Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman’s Hour: Baroness Hale, Race Across the World, Cryptic pregnancy, Patricia Lockwood, Sudanese women, Susie Dent

Episode Date: September 20, 2025

How well does the law serve women? That’s a question Nuala puts to Brenda Marjorie Hale, The Rt. Hon. The Baroness Hale of Richmond, DBE a former judge who served as the first female President of the Supreme Court. She was the first woman and the youngest person to be appointed to the Law Commission, where she led the work on what became the 1989 Children Act. In 2019 she announced the Supreme Court’s judgement that the prorogation of Parliament was ‘unlawful, void and of no effect’. She discusses her new book, With the Law on Our Side – How the law works for everyone and how we can make it work better.BBC Celebrity Race Across the World will soon be back on our screens as four celebs pair up with a friend or family member and travel from a starting point anywhere in the world to another BUT with no phones or flights allowed and only the cost of the flight as money for the entire trip. Woman's Hour had the privilege of revealing one of the pairings: none other than Woman's Hour presenter Anita Rani and her father Balvinder Singh Nazran.To so many women the symptoms of pregnancy are instant, intense and unmistakeable; however some make it the full nine months without having any idea they’re even pregnant. This phenomenon is known as cryptic pregnancy, and the British Medical Journal suggests it’s more common than triplets. Nuala was joined by two women who have experienced this first-hand, plus Professor of Midwifery, Helen Cheyne to discuss.Patricia Lockwood is a poet, memoirist and novelist whose work straddles the literary world and the wilds of the internet. Patricia first went viral with her traumatic poem Rape Joke, while her memoir Priestdaddy, about being the daughter of a Catholic priest, has been called a modern classic. She talked to Nuala McGovern about her new book, Will There Ever Be Another You, which explores the surreal disorientation of illness, memory and recovery in the wake of Covid.Sudanese women and girls are bearing the brunt of a civil war that is entering its third year. The relentless conflict has triggered the world’s worst humanitarian crisis for 6 million displaced women and girls. Cases of conflict-related sexual violence remain hugely under-reported, but evidence points to its systematic use as a weapon of war. Yousra Elbagir, Sky News’ Africa Correspondent talked to Anita about the impact on women and also the role women play in providing support to the displaced.Are you a fan of words, their meanings and origins? The lexicographer Susie Dent, best known as the queen of Dictionary Corner on C4’s Countdown, has created a whole year’s worth of words, most of which you most probably never knew existed, in a freshly published almanac. It is called Words for Life and each day you can read an entry, digest its meaning and maybe laugh at its sound. Susie gives Anita some examples and explains her interest in words.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Annette Wells Editor: Andrea Kidd

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Your idea of banking that's personal happens here. RBC, ideas happen here. Hello, I'm Anita Rani, and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Hello and welcome to the program. Coming up, some of the highlights from the week just gone. Baroness Hale, former and the first female Supreme Court president, author Patricia Lockwood on her new novel, Will there ever be another you?

Also, can you imagine not knowing you were pregnant until you started giving birth? It has happened to many women, and we speak to two of them. The nation's favourite wordsmith, Susie Dent, joins us to talk unusual words, and a big announcement about one of the most popular shows on TV, Race Across the World. So grab yourself a cup of what you fancy, and let's begin. First, to the woman who served as the first female president of the Supreme Court, Brenda Marjorie Hale. The right honourable the Baroness Hale of Richmond, DBE, is a former judge and she's a current member of the House of Lords. Lady Hale was born in Yorkshire and read

law at the University of Cambridge, where she graduated top of her class. She spent almost 20 years in academia and also practised as a barrister. She was the first woman and the youngest person to be appointed to the Law Commission. She led the work on what became the 1989 Children Act. In 2004, she became the UK's first woman law lord. In 2019, she announced the Supreme Court's judgment that the prerogation of Parliament was unlawful, void and of no effect. And now she has a new book out. With the law on our side, how the law works for everyone

and how we can make it work better. Well, she joined Nula earlier in the week, and Nula started by asking her what she wanted to get across with the book. It's a book which is aimed basically at non-lawyers to try and get across the message that the law has impact on everybody's everyday lives and it can do things for people as well as two people. I loved reading through it with the various examples you have and also that you give the reader the chance to be the judge.

You give ABC, for example, various outcomes which you could judge to be the right path forward. Why did you decide on that concept? Well, that's the second part of the book which is talking about particular people's rights and I wanted to get across that some of these issues are difficult and involve value judgments so to give the reader the opportunity

to answer what they would do in the facts of the case. I mean, take the example of the dispute on a bus between a wheelchair user and a woman with a sleeping baby in a buggy who takes precedence and what does the driver have to do to secure that precedence. Now, that's the sort of thing that anybody can empathise with

and have thoughts about, about how it should be done. Really interesting, and I liked, sometimes I got it right, shall we say, with what the judges decided, and sometimes I did not. But, you know, this premise that the law is on our side, but many women and girls would disagree. We all have rights, but sometimes it's just not that easy to get justice. And for many women, their first interaction with the law is really through the police. We found in conversations that we've had many times on this programme is that many women don't trust the police.

