Woman's Hour - Virginia Nicholson: sex and the 1960s, Katy Bourne, Sabrina Cohen-Hatton

Episode Date: April 11, 2019

The Sexual Revolution liberated a generation, but did it do as much for women as it did for men? Virginia Nicholson joins us for a conversation about the impact that decade had. It's said that dogs are man’s best friend - but, we talk to two women whose lives have been transformed by their canine companions. Sabrina Cohen-Hatton joined the fire service at 18. She is now one of the most senior firefighters in the UK and is looking at decision-making in the most difficult situations. And, Katy Bourne is the Police and Crime Commissioner for Sussex. She talks about how her direct experience of stalking led her to get her own force inspected. We hear about how stalking cases should be investigated and how victims can be supported. Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Ruth Watts Interviewed guest: Virginia Nicholson Interviewed guest: Theresa Edwards Interviewed guest: Rosalyn St Pierre Interviewed guest: Emily Dean Interviewed guest: Kate Spicer Interviewed guest: Sabrina Cohen-Hatton Interviewed guest: Katy Bourne

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, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Thursday the 11th of April. Now they're said to be man's best friend, but any woman who has a dog knows there's nothing gendered about a canine love affair. In today's programme, Kate Spicer in praise of Wolfie and Emily Dean on the faithful Raymond. The 60s is said to have started the sexual revolution, but how was it for you? Women, sex, love and power in that seminal decade. And the heat of the moment, Sabrina Cohen-Hatton is one of the UK's most senior firefighters. Now you may have seen in yesterday's papers some rather disturbing stories about stalking.

There was the murder of Shana Grice, who was killed by her former boyfriend, even though she had reported him to the police in Sussex for stalking her five times in six months. The Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner, Katie Bourne, had commissioned a report which was published yesterday which concluded that stalking investigations were not as thorough as they could be and victims of harassment were not properly protected. Well, Katie Bourne has been the Commissioner for seven years, but for five of those years she too was a victim of stalking. She joined us from Brighton. What was her experience of stalking?

Well, it began just before I got elected to this position, which was at the end of 2012. And it was started by a man who first of all decided he was going to stand as one of the potential candidates for the role of police and crime commissioner. He never actually went through with it and became an official candidate, but it enabled him to get access to all the candidates at various hustings in the run up. So that's where I first met him. He then once I got elected became fixated on being a sort of keyboard warrior, if you like, holding me to justice, holding me to account, which initially is fine because, you know, I'm a public figure. You put yourself out there, you expect the public to take an interest and sometimes some of the attention you get is not always very positive. But it became quite obsessive and he became really fixated and it just wouldn't go away. And at what point, Katie, did you start to be frightened that he might do you harm?

Well, it all started online as much of stalking these days does. There's been a massive rise in sort of malicious communications. And then it transferred into the physical world. So, you know, online, he would call me a whore, a prostitute. He'd accused me of murder, being a paedophile, an abuser of the elderly, a Nazi sympathiser, everything. And then he started to accuse me of having an affair with a senior member of my team, which was very hurtful, very upsetting. And then one day, I found out that he'd come to a dinner that I'd been speaking at in a pub room. And he'd, unbeknown to me, filmed me at this event and then posted it online the next morning whilst he walked around the town shouting at the camera

as well. That was slightly alarming because I left the event late that night. I had to walk across a dark car park to get to my car. I'm unaccompanied. And I had no idea that he was even in the room, let alone filming. And then one of his group, there was a small group of them that started this harassment initially. And one of his team turned up when I was doing a charity abseil a few months later. And I knew he was there because he made himself known and I avoided him. But what I didn't know was that he'd not only been filming me, but when he posted the film on the well-known YouTube channel the next morning, he'd also filmed my harness that I had been wearing. He'd had access to the harness and somebody had written underneath it,

you should have slit her rope. Now, at that point, I thought, this is too much. We need to do something. Now, it was Surrey Police that investigated your case. Why not your own force in Sussex? I think because, rightly, they felt, you know, I'm their police and crime commissioner, it would probably be a bit close to home,

and they felt that it would be more appropriate to have a neighbouring force do that, and that's fine. You know, that's fairly common practice. So Surrey, I have to say, Surrey police were fantastic. They did a really good job. Where I felt let down was that they pulled together a case to prosecute through the criminal courts. But the Crown Prosecution Service, when we eventually got to them to review the case, they said there was insufficient evidence.

Despite five years worth of evidence. So what has been the result of your action? So we also went down the civil route and of course if you're a member of the public you have to pay for that out of your own purse. Fortunately being a public servant I was able to use my office to do that. So this route is often closed to many people who are victims of stalking but we went down the civil route and the judge was fantastic and I got an injunction against him. And so he was allowed nowhere near me, you know, permanently this injunction. And of course, he then breached it several times on numerous occasions.

