roles are very poorly paid. So you have to have a foot in the door in the first place. And if I may, just to go back to Anna to get your take on this, what you're starting to allude to there about the difference it might make if someone's coming to it and thinking how are women's lives versus what a woman should be and how they should look are there some examples of where there has been a female creative director and people heart back to the clothes when they were in charge that are manifestly different to now a man's in charge

if you see what i mean well i think i mean i'll come to that but i think there's also what this kind of makes manifest is a fundamental kind of contradiction at the heart of luxury fashion. So for the moment, luxury fashion, it's kind of shop window is the catwalk. And the catwalk is a kind of theatre and the kind of clothes that work best in a theatrical setting are theatrical. And, you know, John Galliano, as referenced, is a prime example. He didn't make clothes that you or I could wear on the bus but he did make clothes that got column inches um so there's there's that and men tend i mean all of these generalizations are generalizations problematic but there's some truth in them male designers tend towards the more theatrical uh whereas women designers i think tend towards

the more kind of real world i mean i, an example of a designer who I think consistently gets it right and who is a woman is Mütje Prada, who's been at the head of her own brand now for decades. And she creates this theatrical moment. You sit on the front row in Milan and it's a whole thing. You know, a few weeks ago, they had sort of plastic curtains of kind of, it almost looked like drool coming down and these quite full-on outfits but what they do is they break down into bits that you and i would

you know sell our grandmother for you know a great pair of shoes a great jumper um so it's absolutely possible to do both um it's just i think, I think it takes often a female eye for that kind of thing to be possible. But it sounds like, and again, you can both correct me, but it sounds like from what you're saying, to come back to you, Fiona Bailey, that perhaps you have to own the brand to be in charge of it, that you have to have your name above the door, because therefore you're not being picked by anyone, You are it. That's absolutely right. And I think in terms of the creative director role, you can only choose from the pool of talent that puts themselves forward.

And I think the role itself, women might not actually want to go for that particular role. They might want to be head of their own fashion house, like Stella McCartney and more recently Phoebe Philo who was ex-Celine, who was a great example of a woman who designed through the female gaze. Her collections for Celine were groundbreaking and incredibly practical.

We did just get a message, do carry on then, but saying would there be more pockets if there were more women involved? Absolutely. That was going to be one of my points actually. Oh, I'm sorry. No, sorry. It's nice to get it from a listener, one of those listeners. Absolutely. I think there wouldn't be pockets and dresses if it was down to men. Women know what women need. And I think the design process is viewed very differently by women as well because where women will sketch and then the next stage in the design process is to create a toile, which is the cotton canvas,

the creative directors who are female can try that on and can see how it feels for themselves so they can make any changes and amendments there. They're not relying on models to tell them or muses to tell them. So I think that's incredibly powerful as well. Do you agree with that, Anna, the idea of that? Conversation with another great female designer who is currently not heading up a major house,

Claire White-Keller, another Brit. She was head of Givenchy. She actually designed Meghan's wedding dress. And prior to being at Givenchy, she'd worked in menswear, actually. And I once talked to her about the difference between designing women's wear and designing menswear. And she said when she used to design menswear, she had to ask the men, you know, well, what's it like as a man to wear this particular jacket?

What does this sort of feel like? She couldn't embody it herself. She had to slightly sort of guess at it, where she says, you know, when you design, you're a woman designing for women you know it's a very it's a very precise kind of awareness that you have that you don't need to use your brain you sort of feel it in your sort of soul and yeah it's telling for me that she's another huge design talent who as I say is currently without a house I think we still have this big disconnect. And actually, it is a problem. It does need to change.

Is it the same, Fiona, when we look to the high street? Is it still an issue there? Because I did mention where the luxury houses go. Some trends do follow. I know it's not always the same. Yeah, absolutely. I think, just going back to Phoebe Philo, who designed for Celine,

I think her revolutionary designs for women, she designed as a woman for women, trickled down into the high street. So much more flattering shapes, much more practical fabrics, much more elegant silhouettes that previously men may have missed. But as a buyer, I found it so much easier to buy with empathy when I was buying women's wear, particularly maternity wear, after I had children, or boys wear after I had children. When I was buying men's wear, I couldn't really buy with empathy. I was having to just ask and research and consider what they might want to wear, you know, looking at sales data, trends and rather than my own experience. And those who create the high street clothes, the creative directors of those brands, do we have the same disconnect? More women, more men? How does it work? Do we know um i can only speak for the companies that i've worked for but um in the main

you normally will have a woman at the in charge of a women's wear um department so yes a female product director and a male product director in charge of a men's department that's not always the way and of course you can have some incredibly talented women designing men's wear and vice versa but but i suppose this conversation that we're having and i just just to come back to you And of course, you can have some incredibly talented women designing menswear and vice versa. But I suppose this conversation that we're having, Anna, just to come back to you if I can finally quickly, is showing that, you know, it's always fascinating to speak to specialists in their area about things that you might not realise why they are the certain way they are and how you're being dressed. And I think very briefly as well, there is another point around luxury that we're still in this world where most of the models are incredibly young and incredibly thin. They're not women in the way that relates to what most women look like, who most women are.

And I can't help suspecting that part of that is in the mix as well. If you have, you know, mainly men and usually sort of gay men that they're sort of used to men's bodies. They're not really used to women's bodies. And what we have is often these women going down the catwalk who sort of look like adolescent males in terms of how they're made physically. And, you know, that for me is another huge problem. We need catwalks to be showing women with shock, you know, hips and boobs. Linda says, why do women's trousers have a front zip like a man's pair of trousers? It's just another thought coming in. Pockets, zips, how we are dressed and how we are not

dressed, perhaps, to put into your mind. Anna Murphy, fashion director at The Times, thank you. Fiona Bailey, senior lecturer in fashion management at De Montfort University, has also been a buyer. Thank you to you. Thank you to all of you for your stories today, especially those generous enough to share your families. I'll be back with you tomorrow at 10. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Thank you so much for your time. Join us again for the next one. Hi, I'm Christy Young and this is Young Again, my podcast for BBC Radio 4, where I get the chance to meet some of the world's most noteworthy and intriguing people and ask them the question, if you knew then what you know now, what would you tell yourself?

I don't regret anything in my life. You don't? No, no way. Oh, if we could only turn back. For me, well, I'd probably tell my younger self to slow down, not to be so judgmental, that all that worrying was wasted energy and that a perm is always a bad idea. This might be the best therapy I've had all year, by the way.

So you never know. Join me for some frank and I hope fascinating exchanges. Subscribe to Young Again on BBC Sounds. 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.