We have the Sarah Everard, kidnapped, rape and murder by a metropolitan police officer. That led to a highly critical review by Baroness Casey, concluding that the Met is failing women and children. Do you, Lady Hale, trust the police? I think I would trust them to treat me properly. Let's expand on that. Well, I might not trust every police officer to treat every woman and girl, particularly those from the more vulnerable sections of society, as they should be treated.

So I wouldn't universally trust the police, but I wouldn't universally condemn them either. I understand. And you understand, of course, as you detail in your book, that that is often the first encounter that women and girls will have with the law and the justice system. Do you think that there is a way to make it more watertight for women to have the law on their side, even when they enter into that scenario? Well, I think that the law is usually on the right side. But I think,

Generally speaking, these days, the actual rules are more or less satisfactory. It's the operation of those rules by the people who are there to put them into practice, which sometimes fall short. And that's not only the police, it's obviously prosecutors, and sometimes it's courts, sometimes it's lawyers. If we think about the family courts, for example, most of the time they probably do get it right. but there will be some very difficult cases which they don't get right. And we need to look at the reasons for that. And that's where research comes in and proper objective studies as to when, where, why.

They're not getting it right and how we could try and make it better. When you were appointed a law lord, you created a coat of arms for your new title. Omnia, Feminae, acquiesimi. Omnia, femininae, Iquismai. Okay, a quesimi, there we go. Meaning women are equal to everything. Do you feel that in the time of your career, for example,

that there has been a shift or a deep shift, let's say we'd say from 1984 you co-authored women and the law that was a comprehensive survey of women's rights at work and in the family and in the state? Do you feel the situation has changed since you started out when it comes to deep-rooted problems of inequality? Oh, yes. It's definitely improved. I'm not saying that it's perfect, as I have just said.

I think the operation of the law is often imperfect. But I think, on the whole, the actual rules have been greatly improved. And also the participation of women in the justice system has hugely improved. After all, the first woman judge was only appointed just before I went to university. and now women are over 40% of the judiciary as a whole. I do also want to turn to the report, I'm sure you saw out last week by Baroness Harriet Harmon, commissioned by the Bar Council. And she talked of junior female barristers going to the regulator,

the Bar Standards Board, about sexual harassment, and some who ultimately came to regret that they had come forward. What was your reaction when you heard about that? Well, deep, deep sadness. there certainly was when I started out at the bar a lot of casual sexism not necessarily sexual harassment but casual sexism I think I didn't suffer that

possibly because when I went to the bar I was already married interesting yeah it's my view but there were things like when women were elected to the circuit which you have to be to practice on one of the circuits they were asked to get on the table I'm shocked by that.

Yes, well, it was shocking. And they were excluded from the bar mess, which was the sort of dining club for barristers when they're around the place. We were actually allowed in in 1969, but there was a big fight about it because the men didn't really want us there, didn't want us interfering with their fun and games

or whatever it is they got up to. So there were casual, taken for granted, things like that. So I was deeply saddened to see, that some of those attitudes are persisting in some people. And the problem particularly is that because the bar is, well, the self-employed bar, they're all sole practitioners. They join together in chambers to share expenses and clerks and so on,

but they are all cottage industries, a solo cottage industry. And if you're a pupil barrister, or even a very junior barrister, an awful lot depends upon staying on good terms with the seniors in chambers and also with the clerks and therefore they're much more vulnerable. There isn't a normal employment structure which would give you or should give you

in all good employment a route to complain and a grievance procedure and the like. So do you think the bar could be heading for its own Me Too movement, for example? Well, I mean, that report sounds a little bit like that, doesn't it? Yes, although it needs, I suppose with Me Too, it needs a lot of people to speak out openly, which of course is so difficult. It is very difficult to do. And most of the time, you're getting on with the job anyway. And also, there are some chambers who do have, you know, grievance procedures and the like.

And they have all sorts of diversity and equal opportunities practices, which are a very good thing. but it's just not universal. And it should be? Well, I think that would be a really good idea. Yes, to enforce some universal code of... Well, there are, I mean, obviously there are codes of ethics. There are codes of professional ethics and other sorts of ethics as well. There are such codes.