So we went back to court and the judge ruled and gave him a four month custodial sentence, which was suspended for two years. So that was towards the end of last year. So if he breaches it within the next two years, he will go straight to prison. What persuaded you to have your own force in Sussex investigated on these matters? Well, it's not just because I've been a victim myself. And actually, it's given me an incredible insight into the mindset as a victim of this type of crime. You know, you live in a permanent state of heightened anxiety, and it is like suffering PTSD in a way. But it also made me think, actually, I don't want to take at face value. My job is to hold to account, to scrutinise the force, to challenge them. And

whilst the chief constable and senior officers take this really seriously, and they are determined to change, I just wanted to make sure that they were actually improving on their processes. So I commissioned Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary to come in and do an independent inspection. It's the first time that any police and crime commissioner in the country has done this. And it's part of the powers we have. But I just wanted to send a very strong message to not just my force, but also to all the victims of stalking out there that, you know, we will take this seriously. I mean, your report did conclude that stalking investigations were not as thorough as they should be and victims were not properly protected. And, of course, we then have the death of Shana Grice.

Sussex Police say they are committed to improving how they deal with stalking. How confident are you that they will improve? Well, I mean, Shana Grice's murder is just tragic. 19 years of age and cut short such a young life and not taken seriously by the police. And we've had other failings. You know, last year we had the family of Miss Michelle Savage and her mother, Heather Whitbread, who was shot in St. Leonard's by Michelle's former husband. And despite her calls to the police again, this was missed. You know, I know the police aren't perfect and certainly Sussex Police are acutely aware of the consequences if their

response to stalking is not the correct one which is why the Chief Constable and his senior team are committed to changing. They're on a journey of improvement but what the report did show which I think is more worrying is that whilst Sussex are on a journey of improvement many forces nationally are not even on that path yet. They are failing to understand stalking. They're not recording it properly. And I think the fact is that there's no legal definition for stalking. So it's quite hard for frontline officers to understand. The government says it's given more than £5 million for tackling stalking

and also says they're backing the Stalking Protection Act. How will that help Sussex and the other forces that you mentioned? Well, the law is strong. There are custodial sentences attached to stalking. So I think the law and the Act are really positive. What my concern is that forces nationally are not risk assessing victims properly. They're using a risk assessment form

that's really good for victims of domestic abuse, but it focuses heavily on aspects of physical violence and explicit threats of harm. And of course, we know with stalking, some of the more common but equally risky behaviours can be covert, can be more persistent. And of course, if you're not able to assess those, then you don't have an accurate reflection

of the risk that that victim is potentially in and how quickly that risk can escalate. So you don't put the right care package around the victim. And if it's not recorded correctly from day one, that will affect the rest of the case going forwards. Katie Bourne, thank you very much indeed for joining us this morning and we would of course like to hear from you if you have been a victim of stalking how was your complaint handled do let us know you can email us or of

course you can tweet. Now I have never gone along with the old saying that a dog is a man's best friend. First I had Taffy, who was the confidant of a sometimes lonely only child for 15 years. Then came William and Mary, and now it's Butch, Frida and Madge. But much as I love all my dogs, it's Taffy, William and Butch, who at different times in my life have been my number one. It's a passion I share with the authors of two books. Kate Spice's companion is a lurcher called Wolfie, and he features in Lost Dog, A Love Story. Emily Dean lives with a Shih Tzu called Raymond, who appears in Everybody Died, So I Got a Dog.

Now, Emily, you do claim your family was not a dog family. What do you mean by that? No, we really were anything but a dog family, Jenny. I always had this idea when I was growing up of a dog family being they had a Labrador. There was an estate car parked outside and the dad was probably an accountant. That was my vision of them. And my parents were, and they had Tupperware, most important of all.

My parents were actors and, you know, my father worked in TV and it was sort of bohemian chaos, I described it as. So we didn't have, you know, we didn't watch Life on Earth. We watched French films about adultery at Christmas time, you know, we didn't watch Life on Earth. We watched French films about adultery at Christmas time. You know, that was our childhood. So I suppose I just yearned for, I suppose dogs represented a domestic stability and constancy that I kind of yearned for and we didn't have that.

Now, Kate, you also describe a fairly chaotic life. How did you come to adopt a dog? Well, going back to what you were just saying earlier, I did grow up with dogs. But I don't think you can compare having your own dog to hanging out with your parents' dogs. And my parents have told me, you don't have dogs in London. So I thought that that option wasn't open to me. And I often wondered how a dog would change my life and eventually I went for it on a day when I had a particularly bad hangover and I just thought I need a dog and it was like my heart and my gut were telling me you need to get a dog and lo and behold I was right the dog imposed order it brought love back into my life it It was a, you know, taking on that dog was life-changing

in a soulful way, mindful way and a physical way. Why did you choose the dog you did? Well, they say about dogs that they choose you. I know it's a real cliche, but it's always a sequence of strange events that leads you to the dog that you get. And I adopted him for a very small and slightly dubious rescue centre in Essex, picked him up from a service station on the M25. And this dog walked towards me and my first thought was, God, I don't even know if I can love this thing. It looks so weird. But then, of course, your heart bursts open and the love just comes flowing out. Emily, the title of your book is Everybody Died, So I Got a Dog. What actually happened?

