Woman's Hour - Vanessa Redgrave; And one woman's anorexia recovery

Episode Date: July 10, 2019

Olivier, Tony and Academy Award winner Vanessa Redgrave on her new stage play, Vienna 1934–Munich 1938 – a production which she has written, devised, and performs in, and which intimately explores her family’s personal history amidst the rise of fascism in 1930s Europe. We hear about the play and her political family history that inspired it.Our listener, Sarah tells us about being in recovery from a lifetime of anorexia and disordered eating. Lebanese songwriter Tania Saleh and Palestinian poet Farah Chamma are two artists from two generations sharing their experiences as women performers in the Arab world. They are both in London this week to perform at Shubbak, London’s largest festival of contemporary Arab culture. Presented by Jenni Murray Produced by Jane ThurlowReporter: Georgina Hewes Interviewed guest: Vanessa Redgrave Interviewed guest: Tania Saleh Interviewed guest: Farah Chamma

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Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to Wednesday's edition of the Woman's Hour podcast. Now, two years ago we broadcast from a hospital specialising in eating disorders. We had an email from Sarah who was in recovery from anorexia in her mid-forties. Well, she now feels ready to discuss what she's been dealing with. And female artists in the Arab world, Tanya Saleh from Lebanon, writes and sings. Farah Chama is a performance poet. They'll both be appearing at the Shubak Festival of Contemporary Arab Culture. Now, when Vanessa Redgrave was born in 1937, her father, Michael Redgrave, was playing Hamlet at the Old Vic in London,

directed by Laurence Olivier. Olivier said to the audience, Tonight a great actress has been born. Well, he was right. Her career began in the late 50s and she's won just about every award going for film and theatre. Two of the playwrights whose work she's performed, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams,

described her as the greatest living actress of our times. And now, at the age of 82, she's also a writer. Her play Vienna 1934, Munich 1938 opens in preview tomorrow at the Theatre Royal in Bath. It draws on the diaries and notebooks of her family during the period which saw the rise of fascism in Europe after the First World War. What was it about this period that inspired her to make a play? Well, it was the period that resulted in the Second World War, what's called the Second World War,

which, thank goodness, defeated fascism. And the final defeat came in May 1945. And it was a marked moment for me because I read a newspaper that... I think it was the News Chronicle. It was a good newspaper of the time. That was in 1945, so I was eight years old. And it gave a glimmer, the newspaper, for the next few days. I had to read it in secret. Apparently

I wasn't supposed to be reading it, but I did. And there were some glimmers of what had been discovered when the various Allied armies entered the concentration camps. And from that moment, I was seized. And that sounds a bit odd, I know, but it's true. From that moment, when I was eight years old, I've been, let's say, preoccupied, at moments obsessed, with trying to find out what happened. How was it possible that fascism could have come to power? Now, you made a documentary in 2017 with your son, Carlo Nero, Sea Sorrow, in Vienna. How did the work you did on that film contribute to this play?

I hope I can be precise, but I'm not sure I can, Jenny. From one instance might be that my husband, Franco Nero, since we first met way back when I was, I don't know, 28 and he was 24 or something. It was 1967 in Camelot. Thank you. OK. I saw it. OK, thank you. Well, anyway, he's contributed on a year-round basis to maintaining what's called an orphanage. Its official name is the Villaggio Don Bosco.

And it's a Benedictine group of nuns and a priest, Don Benedetto, now, formerly Don Bosco, and they look after orphans and they look after refugees. And the police contact them to say, well, can you take a couple of these young guys that have come into some port in Italy? But, of course, at the moment, well, I'll go on to that. So these young refugees we included in our documentary because two were from African country,

one was from Afghanistan, and they both gave an idea to the audiences who saw the film what kind of violence and discrimination and persecution and poverty all mixed together was happening in their home countries. And one can't make just, you know, facile comparisons. However, what is happening in many African countries has and is very similar to what was happening in Europe in the 1930s and what is beginning to happen and rushing ahead fast in Europe and in the UK by way of extreme right-wing, what we call it, philosophy, yes.