It's like everything. But the enforcement? It's the... Or the access to it. Putting things into practice, which is... sometimes lacking. But when you look at the justice system now, this vast and wonderful career that you have had, I mean, Manny would say that the legal system is vast and ancient, but you feel it's fit for purpose? Well, it's capable of being fit for purpose. Interesting. Capable of

being fit for purpose. But I mean, the most serious problem with the justice system is that it's been starved. It's been starved of the resources that it needs in order to do the job that people need it to do. I mean, as you know, I was talking to a young barrister yesterday. She has got cases in the Crown Court listed for 2029. The delays are horrendous. And people drop out, as we know, when it comes to cases specifically. If you think of women's issues, of course. Some of the delay leads to people thinking, well, I'm going to give up. I've moved on in my life. And in any case, you know, it's difficult enough being a witness in these cases. And the family courts similarly have very long delays.

In fact, it's all over the system. There just aren't the resources to provide the service that the justice system ought to provide. And the people need it to provide. So we need to get public opinion on our side. She is amazing. Lady Hell there. And her book, With the Law on Our Side, is out now. BBC's celebrity race across the world.

We'll soon be back on our screens. And if you've never seen it before, four celebs pair up with a friend or family member and have to travel from a starting point anywhere in the world to another but with no phones or flights allowed and only the cost of the flight as money for the entire trip. Well, here on Woman's Hour,

we have revealed one of the celebrity pairings. And drum roll, it was me and my dad, Balvinda. Well, he joined me on the program and we had a nice chat. Morning, Dad. Welcome to Women's Hour. Morning. How are you? Hey, I'm on Women's Hour. You are on Woman's Hour.

Finally, Dad, we can just, we don't have to keep it a secret anymore. I know. It's tough keeping a secret. For months and months. And you are on Woman's Hour. And I'm going to tell everyone why that's significant. Because you have been listening to Woman's Hour since, well, for as long as I can remember, since I was a kid. Since the 80s, I used to have listened to Radio 4 and the car. and I remember you moaning about and read your four

turn it off turn it off and there you are on radio four I know well it worked something worked here we go this is it

this is basically what's going to happen now everyone's going to know everything about me I know why I wanted you to do race across the world with me

because I mean it's quite interesting that you're at work talking to me because all you've ever done is work and you're always saying to me you go off

and you have these amazing adventures You're so, you love it when I come back and tell you stories of where I've been or what I've been up to. But you've never had an adventure yourself. No, not a real adventure. When you mentioned, let's go for an adventure. I thought it may be a couple of days, hiking somewhere or whatever, that sort of thing.

You know, like we used to go into the Yorkshire Moors. When you said, let's go for an adventure, dad. Yeah, five weeks. Yeah. Five weeks with no telephone. Why did you say yes? I don't know, I spent time with you because we have never spent time. where you're for a year since you were a little kid.

No, we haven't. And we've never really been on holiday together either. Not really, I think, no, because you were quite independent. You didn't want to go to places where we wanted to go. Do you know what I realised was, I don't think I ever really asked you if you wanted to do it. I think I just bulldozed, which is what I normally do. Come on, Dad, it's going to be great. I mean, did you ever have a moment where you thought, maybe it's not for me?

No, I were looking forward to the venture, but the only thing was we didn't know where we were going to go. Oh, and you had me learning different languages. Dad, it's going to be here. I know exactly what it's going to be. You have me learning Swahili. I did. And that's because we were given a jab. We were given yellow fever.

And so my powers of deduction were like, right, we will be going somewhere in East Africa. So I was drilling you in Swahili. And then can you remember what cheaper is in Swahili, by the way, Dad? I have no idea. I've forgotten. Nafoo, Nafu. Anyway, it's irrelevant because we're,

We were nowhere near East Africa. We got to the airport and we opened the envelope. And where did they send us? Mexico. Mexico. So I can reveal that, yeah, we traveled along an undiscovered Caribbean, a Pacific coast of Central America. I mean, we looked out, didn't we?

It was incredible. It was good. I really enjoyed it. We can't reveal anything about the journey. We don't want to give it away either. We want people to enjoy it. Did you feel out of your comfort zone, though? A lot of places I was,

especially with language you know the Spanish were what did I learn Spanish but in English when somebody says it's more than you expect it so you say how much

I think that's very yeah your Yorkshire man definitely came out how much but I couldn't pronounce it in Spanish to say how much you're quanto question

yeah well you've got all this to look forward to dad's brilliant language skills and you can see that even after five weeks brilliant actually dad you were fluent by the end of it Anyway, we don't want to give too much away.

Now, I think people are going to want to know, right, because we haven't spent much time together. I went off from at the age of 18 to uni and never came home. We've never been on holiday together. And here we are going away as with your adult daughter. People will want to know how we got on. Well, I think it's, I think what I probably thought is still as me a little six-year-old little kid. Come on this way.

You're saying, no, not this way, Dad. I know better. I know better. Did I know better even when I was six? I probably did. See, it's all going to come out. I think we reverted back to being a teenager and her dad, didn't we, a little bit. Oh, it is.