I know, big spoiler there, I'm afraid. Well, my family died very quickly. My sister died and she had gone down the dog family route, whereas Kate and I, I've known Kate for a long time and I was described as the last one at the the party so I sort of avoided that that stability whereas my sister went down that route and she got a dog but she died very swiftly from cancer leaving two kids and you know a husband and the rest of us and and my parents died so it was within a three-year period I lost my whole family and obviously that does force you to re-evaluate your life and perhaps make decisions that you didn't have the confidence to make before. And I just had this sense of, if not now, when? It was the thing I'd always wanted. And I just suddenly decided I'm going to get a dog. I got Raymond. My sister was called Rachel. So Raymond is a nod to her without

being too confronting. And it's utterly changed my life in a way I never thought possible. And what made you choose a Shih Tzu? Well, do you know, I experienced a friend of mine had a Shih Tzu and I really liked the fact that they were sort of playful and a bit strange and because my family were bohemian and quite eccentric I wanted a dog that was a bit odd as well and and I really have got that because he looks like the love child of Chewbacca that's what everyone tells me he doesn't look like a dog um so yeah I think I like their temperament and I like the fact also they they are good companion dogs and that was important to me as well.

Now, Kate, Wolfie did go missing rather famously. Again, there's a bit of a clue in the name of the book. Lost dog. Yeah, I know. But let's expand on it, shall we? How did Wolfie get lost? Well, both Emily and I do everything with our dogs. So Wolfie and I have some separation anxiety when we're not together. But I had to go to a wedding and I left him with my brother. And I thought that I had this romantic notion that my dog was like a sort of dog cousin to my nieces and nephews. And I don't have kids and that I provided this sort of cousin-like figure with four legs and shaggy fur.

And I left the dog with my brother but of course because I spent so much time with Wolfie he was pining for me lying by the door howling and it was Halloween the doorbell rang trick-or-treaters my five-year-old niece runs down to open the door and pachung my sighthound is straight down the road at 35 miles an hour he because he was so far away from his home in West London, he didn't have the P-mails to read to come back. So he got deeper and deeper into a neighbourhood that he didn't know. And he was brilliant at skulking about and not being seen. And he lived wild for nine days. You were right that you went a little bit crazy

when he was missing. What did going a little bit crazy when he was missing. What did going a little bit crazy involve? Well, it seems ridiculous to say this when we're sitting next to Emily, who's lost three members of her family, but I got a taste of what grief really is at its rawest state. I was absolutely riven with grief and the surging hormones that I'd never experienced before, they flood your body and you are deranged with it.

I mean, people talk about being mad with grief and one of the things I realised when I lost my dog, because I'd always felt a bit sorry for myself and we can all be a bit prey to feeling victims sometimes, but when the dog went missing I suddenly realized what real loss is and the fact that he came back felt like a second chance at life to be honest and I suddenly realized you're all right mate you've got everything you need and your dog came back Emily lone women with a cat are often seen as rather sad creatures how do people respond to a lone woman with a dog

well it's interesting because i i have had someone say to me not long ago do you think your dog's a child substitute and i said no he's a dog however i am able to make that distinction however in fact kate and i were talking about this earlier and i sort of think you've got to be careful because it can be another way of slightly shaming child-free people saying is that a child substitute the assumption being that well you couldn't quite get a child so that's your consolation prize, a dog. And they're a different species. It's a different relationship. Kate was talking just now about loss. I mean, I lost Ray for, mine was 40 minutes, I think, Kate, and he'd fallen behind a plant.

And I can honestly say the panic and terror I felt, honestly, and I hope this isn't insulting my wonderful family who would understand me saying this it wasn't far off because it's that sense of something you love is in danger and it doesn't matter what or who that is that's that is absolutely that's just a feeling you have so but yeah I get whenever people say that that whole that is a trope that that annoys me a bit that idea that well you didn't have the domestic set up, so you're just living alone with your dog and, you know. And how do people respond to your love affair with Wolfie?

Do you get that? I do describe it as a love affair, which feels strange because we associate love affairs with sex, but I think there is a very complete love you can have for a dog that you cannot have with any other human because they stand next to you, they're living, they're warm, their heart beats, they clearly have feelings. There's a very deep, soulful, meditative connection with a dog

that I don't actually think you can compare to any relationship that um with any human but the only two receptacles of unconditional love are really children and dogs but that doesn't make them the same but like you're saying it's very often used as a shaming thing my stepfather likes to say when the dog jumps on the sofa oh she won't tell him off it's her first child. And I do find it. It's diminishing. And the good thing about dogs is they're never cross when you come home, are they? They're the opposite of cross.