Stephen Spender was a very good friend of your father's and one of the parts of the play involves him and a woman called Helen Mary Morris who's also known as Muriel Gardner. Now why is she so significant a part of your play and her contribution to the lives of children? My gosh, well, you've really put me on the spot to try and say in a couple of minutes what she represents. and the only American woman who assisted the Austrian socialist Jews, and non-Jews, but first and foremost the Jews who were under direct threat of death in concentration camps, assisting them with false passports and affidavits, photographs, you name it, to get out from the Nazis' regime. So she did this, and she was in Vienna from 1928 to 1938, then she went to Paris in 1939

and managed to get out with her husband, Joe Budinger, in 39. I think the reason that I... Two reasons why she sees me. One is that my adored, revered maestro of the cinema, Fred Zinnemann, made a film called Julia. It was based on a short story that was written by a wonderful American writer called Lillian Hellman. And Fred and I, well, we had a very close relationship

because I just worshipped him as a filmmaker but also as somebody who, with his brother George, had escaped from Austria in the 1930s. And the story was about a woman, Julia, who had a remarkable resemblance, when people came to look at it, other people we didn't know, are to Muriel Gardiner.

Then long after that, long, long after that, I was in a play called Hecuba by Euripides and translated, adapted by Tony Harrison, our English, wonderful, brilliant English poet and dramatist. And I got a message from the stage door that Connie would very much like to come and say hello and it turned out this was Muriel Gardiner's daughter

and I was very, very excited excited thrilled or inspired to meet her. And if I recall correctly you won an Oscar for Julia? Yes I did yes. I saw the play in rehearsal on Friday afternoon I haven't yet seen it in the theatre in in in the full centre the word. But you draw very much on the diaries of your father and your uncle, Nicholas Kempson, your mother's brother. Why were you keen in the play to very much interweave the personal and the political? It just seemed the right way to explore. I wish I could give you an intelligent answer.

I can't, Jenny. I've always been reluctant to bring the personal in, and I think that's a mistake, a big mistake. The more you look into the personal, the more you understand about the non-personal, the context of our lives, and the more you look into the context of our lives, the more you understand about the personal. It's a dialectical process, isn't it?

But, of course, my parents, as two young actors, artists, my father, who'd been educated partly educated in Germany at the Heidelberg University who adored the writings of Thomas Mann and adored is a stupid word I know but he did adore them in Thomas Mann's original, people may not remember the name The Magic Mountain, but there's also Bud and Brooks, there's Death in Venice, there's so many more. And I looked at these volumes on my father's bookshelf and didn't dare open them. I pulled out pretty well every other book but not Thomas Mann

because they seemed to me to be about five inches thick and that actually intimidated me but I've gone off the point I think you better bring me straight back it was it was one big scene in the play is about your father and his marriage to your mother and his lovers, male lovers. And I wondered... Male and female. Male and female, yes. But I wondered whether you feel any guilt at all

about putting his private life on the stage. Guilt? Why would I feel guilt? Thank God it isn't criminal offence anymore. I lived in the days when it was a criminal offence and when some of our wonderful actors, leading, famous leading actors, men, were coming under great stress and persecution from the police and so on and so forth. The police of course were doing their duty to

follow the dictates of the law and English law was barbaric on the question of sexuality and affairs and whatever. I came from my parents' family who were, let's say, kind of normal. Kind of normal people. I don't know if I want to call anybody normal, actually, because what's normal? But the point being that from my childhood and teenage point of view, to love, for my father to love a man was as understandable and welcome as for my father to love my mother,

for my mother to love her lover, who was a man, we felt, let's say, just simply good, right about these things. Point being, if everyone was open, now of course to some extent no one could be open because they became under the threat of blackmail and of the law, criminal law. But in our professions, don't know about others, but in our professions, everybody looked after each other. And is that still the case, that everybody still looks after each other? I mean, the dynasty, the Redgrave dynasty, continues, Joely and your granddaughter Daisy.

No, we're not a dynasty. We don't rule anything. We hardly own anything. Please, please, please, Jenny, don't, don't. Anyway, pass on. Well, it's very normal, you know. It was the musicians, the Menuhin family were very close to my parents. Diana Menuhin, who had been a wonderful dancer, helped me train with the Ballet Rombert and Yehudi. Yehudi was not only a brilliant musician, but extremely enlightened. So he was a perpetual example. And much later on,

we actually worked together for UNICEF in some concerts. So what shall I say? You just told me off, and I promise, Vanessa Redgrave, I will never refer again to the Redgrave dynasty, but the very best of luck for your opening in preview tomorrow for Vienna 1934, Munich 1938. And Vanessa, thank you so much for being with us this morning.