Anyway, we've got nothing. We can't do anything about it now. It's all going to be on TV. At least we're still talking. We are still talking. We had an amazing time. Are you going to come back on the program and talk to me again? Let's see what people think of it.

We might have to go into hiding. Yeah. Ah, my dad there. And I'm absolutely terrified about what you're going to witness. Can you imagine doing race across the world with your parent? I'll leave you with that thought. Now, for many women, the symptoms of pregnancy are unmistakable. The crushing fatigue, tender breasts, nausea, changes in appetite,

and of course the ever-increasing baby bump. However, some women... don't experience any of those symptoms, and some are completely unaware they're pregnant right up until the moment that their baby is born. This was the case for Helen Green, a woman from Bristol, who recently made headlines by giving birth to a baby girl hours after arriving in Canada on holiday. Helen woke in the middle of the night with stomach pains and went to the bathroom. She felt a sudden urge to push, then baby Olivia was born, weighing a healthy £8, 3 ounces.

This phenomenon is known as cryptic pregnancy and is more common than you might expect. Studies across Europe and America suggest about one in two and a half thousand pregnancies go unnoticed until delivery. This translates to about 320 cases in the UK each year. The British Medical Journal reports that this makes it a more common occurrence than triplets. Well, Nula was joined by two women who have first-hand experience of this. Thawana Muswaburi and Maria Rogers have both

had cryptic pregnancies and also by Professor Helen Cheen, Professor of Midwifery and Deputy Director of the Nursing Midwifery Research Unit at Stirling University. She began by asking Maria to explain what happened. So I was working as a manager full-time in Truro, M&S, down in Cornwall. I had my periods all the way along and so I just thought, oh no, I've got another period coming and the next thing I knew And my daughter was born. The Friday I was at work as absolutely normal. And I thought, oh, no, I've got a really bad backache because I put it down to just working in the cafe. But no, that was beginnings of my labour. So I was in labour for three days. And then she appeared at midnight on the Sunday. At home? At home, yes. And your husband was there? Your partner? He works for the ambulance service. Yes. He was there. He had just come off his night shift. So if she had come any sooner, obviously, I would have been at home on my own. I mean, it's quite the story. I want to bring in, Tijuana, your story slightly different. Tell me a little bit about how you discovered and welcome you're in studio with me.

So I literally did not know. I was pregnant. I woke up from morning. And I just felt like I was dying. Like my chest felt like it was caving in and I couldn't breathe and I called my mom. And I was like, Mom, like, I don't know what's wrong with me. And then she said, okay, call an ambulance. And at the time, I was living like a really crazy lifestyle, partying.

You were young, right? I was drinking, going on holidays, like living my absolute 20s to the fullest. And when I got into the hospital, they kind of thought, okay, she might have kidney failure. So they were going to put me, like, in some big machine. But they were like, if you go into this machine and you're pregnant, it could have some effects to me or the baby.

Like an MRI. Yeah, like that. And I was like, okay, there's like, okay, we're going to have to run some tests. I did, at the time, I was on contraception. I had the implant in my arm. So the doctor asked me, do you think you're pregnant? And I was like, I can't be pregnant.

Like, I'm on an implant. I have contraception. And yeah, so they did some test. I did a pregnancy test. My pregnancy test came out negative. So it's like, oh, I'm not pregnant. I'm on contraception. I'm fine.

Like, let's get into the machine. And there was a nurse that kept, like, saying, oh, I don't know. Like, I just feel something funny about this. Because I kept telling her, like, my back is on fire. Like, my back is just hurting. And she was like, I've seen this before. like it's so common and she just basically like encouraged the doctor for me to have like a little

tummy scan like a yeah like an ultrasound yeah like an ultrasound so after a while her and the doctor going back and forth like like you're wasting time we just need to get this go in the machine to see what's wrong with her she finally convinces the doctor to do the tummy scan on my stomach and they just both froze and looked at me and I'm thinking what's going on am I dying so I'm panicking and they're just looking at each other and they're like, okay, Tamana, don't panic, but you're pregnant. And I'm like, what? I can't be pregnant first of all because I'm on contraception.

Because when I signed my contraception, it said it's 99% effective. So I'm thinking, what's 1%? Do you know what I mean? And they're like, okay, well, that's not what the problem is. You have a fully grown baby inside your stomach. We don't know. Like, you could give birth in like four weeks. We don't know.