They always are delighted to see you. Yeah. Which doesn't always apply to the people in your home. Thank you both very much indeed. Emily Dean, Kate Spicer, and I shall try not to cry just thinking about losing a dog. Thank you both very much. Thank you. Now, still to come in today's programme, the heat of the moment, the life of Sabrina Cohen-Hatton, one of the most senior firefighters in the UK, and the serial Episode 5 of Ship of Lies. Now, it was the decade that saw so much seismic change.

Philip Larkin said sex began in 1963, the pill arrived, abortion was legalised, as was homosexuality. Mary Quant brought the skirts up, and by the end of the 60s, the women's movement was up and running. But how was it for you? Well, that's the title of Virginia Nicholson's book, which examines women, sex, love and power, and asks whether women were the beneficiaries of the sexual revolution or merely put under pressure to do things they didn't really want to. Lots of women were interviewed for the book, including Teresa Edwards, who's a ceramic artist, and Rosalind St Teresa Edwards, who's a ceramic artist, and Rosalind St. Pierre, who's a retired academic and a county councillor.

We all spoke earlier about the impact the 60s had had. Virginia was born in 1955, so was only really young when the period began. Why was it a time that so fascinated her? Well, I think it's a very personal decade for me because I felt I missed out. I was five when it began and 15 when it ended. And it was like watching this incredible carnival parade through a glass window and feeling I hadn't been asked to the party. So what are the things that most stick in your mind that you were envious of? Well, I have a very vivid memory when I was about 10 in Leeds, looking out over my parents' garden down below from my bedroom and seeing all my father's art students having a party.

And they were utterly gorgeous. They were in beads and velvets and they had long party and they were utterly gorgeous they were in beads and velvets and they had long hair and they were smoking and that was the men as well as as well as the women and then they took their clothes off and jumped into the pond and this to me was the permissive society and for me ever afterwards it was the most aspirational image possible. So part of writing the book was wanting to ask myself the question whether that was true. Rosalind, what are your most striking memories of leaving Surrey for Liverpool in 1962? Because you're a bit older than Virginia.

Yes, that's right. So I was 18 when I got on the train to leave Surrey. It was a place I was not happy in at all. And then getting off into this very steamy, grotty, dirty place and waiting for a bus and people telling jokes, that was the first thing that happened. And then going to the university, which at that time was so vibrant and it still is it's still an excellent university and within a week going to a dance and it was a dance in those days in a frock and chaps in ties and suits all going well to Victor Sylvester when the

Beatles came on as the interval group and And I should think everybody went wild. And to me, the 60s started in October 1962. With the Beatles. With the Beatles and the music and the energy. Now, Teresa, Art College in Leeds, London in 67. What was it like to be young in the capital? It was brilliant. It was really good. I mean, I was poor most of the time

and a little bit kind of in awe of all these wonderfully dressed people who all seemed to be having a wonderful life, you know. But I was still involved in the art college scene because my now husband, then boyfriend, was at the Royal College of Art. So I was able to be still a bit of a student. But when I got myself sorted with work, certainly once I'd got into working in animation, I remember one of my friends said,

it's just like being at art school but getting paid. You're there with a lot of purple trousers and smoking fags and lots of drink and drugs and things like that, but you've got paid at the end of it. And London didn't awe inspire me, not really, because I knew about it. My father lived in London, so I'd gone up and down quite a lot. But it was just where it was. It was where it was at. It was where we all wanted to go.

Even though Leeds was brilliant, art school was brilliant, Leeds was, not unlike Liverpool, a very interesting, fabulous place to be a student in. But most of us felt the pull to go to London and I've never left. Virginia, we generally assume that it was a sexual revolution and we all had a great time, which seems to be the case from what we've just heard. But what did you discover about women for whom maybe it wasn't quite so great? Well, that was extremely interesting because quite quickly when I started doing the research on this book, the scales started to fall from my eyes. I'd imagined, I guess, as many of us

do, that it was just amazing fun being part of the sexual revolution, that the pill in particular was a real game changer, a door opener for women. And it absolutely was. It meant that the wages of sin didn't have to necessarily be a baby. I thought, well, how wonderful. You can take the pill. You can try without buying. You can behave like men. But there was a very big price to pay. And that's what I started to unearth was that if suddenly you don't have to pay the penalty of sex and have a baby and be left holding it, then how do you say no to a man who says, well, you know, how about it? And if you don't want to have sex with that man,

how does that make you look in a society which has changed? I think the late novelist Jenny Diskey told you some really quite striking things about things that have happened to her. It's in her book, actually. Jenny Diskey wrote an amazing book about her own experiences of the 60s, which she bought into completely, the sex, drugs and rock and roll. But much later on, she reassessed it completely. And this is what she said. It was uncool to say no. The idea that rape was having sex with someone who didn't want to do it didn't apply

very much in the late 60s. On the basis that no means no, I was raped several times by men who arrived in my bed and wouldn't take no for an answer. Teresa, how much experience of exploitation of that nature do you recall? Well, I was always sort of fighting people off. I didn't really indulge very much. I mean, I had a boyfriend. I had the boyfriend from 19, and he was in London too. But I was pestered constantly. I'd be followed from the tube to outside my bedsit door.