Bless you. Thank you. Now still to come in today's programme, Tanya Saleh, who sings and writes her own music, and the poet Farah Chama. They're both appearing in the Shubak Festival of Contemporary Arab Culture and the serial Episode 3 of Dead Sir. Now, you may have missed yesterday's discussion about trafficked women

held in Yarl's Woods. Surprisingly, the majority are from China. And the rules of the Girl Code. Apparently, going out with your friend's ex is absolutely not allowed. Now two years ago we broadcast a programme from a hospital in Worcestershire which specialises in eating disorders. Sarah who'd heard the programme got in touch with us to describe what she'd been going through as a woman in her mid-forties who was in recovery from anorexia. At the time, she didn't feel ready to discuss her experience on air,

but we kept in touch, and she's now met in her garden with Georgina Hughes to discuss the struggles she's had since her childhood. I just wanted to come round this corner with you, because when I come round this corner and just see that beauty, it's just, ah, new life and early summer. It's more than a shed, it's more like a wooden chalet. Tell me why you've brought me here.

A lot of my recovery happened in this place. When I first went to meet my psychiatrist, she had sleepless nights she said because she was so concerned and was desperate for me to be an inpatient but I begged to do it at home and in the end she said if you can create a hospital at home then you can stay at home as long as you keep gaining weight and so that's what this place became for me and I had a huge mirror I'll show you it's empty now because I'm moving. Here's your big mirror. This is one of the key physical things of my recovery was discovering a wonderful yoga class in a local

village and I've been going for four years now twice twice a week. Then I had this huge mirror put in my log cabin so that I could enjoy getting to know myself in a bodily way. And actually I can remember when I started to gain weight putting on a bikini and just standing and just taking time to enjoy letting myself become Sarah. I mean, if you think, I've gained about three stone from my lowest weight. So welcoming myself with my growing strength and things in a community with other women in the yoga class has been a really wonderful wonderful thing. And what would you do down here when you're in here? I did a lot of singing, gentle dancing, I prayed, I diditated, and I started painting as well.

The first six years of having it, it was really a horrible place of discipline. I had a treadmill in that corner, and I used to just walk miles and miles and miles on the treadmill and eat nothing. In the winter, I spent whole days out here, quite isolated from other human beings and not singing, silent. I was quite famous in the local town for walking excessively, but I actually was so tired, I'd stop walking and I just used to, I had a bed, and I used to come in here and just sort of be in a semi-slumber all day. We've both eaten heartily, and you've just served me up some lemon drizzle cake. I guess I'm wondering, how long have you been able to eat like this? I suppose the seeds of eating in a new way were planted on the first day in March 2015 when I went to see my new dietitian and she was American

from the deep south. She said to me Sarah okay what what what can you eat? I'd filled in diet books for dietitians hundreds of times where I'd made lies about all the things I'd eaten. But this time I just dropped my shoulders and said, I can have light soya milk, spinach, and parsnips are a special treat, and low calorie hot chocolate. And then there was just a kind of silence. And that was my list. That was it? That was it. For five years previously to meeting her, I'd been living on low-calorie hot chocolate and vegetables and nothing else.

I'd made a pact with myself that carbohydrates would never pass my lips again. She just said, OK, let's start right there. She asked me to feel back into a moment in my childhood when I felt relaxed about eating and to remember any foods that I particularly enjoyed. So I knew I loved porridge. I knew I loved steak actually. I loved a really good pizza. You've taken me back a bit thanks to your nutritionist to that time when you were much younger. While we're there why don't you just tell me where your eating disorder began My parents marriage began to fall apart when I was kind of about 11 or 12 and that coincided with my body beginning to change because I was coming towards puberty

As my body was beginning to swell and change and clothes weren't fitting and I felt sort of physically uncomfortable, I just felt like the landscape around me became increasingly chaotic and unreliable. There was one summer I remember where I actually was overeating and I was gaining weight quite fast. In a way I'd use that food to block my voice like a sort of cork to stop myself expressing my despair. So at what point did it turn from the binging, which is what you're describing, to anorexia? I remember on that holiday, I had a chat with my dad and he was encouraging me to get into my sport again. And I started realising I am quite a sporty person.