Like your baby is very, very big. And I just thought they were lying to me And then they showed me the screen When I tell you, like I wanted to just pass out Like I was just like, what is going on? So, because when they first told me I was pregnant In my mind I was thinking, okay, like I'm going to get an abortion I'm too young to be a mom

I don't want to be a mom And they were like, it's too late for that Like you have to carry out this pregnancy There's no time for an abortion It's basically illegal in the UK So yeah, I just went through a whole whole stage of like denial I didn't believe it and I had to like call my mom and tell my mom I'm pregnant even though I didn't feel pregnant they explained to me like what a cryptic pregnancy

is like um sometimes women don't feel the symptoms of pregnancies and they told me it's a lot more common than you actually think like some of those figures I was saying yeah I've heard of it but when I heard of it I just thought women were lying like I used to be like how can you not know that you're pregnant for so long and and until it actually happened to me. And I told my mom, and my mom's reaction was like, you're not pregnant. You're crazy.

I had to, like, show her the scan, show her, like, all the, like, paperwork, my discharge form from the hospital, for her to actually start believing, okay, we need to prepare for a baby. Like, because, you know, sometimes if they tell you you're giving birth in, like, three months, sometimes babies come early.

And my mom's like, you need to prepare that you're going to be a mom. And you, I actually was on, I can't remember with your TikTok, maybe last night on Instagram, like I saw a picture, you did not look pregnant at all. Nothing. Like, and that was the hardest bit because it's like thinking that you're pregnant

and looking at your body and it's not pregnant, it's so hard to like build a connection with baby. And I'm going to come back to that. I'm going to bring in Professor Helen here for a moment. We're talking about it. It is rare, but maybe not as impossible as we sometimes think. Yes, I think that's, Dwana just captured. it exactly. It's more common than you think. I think there's a kind of natural belief

that a woman cannot possibly not know she's pregnant. And yet these stories, these occurrences are rare, but, you know, and sporadic. But they are, they are testimonies of very reliable women that, and you have to accept it's a phenomenon. What is happening, though? Like, why can't we see the baby? It's not known why this is. It's cryptic. It's difficult. It's cryptic, yes. The baby is where the baby would normally be, of course.

But for some reason, the symptoms of pregnancy aren't there. Many women will report that they had periods throughout their pregnancy. They didn't notice waking. Of course, it's something that can only be studied retrospectively because it's not, it doesn't, you know, so you can't really follow somebody who's having a cryptic pregnancy. but Tawina's story in particular is I think very characteristic and so it's not known why this happens and in previous times women were not believed often

and is a very dangerous situation for a woman I mean Maria's story for example of giving birth thankfully her partner was there but as she said she could have given birth alone it's very dangerous for women and baby Yes and of course you wouldn't be expecting a baby to arrive you might think a heavy period or something like that.

Maria, how was it coming back to you to get your head around that you have a baby? What do you do? Call your boss and say you're on maternity leave now? Yeah, the phone call into work my husband actually did.

I really wanted to do it, but I was just, I think, was in so much shock once it got round to it. She was completely in shock thinking, like, I only saw you on Friday. Why have you, this is ridiculous? Like, you've had a baby, but I was like, I can assure you, then I sent all the pictures round, and they were like, they just couldn't believe it, because working 40 hours a week and just not knowing at all. Was it hard to adjust? Was this your first baby?

My first baby, yeah. And then we went into lockdown 10 days after she was born. So obviously, my husband went off to work back in April. And then I was at home alone. Just, yeah. So it was quite hard to adjust. But it was nice to have that bonding time, just me and Emily. But what I was thinking about that, I do remember reading that And I was thinking your partner going out Obviously in COVID-stricken areas He works for the ambulance service And that the fear it must be within you baby as well coming back That fear of COVID such as, I mean, what a strange time

For your head to go through as well as your body It's crazy He had a process of been allowed back in the house after he came home He wasn't allowed in straight in He had to go through the garage so yeah I want to come back to you Tijuana Like you put across to us there, I think, how shocking this was. And you did not want to become a mum.

Yeah. You did become a mum. Obviously, you gave birth to your baby just a few weeks later. I think it was four weeks later. Yeah. But how was that? It was traumatic. Like, it kind of felt like my body had failed me, you know?

I'm so pro-women and, like, women's rights. I had no option to become a mum or not to become a mom. It was, you have to do this now. you have to prepare for the time that I was pregnant yeah um I was in denial most of the time I thought about giving those four weeks yeah pure like it just you know I started I couldn't process it but I started to feel the symptoms when I spoke to my midwife she said it's kind of like when you cut yourself and you don't realize you've cut yourself when you cut yourself and you don't realize it doesn't hurt but when you now realize that you've cut yourself it starts to hurt so kind of like the placebo in a

weird way it wasn't like fully like I'm feeling everything but I'm like okay like my breasts are feeling funny now and like you know my tummy is still not pregnant it's bloated but I'm seeing a little bit you know um but yeah in terms of like adjusting it was just from the minute I gave birth traumatic it's very traumatic I just did not want to be there and then I thought about also putting my daughter up for adoption because I thought okay this is not fair that I'm taking this baby. I don't even want to be a mom. I don't even know how to be a mom.