When I was working in a shop, I had constant attention, people phoning me at the desk, seeing my name on my badge and phoning up the main thing and asking to speak to me and offering all sorts of things, wanting me to be in films, wanting me to do modelling. There was a buyer for one of the publishing companies who used to come and I just thought he was a nice, friendly man. I was a very friendly woman.

We were selling books, art books, it was interesting. And he used to sort of lean on the counter and talk to me. And eventually one of my colleagues from across the floor came over and said, you know, he's masturbating while he's talking to you. There was a racial element as well. Yes, I think that was part of it, very much so. I was a bit exotic, I suppose, and hard to sort of make myself hide, really.

I was proud of how I looked. I was very keen on what I wore and the face I put on the world. And I think there was a racial thing. I think they thought I should be maybe thankful or they were intrigued. I went for a job as a printmaker. I didn't realise what I was doing, but I accepted an offer of an interview. I was very keen to get into art after leaving art school and I didn't like that I was working in shops and boutiques and trying to make a living. And there was a man who made screen printing on paper bags and T-shirts.

And he said, oh, if you can screen print, I'll give you a job. And the interview entailed him taking me to his horrible little office and measuring my vital statistics, you know. I mean, and you go downstairs and there's the print workshop where all these big, leery lads who are printing posters and things, and they just look and think, oh, yeah, you know, I felt such a twit. So that sort of thing happened to me. Rosalind, I know you became pregnant, I think, in 65,

whilst you were still at university. How did the university respond to that? Well, it was extraordinary. Rather like Teresa, I only ever had the one boyfriend, and in my group we weren't very promiscuous. Well, in terms of the 1960s, we were quite steady. And actually the pill was quite difficult to get hold of in the early 60s. That came in later on,

but even if you wanted the most basic contraception, you had to persuade somebody, a doctor, a nurse, that you'd been married for donkey's years. So I got pregnant, and being very ignorant, it took me quite a long time to work out that I was indeed pregnant. So anyway, I bounced up into the department and said, you know, that's it, and it doesn't matter because the baby's not due till mid-July so I can do all the exams and everything. To be told, oh, no, no, no, the university doesn't accept pregnant, single, unmarried, and I said stuff and nonsense. Now, there was actually a girl ahead of me called Anne Kennedy

and to Anne, if she's ever listening today, you are my role model because she also fought the fight with me. And we said, well, that's fine. We're quite happy to stand down and go home and disgrace as long as all the boys do too, which blood left the faces of many young men. And the university thought they'd be bereft of students. And so after a tussle, and being very polite and totally firm that we weren't going anywhere, they actually buckled down and said, yes, it was stupid. And that was it. So that was the beginning of a change as well to attitudes.

You did, Virginia, gather information about men's attitudes to the whole women, sex and feminism question. What struck you most powerfully about what men were saying? Well, that was very interesting. I was getting all this feedback about women, as Teresa has said, feeling got at, feeling exploited, being groped and abused and harassed. And I thought, well, I've got to find out what the men said about this. And you start looking at the sources. And actually, they were still stuck in the dark ages, of course. Attitudes hadn't kept pace

with the social movements, because of course, it was very much to men's advantage to look at all these gorgeous young things in miniskirts. And it's like having an all-you-can-eat buffet laid out in front of you. And it's pick a mix, take your choice, and you get plenty of examples of a sort of buccaneer attitude where men go along and say, oh, there is some pretty appalling language and abusive language... I think we can all guess exactly what it is you're referring to. ..about how many women you could have sex with, and it was a sort of notches on the bedpost

and there's some really, really abusive examples. I mean, the late Richard Neville, who was editor of Oz, talks in no uncertain terms about gang-banging on the beach with willing and generous young women who lie behind the sand dunes. How surprised have you been that 50 years on, the Me Too movement had to be formed? I'm not really surprised. I don't think it's stopped at all, really.

Everybody, when they start picking, you can find something that's occurred. And I think that we've just got to be very vigilant. When I was a student, we were all really good friends. And I had a big group of boyfriends and girlfriends. London, it was a bit more difficult. I found the men in London weren't as nice as they were away in the provinces. There was just a bit of an edge.

I mean, parts of my life was just like a Benny Hill programme, you know, really. I mean, thinking about it now. And from you, Virginia, what have you concluded? Were you lucky to be spared the 60s or did you miss the fun? Inevitably, the answer is both. I'm very glad that I didn't experience the harassment and the abuse that some of the women have talked to me about in those years, which was truly horrific.