I could see myself losing weight and I got a kind of thrill out of it. And I can remember my dad dropping us off and saying to my mum, you know, doesn't sail it great. So that gave me a kind of buzz. But then that autumn, I was off school for about three months and I just lost more and more and more weight during that time. And I loved it. Unlike the binge eating where I'd felt totally out of control and ashamed of myself in the progressively whittling my body down I felt a deep sense of achievement and satisfaction and control and safety and that power of being able to shut my jaws and say no no entry nothing by mouth you can't make me it's only more recently that I've become aware

that what I gave up losing the intimacy of connection and human contact was so but I didn't see it like that I just thought human beings are quite dangerous because they can make me become certain things so I just if I keep myself completely squeaky clean separate yep sealed off and that persisted then so you were about what 13 did you say 13 yeah and you you were ill until what age I was always weird with food you know 18 I had a friend who was vegan so I became vegan and then I went through a phase where I just love porridge. So I'd have porridge like four times a day. You know, the middle way just wasn't something I did. The anorexia comes back in with a vengeance later. When I first went to university, I always had barren shelves and would steal food from the communal fridge because I just didn't provide for myself.

And then later in my 20s, when I was starting to do a PhD I was becoming more anorexic I went to an awful kind of three or four day cycle where I would binge hugely and I would literally go to the refuse dumpsters behind supermarkets at night and get stuff out of them or around the market square where people had left their portions of half-eaten chips. I'd pick them up and I'd eat them all. And then, because I was losing weight, I would not eat anything for three days and I'd write lists on my walls and say, I will never touch these foods again. I think there's part of me who wanted to be found out, but I kind of wanted someone to look out their window and say, what's going on there? Call the police. and then gradually over the next four or five years i just lost weight more and more how old are you now 48 and how old were you

when you began to get better 44. so we're four years god it's amazing because it feels like such a long period of my life now but you know yeah only four ago. What was the point at which you turned the corner? In the winter of 2014, I remember going on holiday with my husband to visit some friends in Hereford. It was a really, really cold, misty day. And I just felt my life was in danger. I mean, I just felt so cold. I remember walking around the supermarket going to buy some low-calorie lemonade and just feeling I'm about to drop, I'm about to drop. And I wanted to drop.

You've got a photo of that time that you were going to show me. I never just want to get kind of blasé and just kind of show them, oh, yeah, this is me. I want to stop and breathe and think, my God, sir. There. Oh, my goodness. So I'm looking at this and you look about 70 years old, extremely unwell. How does it feel to look at that photograph now for you? I see so much stress and fear.

The key thing that people need to recover successfully is social contact and community and family. If you're living on your own in a beds set it's almost impossible to recover I'd always been living in a fractured kind of itinerant way I didn't have a stable place I didn't have a GP I didn't but this time it was different because I was married and I had a stable home and then a couple of things happened really because then my husband was still desperate to have a baby so a lady from an adoption agency came to visit us at our house. But at the end of the meeting, she said, I think you're a lovely couple. And then she just turned to me and she actually physically moved her chair. She said to me, I've got to be

frank. You look like you're dying. Do you have a terminal illness? And that was one moment, a beginning of the thought shift. I just heard myself say, yes, I have chronic long-term anorexia nervosa. And I kind of heard a little whisper in my head saying, and I want to be well. I phoned up the doctor's surgery. I thought, I'm going to see him on Thursday at two and I've got a double appointment. That's 20 minutes. I I thought when I go there I'm not taking the adoption papers I'm going to tell him please will you help me there were deeper and deeper layers of kind of disclosing the truth I don't know I just feel I've been blessed every way because if I'd had the wrong kind of dietician who bossed me around I wouldn't have got well I

think it's really common in recovering anorexics you're so full of lies and subterfuge did you ever get scared all these years living like you say like a block of ice and then all this opening did you ever get fearful have there ever been moments of retreating willing oneself to go back I think occasionally when I came to another six months and it was getting rid of another lot of clothes to keep on doing it and shedding because I mean I had to go through it about six times my clothes becoming too small and sometimes that made me feel panicky this silk dress here is just about the only one left I've got from when I was very very thin and I don't know why I've kept this one because I like the colours I thought maybe I can make it into a nice handkerchief or something one day but but actually when I see that it makes me feel trapped and small and sad and and if I'd stayed in there then I wouldn't be alive now really so what else has helped you get better for me it definitely

has a lot to do with the little community at the church I belong to. Beginning to kind of not just be Sarah the sick one. And instead of hogging the conversation, I just kind of enjoy being in the company of others. Also, anorexia is so much about perfection. It's about perfect performance. Before I came into the company of people, I'd be anxiously imagining what are they going to be thinking of me? How do I present myself in the appropriate way? When I was there, I was second guessing, second guessing. And after the event, I'd be thinking I've got to do it better

next time. We can't get better on our own. That's the amazing thing because it's such a solitary disease and recovery involves realising we can't do living on our own what a joy to realise that in my 40s and Sarah was talking to Georgina Hughes now this week in London there's a festival called Shubak of contemporary