I'm in my early 20s. Like, I was partying a week ago and now I'm, you know, here. But I didn't end up going through with the adoption scheme because there was no open adoption. So I couldn't, like, have a relationship with my daughter and kind of explained to her

that, oh, you know, this is why I had to give you to a better family. And I decided to like, okay, I'm going to keep my daughter. But when I decided to keep my daughter, it was like I was hit with postpartum depression. straight away. I hated the whole experience of being a mum. I had thoughts of like harming myself and harming my daughter. It was so bad like there'd be points where my daughter was crying and I'd just be looking at her because I'm still in disbelief that I had a baby. I just hated everything.

My mum had to like now step in, take time off work and explain to her boss and say, look, my daughter's had a baby. She didn't know she was pregnant. He was kind of a bit like, what? Like how does she not know she's pregnant? My mom had to become my daughter's mom. Well, I'm glad you had your mom there. And if anybody has ever had thoughts of some of the issues that you're raising there off harm, I do want to say the BBC's action line there is there with links to help and support. But how are you now? Now I'm really good.

Like she's three in February. But it's now slowly starting to sink in. It does sometimes hit me when I wake up and I'm like, I have a baby. I have a baby. I'm someone's mom. But yeah, it's slowly starting to sink in. Thawanna Musfabari, Maria Rogers and Professor Helen Cheen there. Still to come on the programme, I'll be nerding out over words

with our favourite wordsmith, Susie Dent. And remember, you can enjoy Woman's Hour any hour of the day if you can't join us live at 10 a.m. during the week. All you need to do is subscribe to the podcast. It's daily and it's free on BBC Sounds. Now to a woman who's been called one of the most original voices of her. generation. Patricia Lockwood is a poet, memoirist and novelist whose work straddles the literary world and the wilds of the internet. Patricia first went viral with her traumatic poem, Rape Joke. Her memoir priest daddy is about being the daughter of a Catholic priest and has

been called a modern classic. And now her new book, Will There Ever Be Another You, explores the surreal disorientation of illness, memory and recovery in the wake of COVID. Patricia joined Nula this week to talk about the book, and she began with a reading. People had lost their fingerprints. How was that possible? People were up at 3 a.m., contemplating the purchase of apple-flavored horsy-worming paste, which had gone up to 30 bucks a tube. People, or maybe just her, were becoming confused after they got out of the shower and applying large tracts of deodorant to the skin of their face. People had Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, and something called drunk baby head and dark glittering damaged their vagus nerve. People were writing poems

about it. Ha ha ha, she said whenever she saw one, though she used to write poems about everything that happened to her. People had Brian Fogg. Oh no. And people did not recognize themselves. Amazing descriptions there. Were these things that you heard people had with long COVID? So you have to remember this was very early. I got sick in March 2020. I got sick in March 2020. I wrote about it for the LRB in late spring toward the beginning of summer. And what was going on is that I was on really early message boards for people who had gotten sick. And this was before there was any sort of narrative about Ivermectin, any crazy stuff coming from the White House. This was just people basically dosing themselves with Wormwood to see if anything would help.

We tried crazy, crazy things back in those days. And nothing really did the trick. But it was something that I knew I was there. I was on the ground. No one else was really paying attention to it. No one was maybe going to remember it in the way that I was. So I did the same thing that I had done before I went crazy, which is that I just sat there taking notes about a time that no one would want to remember in the future. Well, this, we can talk about that as well because I find that really interesting that we all went through this collective experience, but many people just want to forget it. Oh yeah, they just wanted to paper over. You wanted to put the reader inside the cyclone. I feel you do that. Yes. Well, thank you for saying that. I thought if I could just be true to the perceptions, what she's feeling, it doesn't matter if anyone believes me. It doesn't matter if anyone believes her.

If I can put them in the whirlwind and sort of like put them into her skin, then they'll just go along with it. And I think they'll understand. Off being that ill, that all off perspective is skewed. I mentioned that it is a novel, but I read that you prefer to call it a pineapple or a chandelier. Yes, or a disco ball, a mirror ball, a Louis Wayne. anything like that. I want to give a sense of it being a 360-degree book, right? Also, the revolving restaurant on top of the space needle is another. You get a different view all the time. We keep coming up with new sort of descriptors for it. But I did think it was something in the round.

You know, it didn't feel like a flat plane. It felt like you could enter through any door or a beehive, something like that, that there are a million cells where you might find yourself at any given moment. I want to turn to Virginia Woolf's 1920. essay for a moment on being ill. Yes. Where she says, it is strange that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealousy

among the prime themes of literature. Maybe that intersects a bit with us not wanting to talk about COVID. But why do you think that is? Because it's such a human experience. When you think about her and she is one of those models of this sort of illness, she had this type of migraine, she had the highs and lows, she had the oras.