But, oh oh boy, I do wish I had seen Lulu on the stage at Ready Steady Go. I do wish I'd seen the Beatles as you did, Rosalind. I would have loved to have gone to the Isle of Wight Festival, but I wasn't allowed. It would have been great, but I did miss out. You define it as a turbulent power struggle that started to take place. Why did you choose that term? Well, I think we're still living with this. I think that the battle of the sexes is ongoing. And I think what we're talking about is the emergence of women's liberation in a way that hadn't been seen before. People imagined that feminism was something that happened

with the suffragette movement in the early 20th century, done and dusted, finished. A whole new thing started to happen in the mid-1960s, and that was one of the most fascinating things to unpick, was those very early days. I'm not talking Germaine Greer here. We're talking about people like Sheila Rowbottom who were starting to find a vocabulary

and find a new agenda for women, a new understanding, a new way of conceptualising abuse, oppression and inequality. I was talking to Virginia Nicholson, Teresa Edwards and Rosalind St-Pierre. Virginia's book is called How Was It For You? Women, Sex, Love and Power in the 1960s and if you listen to the podcast later you can hear a bit of an extra clip from the discussion where the four of us are reminiscing about the Beatles and my failure to see them because my mother wouldn't let me. Anyway, I think we all know only too well how much we depend on the fire service because things can go wrong at any moment.

But I doubt any of us have thought as seriously about the dangers firefighters can face as we have since the terrible shock of the Grenfell Tower disaster. Sabrina Cowan-Hatton joined the fire service when she was 18, and she's risen to Deputy Assistant Commissioner, making her one of the most senior firefighters in the UK. She's written a book called The Heat of the Moment. Sabrina, what exactly does a Deputy Assistant Commissioner do? I ask myself the same question most days.

I have a management role within the service day to day but I also have a senior command role so for example if we have an incident with more than 10 fire engines I would go out and I would take charge of the entire scene. Why did you go for the fire service when you were 18 and become a firefighter? Yeah well I had a quite an unusual start in life. I was actually homeless at the age of 15. And I went through some really, really difficult years, as you can imagine. One of the things that I found when I was sleeping rough is I'd wake up every day and I'd think, well, life really can't get any worse than this. And I'd go through the day and things would happen

and you kind of get to the end of the day and you think, no, it's got worse. It really hasn't got any better. And when I was living that life, one of the things that struck me is that I really wanted to do something to help other people who are experiencing their lowest moments, their rock bottom. And the thing about the fire service is that people trust us to know what to do when they're having their worst possible day. So in a funny kind of way, I wanted to try and do something where I could rescue people in a way that no one was able to rescue me. At the beginning of the book, you write about an incident four years into your service that made you really angry. What happened? Oh, my goodness me.

We had a house fire. I was a firefighter at the time, and my colleague and I were the team that would go inside wearing our breathing apparatus to look to effect a rescue. And we went in. We knew there was someone in there, but what I found out when I was in there is that actually we thought there was a child in there. I feel a pram and you know whenever you go into a building you

never know what you're going to face with what you're going to be faced with sorry so we were searching around and trying desperately to find a child and I went into one room and I could hear this horrible noise and it sounded a bit like um like what I can only describe as a death rattle like someone's about to die and it's that noise they make where they can't breathe. So I was manically looking around and found this guy and my colleague and I carried him downstairs and took him outside and it turned out that it wasn't a death rattle at all, he was snoring. And I was trying to try and get some sense out of him to say,

look, where's the child, where's the child? And the paramedic that was stood next to me pulled a bottle of methadone out of his pocket and said oh you've got no chance mate you know he's gone and I can remember feeling so angry because I it had torn me away from this desperate search for a child and as much as I felt angry and frustrated that his state of intoxication might have contributed to this I felt like I'd failed because I felt like I'd broken my unwritten promise to be able to rescue someone when I went in there but there wasn't a child no there wasn't it turned out that the parents had had an argument and the mother was elsewhere with the child thankfully now when you

joined you were the only woman on the team yes what was that like uh honestly it wasn't great when I first joined the fire service. And I'm going to qualify this by saying I don't think it's anything like it was then, now. But when I first started, I experienced some pretty horrendous sexism, to be honest with you. And I would be doing all of the women that joined at the same time as me a disservice if I pretended that it didn't happen. I was sexually harassed. I received unsolicited and inappropriate pictures although in the guy's defence it was a very small phone screen and I was told that things had to be different for me because I was a woman

and I didn't call it out at the time because I was 18 years old I was young, I was insecure and I wanted to be accepted and I felt like this balance of power was completely against me but you know what, it's completely different now And I wanted to be accepted. And I felt like this balance of power was completely against me. But you know what? It's completely different now. We've worked so hard to change the situation for women that join the service today. And one of the things on a personal level that I will always do is call it out when I see it.