Arab culture Farah Chama who's Palestinian but grew up in Dubai is a performance poet who appeared at Rich Mix in Bethnal Green. And Tania Saleh is a Lebanese singer-songwriter who was at the Barbican last night. Tania, growing up during the Lebanese Civil War, what was your childhood like? Horrible. I'm sorry to say, but this is the truth. Like I was feeling that it was shattering me in many ways. Like during the war, my parents had divorced. At the same time, the war has separated me from my friends because my friends happened to be living in the other side of Beirut. So I was feeling left out in many ways,

within the family and outside. And I had those feelings about becoming a musician, but I never dared to even dream that. I mean, because I wanted to take piano lessons and guitar lessons, and I couldn't. And I wanted to take ballet classes, and I couldn't because I wanted to take piano lessons and guitar lessons and I couldn't. And I wanted to take ballet classes and I couldn't because of the war. So I didn't even dare to think about myself and the future at that time. So how did you develop a career in music?

I studied fine arts and went into advertising. Also, I took courses in advertising and I worked in advertising. The first job I had was to write a jingle for a brand. And at the time, my boss told me, you should write songs. I didn't understand what he was saying. He said, trust me, you should write songs. And it was not in the plan at all. This is how I started.

It was a challenge and I like taking challenges. Now, at the beginning, we heard a little extract of your music, which Vanessa Redgrave raved about. Let's just hear it again. That's wonderful. I'm a big, big fan of hers. Let's hear it again. SONG PLAYS And you have now to tell us what you're actually singing about. Farah sitting there knows exactly what you're singing about, but I don't. Well, it's describing the situation in the Arab world.

And I wrote this song as part of an album that was an audiovisual album telling the story of the Arab world and how we are being stagnant for the past maybe 400 or 500 years but the album is telling the story of this world in the past hundred years and and how it's repeat the history is repeating itself and this girl is asking, where do I go from here? Can you tell me on the map which way to go? Because I'm lost. I'm lost in the history and I'm lost in the future. I don't know where to go.

So the song is called Show Me the Way. Now Farah, you grew up in Dubai, Palestinian parents. How have you developed a career in performance poetry? I started writing in school, showing my text to my English teacher. And then I discovered a group called Poeticians, run by a wonderful filmmaker and poet called Hind Choufani. And I stumbled upon them and went with a little text along with my extended family and my family for support. I was 16 and I performed for the first time, even though Hind had told me, you're too young,

we need to be 18 plus to be in this group because we might speak about, you know, politics or something that's not appropriate. And ever since then, it just started happening. There was a ripple effect. And this became what I want to do. And it just made sense. Now, I know you write in, is it five or six languages? Well, to be fair, I mean, I play with language. It's what I love to do. But I mean, I speak four languages. I would say, well, the other two I just play with mainly.

But I mean, I think Arabic, English and French are the main ones. And then Brazilian Portuguese, because my dad lives there and I go to Brazil a lot. So, yeah. Okay, you are going to perform live in Arabic. Yes, I am. Okay, where you go? Okay, so خايفة أطلع متلك حالمة مسالمة عشقة للجمال ولغيره مش مهتمة خايفة الحياة تكسرني وانت اللي من الكسر جبرتي جبر

وانت اللي من القهر عمرتي بيوت ومشيتي على ضروب الصبر من شو خايفة يا امي خلي الموج ينحط الصخر خلي الليل يعلمني فن الصهر ولا لشو اسمك صحر It's such a beautiful language with beautiful rhythms, but I have no idea what you were saying. What do you think it's about? I've got no idea. I have no clue. What is it about? So I looked at you as if my mom were here. And I asked you, what are you afraid of, mom? Are you afraid that I become exactly like you?