You really, when I got ill, I looked back historically and I thought, oh my gosh, Virginia Woolf, Lewis Carroll, all of these people. Exactly. I know. You look back and you're like, but it was a subject for them. It was maybe sublimated through their work. But I think Virginia Woolf is one of the people who came very, very close to being able to describe those perceptions to put people into the whirlwind. But yeah, of course we wanted to forget about it. I mean, people had gone totally nuts, even if they hadn't gone nuts. They were making sourdough bread. You know, they were trying, they were enrolling. in pottery classes. Everyone wanted to have a different life at that time. And everyone had an agreement. There was a contract. We're not going to write about it. We're not going to write. And over here, I'm in the corner. And I'm scribbling in my mad notebook. And I'm like, well, I'm writing about it. Okay. Well, one line I thought was stayed with me. And it's an interaction with the doctor. You know, and we often say, I'm just not feeling like myself, right? Which means you're ill. Right. Yes. And if you're not yourself, then who are you? Are you? The world undergoing an unprecedented Bucatini shortage.

I remembered, I'm back, baby. I'm cured. How are you now? I am doing a lot better. So a lot of it was, it was status migranosis, which meant that I was either in a state of migraine or in a state of aura at all times. And rather than having pain,

I had perceptual disturbances. They were definitely Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll-type migraines. It's like, you look down a hall, and it's like it lengthens or your foot is far away. You're standing six inches to the side. of yourself. It's like that. And I found that it was responsive to the new class of migraine

drugs, CGRP inhibitors. So I tried Culipta. I'll recommend you go to your GP to check it out, but that's my job. But at the same time, I also went on a crazy podcast diet, which I just want to let you know right away. It is a podcast diet. It's very uncool. Some more things about you. You are ready to be a committed carer in the sense of if somebody needs personal care, that's something thing you're not afraid of. I'm fair, baby. Yes. You are a jewelry maker.

I am. I made this. A. Gates are your thing. I love to open agates on my lapidary saw. But yes, I took metal smithing courses starting, I believe, in 2022 or 23. And there's a chapter about that, if you're interested, yes. And then I'll just drop this one in. And your father is a Catholic priest.

And you know, he just happens to be a very nude, very loud Catholic priest, who is always dressed either in tidy whitties or resplendent. cascading black robes. He got special dispensation, even though he was married with children. He did indeed. Yes, he was a Lutheran minister after being an atheist who converted on a nuclear submarine when he was about 19 or 20 years old. I mean, I've just glossed over the nude, the tidy whiteys, the flowing rows.

It's all in there, though. It's all there. Another thing I like that you do, you write from bed. I'm a big proponent of working from bed. The horizontal move is absolutely the move. Because I think when you get up then, you're not. feel like you haven't done any work, but actually you've been really productive. And you know what it probably does? You know how you're so creative right after coming out of the dream state? It probably

tricks your body into thinking you're still there. And if you've got a physical notebook and a real pen, that's the way to do it. You also said that the families of writers are kind of condemned to be observed. How does your family feel about that? Well, my father, you know, my father is the one who really deserves it, right? I'm like, hey, this is payback. But he also has this brilliant thing where he says, you know, I'm never going to read this. You can write anything you want. People belong to themselves. The rest of my family is very generous as well, but there's something really beautiful about that, I think. Patricia Lockwood there and her new book, Will There Ever Be Another You, is out now. Now Sudanese women and girls are bearing the brunt

of a civil war that's entering its third year. The relentless conflict between the Sudanese armed forces and the paramilitary rapid support forces has triggered what the UN have called the world's worst humanitarian crisis with 6 million displaced women and girls. The exact number of people who've been killed is unknown, but the US Special Envoy to Sudan estimates the figure to be 150,000. 24.6 million people are now facing acute hunger and 2 million people are facing famine or at risk of famine. Cases of conflict-related sexual violence remain hugely underreport.

but evidence points to its systematic use as a weapon of war. Yusra Elbegir, Sky News Africa correspondent, recently returned from North Darfur and joined me this week. And I must let you know, you'll be hearing about some distressing and graphic accounts of what's happening and Sudan in this conversation. I began by asking Yusra, what's happening there? What has happened is that the rapid support forces has grown to an extremely powerful paramilitary group with foreign support. And what they've done now is they've managed to execute the systemic abuses that we saw in the early 2000s on a much wider scale. The women we met had fled the regional capital, al-Fashit, which has been surrounded and forcefully starved by the RSF for the last 16 months. They fled with nothing.