Because I've got a nine-year-old daughter. And I'm not daft. I know that we're not going to fix years and years and years of social conditioning overnight. I know she's still going to face challenges. And I want to be able to look her in the eye and say, yep, you know what, it is unfair, but this is what you can do. But how attractive is the surface now to young women? I know there was a lot of discussion recently about Fireman Sam

and people saying, oh, it's Firemanman sam it's putting girls off they think only men can be firefighters is it putting people off well do you know what language is important because those messages that you hear around you every single day become part of your internal narrative they feed that little voice in your head and you know kind of regardless of any particular character that concept of what you refer to yourself as I think is important and we can see this in the service now there are only five percent of firefighters that are women and there are actually more chief fire officers called Chris than there are women chiefs I've got nothing against Chris's by the way but it's quite stark

and the qualities that you need to be a good firefighter aren't determined by gender it's not about brawn it's about being calm under pressure it's about being decisive it's about seeing the bigger picture and I would love more women out there to think of the service as a career I really would. Now you began to specialise in decision-making in the force and researching it as a result of an incident where your husband very narrowly escaped being badly burned. What happened there? Oh, my God. This was the most harrowing incident I've ever been to in my life.

So, basically, me and my husband were both firefighters at the same time, and we worked on neighbouring stations. And one day I was called to an incident where a firefighter had been badly burned and there was a one in four chance that it was him and I can remember just feeling absolutely torn between the role of a loved one and the role of a responder. Anyway we arrived there and it transpired not to be him it was our colleague but he very nearly had been burned and as much as I felt this overwhelming sense of relief that it wasn't him I also felt an incredible sense of guilt because I'd felt

relieved when our not just a colleague but our friend had been burned and I found it really difficult to live with myself for a long time with those kind of internal feelings and it was actually that incident that started me looking at how people get hurt. And what I discovered is 80% of accidents across all industries happen from human error, which was an incredible statistic. And so I started researching what we could do to improve decision making to reduce that human error. Now, you don't mention Grenfell in the book, even though it's in everybody's mind still. Why not? Absolutely. So from my perspective, firstly, as a serving fire officer, I can't talk about Grenfell.

I'm sure you'll appreciate. However, there's another point for me. I wasn't there on the night. I was involved in the aftermath, as were many, many firefighters. But there are still lots and lots of grieving families and survivors that need answers. And the inquiry is the most important thing that can give them those answers. So even if I could talk about it from a personal moral perspective, I don't believe it's my story to tell. Just briefly, Sabrina, you know, firefighters witness terrible trauma all the time, whether it's fire or road accidents. How do you deal with the risk and the trauma day after day? Yeah, it's a really good question. And it's true. Our every day is made up of everybody else's

worst ever days, really. And it does take its toll toll and I write about this in the book and I talk about a colleague of mine Ron who suffered from PTSD after a particularly harrowing incident where he came across a young girl who died in a fire and he had some really severe symptoms but actually lots of us will experience trauma day after day and what you find is people in the service find it quite difficult to talk about because we like to see ourselves as rescuers and there's still a stigma attached to it that we need to really try to deal with. Sabrina Cohen-Hatton ending the programme. And do hang on if you're hoping for that bit extra about the 60s,

in which I am included. So thanks for all your emails and tweets about the interview with Katie Bourne and stalking. Suzanne emailed, I've been stalked for the past three and a half years by my ex-partner. We were only together for a year, but he became fixated and obsessed when we broke up. I've moved house twice, had up to 35 nuisance calls a day, and he followed me everywhere. He would turn up places where he couldn't possibly have known my location without having used some kind of tracking device.

I've had to close all social media accounts, and I cannot go out in the evenings anymore. Elspeth was worried by the link between stalking and domestic abuse. She tweeted, I'm worried that the two murders in Sussex are being regarded as a consequence of stalking when in fact they're murders of women by previous partners in what was an abusive relationship. The stalking was merely another manifestation of domestic abuse. Training police in stalking isn't going to sort this out. They need training, policies and structures that protect victims of domestic abuse. But Sue emailed to say she felt the stalking laws are still important.

She wrote, My daughter Alice was murdered by an ex-partner who stalked her for three months. She reported this to the police but no one recognised how serious this was and she was brutally killed just 12 days later. It's important that stalking laws are always used. It's not enough to base this on a decision of how much danger the victim may be in. And Christopher shared his experience. He tweeted, They've now arranged safeguarding for me and access to other agencies. Now, inevitably, I was rather pleased by all the emails, tweets and photographs you've sent of your dogs.

Jane tweeted, I may have to switch off Women's Hour or I'll be rushing out to get a dog and my cats will be very cross. Leslie emailed, I have a beautiful retired greyhound, my third, and dog ownership has opened up a new world for me. He's my exercise machine, my companion, my psychiatrist, my way into new groups of friends and a great calming influence. I recommend dog, particularly greyhound ownership, wholeheartedly. Julie emailed, I lost my beloved dog, Log, six weeks ago today. He was my absolute best friend, companion and partner in crime.