A dreamer? A peacemaker? A lover of beauty? And it's a poem I wrote for my mother, whose name is Sahar. And the word Sahar. And the word Sahar is in the poem, which also means dawn, a moment of dawn. That's what Sahar means. So I told her, why are you so afraid, mom? Are you afraid that I become like you? I wrote it for her when I decided to study theatre, because she wasn't okay with this

decision. She opposed it. And I wrote this telling her, but I want to be like you. I want to be a writer. I want to be the beautiful person you are. So stop asking me not to, because you're afraid of money. And you're afraid that this career will not feed me. But how easy is it in the Arab world, which one still perceives as something of a patriarchal society, how easy is it for young women to become performers? I mean, I think it's a very easy and difficult question at once, because it all comes down to, I mean, to the nuclear family. And I always tell my mother, I'm so grateful that you are my mother, because she has always seen beyond the patriarchy, has always opposed it on a very small scale. She's not a political figure or even she doesn't even think politically. She's a very literary and emotional person.

And I always say that I try my best to understand the world on a micro scale and fight the patriarchy there in that nuclear family in order to see the world. It only for it to become a bit easier and not become very overwhelming. Tanya, what about you? Well, I don't think I've had any problems with that because I imposed myself at an early age. But I imposed myself as a woman,

not as a... I was thinking about that the other day that sometimes when we were young because of a lot of harassment we tend to become stronger and more aggressive and more manly and I didn't do that at all

I stuck to my femininity and I wanted to impose that on whoever was opposing it and I think in time it took a lot of time, the people who were thinking that you're a woman, you can't do this, you can't become a songwriter, you're not intelligent enough, men are only responsible for you, etc., all of that.

I proved the opposite in a peaceful way without having to make problems or become aggressive with the patriarchal system. Just briefly from both of you, how important has social media been in spreading the work that you do, Farah? I think it's been the way. I mean, it started off with social media, with an Arabic poem called How Must I Believe that spread on the internet.

But I was telling Tania before the show that it's very difficult to understand your work only through the numbers and the likes sometimes. It becomes very limiting. difficult to understand your work only through the numbers and the likes. Sometimes it becomes very limiting. So I think it's very important to understand social media as a tool and not as an objective. Tania? Well, I feel that it was important for me because I'm not a mainstream artist and it helped me to become known in the Arab world and also everywhere. Like it's easy to get to know people when you're online.

But the problem is that now it's become addictive. And this is something I don't like at all. I don't like the fact that I'm always on my phone trying to see who liked this and who didn't like that. I want to connect with nature, with people, with life as it used to be. And this is something that's becoming dangerous. I was talking to Tania Saleh and Farah Chama. Lots of you got in touch about my interview with Vanessa Redgrave. Amanda Jones said, feeling privileged just listening to Vanessa Redgrave on Women's Hour. Everything she's saying is important.

Vic said, wonderful to hear this amazing woman talking about her latest project. The mention of the Redgrave's lack of ownership reminded me of a story I was told many years ago by a young actor who was in a play with Vanessa. The cast was invited to her home and found it a very simple dwelling. The reason, my friend later discovered, was that she was the most generous of souls and simply gave everything away. Long may she continue to amaze, inspire and entertain us. And then on anorexia and Sarah's story, several emails, none of whom wanted to be

named. This one said, today I listened to the 48-year-old lady talking about her experiences of anorexia and I nearly cried. I'm 22 and my left hip is nailed together with metal because of the damage anorexia did to my bones. I'm overjoyed to be finally getting better. My left hip is nailed together with metal because of the damage anorexia did to my bones. I'm overjoyed to be finally getting better. My weight is good, my periods are back, but it is still an almost constant struggle. It was good to hear someone talk so eloquently about these feelings that I thought I was alone in feeling. It's good to know I'm not alone. Someone else said having just listened to Sarah on today's program I would like to say how much of what she said resonates with just how I felt as I struggled with anorexia in my teens and twenties. I most regret the self-imposed removal from friendships

and relationships and the wasted years of not being able to enjoy life. I'm now in my 50s, married, and against all the odds, I have six children. It's something I still feel too embarrassed to talk about, especially with my children. And someone else said, I felt Sarah's story gave so much hope for others by means of explaining various methods of thinking about issues, about herself and about the community. Sarah explained about fear and control,

and I could recognise myself in some of her descriptions. I don't suffer from an eating disorder, but a progressive disability which makes me feel hopeless. I was blown away by Sarah's bravery, gentleness and insight. And Sophia said, this was very moving, wishing Sarah health and happiness. Of course, I must mention

that we do have information on the Woman's Hour website about places that can offer support for people in recovery from anorexia. But tomorrow I'll be talking to the playwright, Rona Munro, and the director, Mellie Still, about teaming up to bring Captain Corelli's mandolin to the stage, complete with a goat, which, by the way, is not a real one.

Bye-bye. 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.