He changed my life when I lost my dad nine years ago and brought me so much love, laughs and happiness. I love and miss him so very much but for all this pain I wouldn't change a single moment of all the years we had together. But on the edge was not a dog fan by the looks of it. Tweeted, I had to look at the calendar to check that it wasn't the first of April. I just can't believe the bonkers obsessive conversation you're having about dogs. Separation anxiety. I'm thinking of switching channels. And Cameron emailed a classic joke. I went to a zoo the other day. It only had one dog. It was a sheep zoo. And then lots of you got in touch about your experience of the 60s. Catherine tweeted, I just listened to the discussion on the 60s. I must

have been in a different place. I lived through it, did all the usual stuff like seeing the Beatles, dabbled in soft drugs, but was never threatened, groped, raped. It was a brilliant era. But Justine emailed, I've never forgotten Freshers' Week at Durham University, 1968. I overheard a group of lads laying bets on the girls they could deflower at the freshers' dance, and particularly thought it would be easier with the teacher training college girls. They then described how they would set up a tape recorder under the bed. This was not a one-off.

For me, the 60s were great, and the pill enabled me to have a loving relationship. However, one schoolmate died having an illegal abortion in 1968. Maureen had this thought, why was there so much emphasis on fashion, sex and drugs? Many of us were marching, protesting and involved in the socialist movement which gave us the NHS and the education our parents never had. Most of us didn't set up dress shops on Carnaby Street or the King's Road. I was at Goldsmiths College at the same time as Mary Quant on a scholarship. A different liberation altogether. My gap years were at Greenham. And so we come to the conversation I mentioned where I shared my experience of the Beatles, or lack of, with our guests.

Because, after all, I was a 60s teenager. I had tickets for the Beatles in Sheffield Town Hall. And my mother found them in my room. I must have been 15, 16. And she said, don't think any more. You're joking. He's going to a place like that

and he's going to be screaming with all that disgrace. Oh, my God, did you ever forgive her? No. That's awful. No, you wouldn't. Their first concert at the Empire, the Beatles, I went, and we'd been hearing them at the universities in the book, and my friend, who was a bit older,

turned round to these 16-year-olds behind, because we were all of 22, you know, kind of gets lovely, and she's like, oh, I love him. And they were screaming, and she turned around and said, will you sit down and be quiet? Oh, God. And these girls went in a minute. But you see, the strange thing about my mother is,

my father worked in India for a long time in the early 60s. And my mother had to fly out there to stay with him for a while. And she went to Manchester Airport. And she came back after six months. And she said, Oh, God, I had a very interesting experience at Manchester Airport. I said, what? She said, well, there were all these girls all screaming. She said, so I got on a plane and I sat down.

She said, and these four scruffy-looking lads got on. And one of them sat down next to me. And I said, what do you think is going on? And he said, oh, I'm sorry, Mrs. I think it might be us. And she said, hang on a minute, has my daughter got your photograph on her bedroom wall? And he said, probably. And she got his autograph. Which one was it? Paul. He's lovely. She's so lovely. She's redeemed herself. So there we are.

That's amazing. I have to say, Paul and I were born on the same day, at the same hour, in the same year. Oh, how funny. Did you ever meet him? I like speaking. I've met him lots and lots of times. I work with him. Were you Paul? As a fan.

I like George Harrison. I thought he was rather handsome. Oh, really? Yes, there was something about him. I like George Harrison. I thought he was rather handsome. Oh, really? Yes, there was something about him. I like George Best from the beginning. There was something about him. And I did like Paul, too. I was frightened of John.

Yes. And poor old Ringo, I kind of, you know, okay, he was jolly. But when I met Paul McCartney, because he's very interested in animation, and he did a lot of animated films. Because you did him on the Yellow Submarine. I didn't meet him on the Yellow Submarine. It was when we were working on The Frogs. I did that bit where the frogs jump off the cliffs and swim

and go all sort of abstractly in different colours. And I was told if I went into the studio on such and such a day, at the time he would be there with Linda and come and meet him. I couldn't look at him. I had to go way over behind some shelves and kind of just do it in a... And then gradually I came out, because he was just... It's like the Queen, isn't it?

That face. Well, it's like meeting you, Jenny, I must say. He's not as funny now as he was then, though, is he? No, bless him. And I never did meet Paul McCartney personally. Maybe the day will come. Anyway, tomorrow, the author Bev Thomas will be discussing her new novel A Good Enough Mother and her

work as a clinical psychologist which inspired it. Do join me tomorrow if you can. Two minutes past ten. Bye bye. Oi, you. While you're here, have a listen to this, would you? An environmental thriller for BBC Sounds

I'm so sorry Meet Pan For what I did She lives a few centuries from now After a data crash that wiped out most records of life A shock So when she finds an old recording of a rainforest She has no idea what it is

Forest 404 Nine part thriller. Nine part talk. Nine part soundscape. Starring Pearl Mackie, Tanya Moody and Pippa Haywood. With theme music by Bonobo. Subscribe now on BBC Sounds. Subscribe now.

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.