They went through famine conditions. Many of them tried to endure months and months of the siege. and when they escaped, they were facing RSF on the road because you have to go through RSF towns and RSF routes to get to safe zones that we managed to get to. Many of them lost their partners on the way. Many of them witnessed men being beaten, whipped, killed, and these women are basically taking care of their children alone

in these very dire displacement camps that have seen very little aid. Tell me more about what the women told you about what they'd been through it when you met them in the displacement camps? They said they'd been tortured, humiliated, beaten. One elderly woman was crying and shaking, saying that two of her daughters were raped in front of her and that they just fled in shame and she hasn't seen them since. She's had children killed by the RSF.

She's had her sons killed. And these stories, I mean, every time you hear them, you get that kind of crushing blow of the depth of this, the scale of this, but we'd go to camps where, Everyone had a similar story. It's just the scale of it's horrendous. One camp we went to actually had a women's union because there were so many women who had no means of support.

And they were trying to figure out ways for them to make livelihoods to be able to feed their kids. And some of them were farming in farms near the camps. They were trying to grow food to feed their children because they have absolutely no means of support. It's not something we haven't seen before. We've carried out investigations into RSF capture of towns in North Darfur, from the very early days of this current war.

And we saw that they were going door to door and executing men of fighting age. So they target the men and then they humiliate and defile the women. And we've seen that across the country. I want to pick up on something you said, Yusra, which was the horrific account that you shared about the woman who watched two of her daughters being raped. And then you said that the two daughters fled in shame.

So it's that sort of double burden that, number one, they are the victims of this horrendous use of a weapon of war, and then they have to carry the burden and the shame of it. Can you explain a bit more about that? Sudan is an honour-based society. There's a lot of value around marriageability and virginity, and we have all those kind of very traditional North African, East African practices that are harmful.

What we saw earlier in the year is mass suicides, group suicides from women in central Sudan, who'd been raped by the RSF. We worked with SEHA, which is the Strategic Institute for Women in the Horn of Africa, and they were able to verify cases of rape in girls as young as eight years old. And one of the voice notes they sent to us that we featured in a report was from a young man who was captured by the RSF with his family. The RSF came into his home, and he heard his two cousins being raped,

and then he heard their screams go silent, and he went into the room and found that they had both committed to it. after the RSF had raped them. So we're seeing that double tragedy. We're seeing women experience sexual torture, sexual assault, rape, and then them committing suicide and almost reclaiming, in a way, through the suicide, their right to not exist in those conditions. It's very difficult to hear these horrific accounts,

but it's important to hear them as well because this is being done to women, and it is done to women time and time again. Now, you reported, and you are a journalist, but you're also someone whose family home is in Khartoum, and it was looted and destroyed. So first of all, how are your family? My family are okay, and I always say we're the lucky ones. We managed to get them out in the first two weeks of the war,

and I think when they did evacuate, they didn't imagine that they wouldn't be going back to their home. I remember my mum saying to me, should I leave the keys under the mat just in case we come back? And it was surreal to go back to the home and kind of collect our belongings, our valuables, which for family photos and things that we hold dear, collect them. And now I'm actually going to see them and taking some of that stuff back. But I think when you're standing in your home, you're able to see that your valuables are actually the memories that you have in the house,

what you cherish. Those are the things that you hold on to when you realize that actually the material objects are of no meaning. Yeah. Well, we've got a clip of you having a video chat with your mum, and this is from when you return to the family home. I never thought that I'll see my house like that. I mean, this is my house for the end of my life. I was supposed to die here in this house. I was supposed to be buried here in my country. I was supposed to enjoy my garden and my place. I was supposed to cook. I cater for you and your children. I was supposed to be here. for the rest of my life.

How are your parents coping with the fact that they probably won't be able to rebuild their home? It depends on the day, honestly, Anita. I think there are some days where they find solace in just the joys of being together, of having survived. But I think the predominant feeling is quite despairing. There's a lot of despondence.

My parents have worked their whole lives for everything that they have. And I think even not being able to be home, continuing to work and reaping the benefits of that work, sitting in their garden, being around their fruit trees, it's tough. But ultimately, they're here and they're alive. And I think that's what we kind of come back to, that so many people have lost their lives. So many people have lost their dearest loved ones.

I think we all kind of feel the solidarity and feel that this is a shared struggle and that we are all in this together. And I think that's how people have survived through the war. the mutual aid, the community kitchens, the emergency response rooms that came from Sudan's revolution. I think those are the things that we hold on to, that there is a lot of courage and there's a lot of strength. Is the UK and its allies failing Sudanese women in particular by not taking stronger action against those committing these crimes? 100%. The UAE has been accused time and time again of supporting the RSF. Our own sources on

the ground have told us that they're providing logistical and armed support to the RSF. The UAE denies this again and again, but they have not been held to account by their strongest allies in the West, the UK and the US. The Biden administration called what's happening in Darfur genocide at the hands of the RSF and had named the UAE a major defense partner. The UK continues to kind of show symbolic support. David Lamie was in Chad, these kind of symbolic actions that don't translate into a stronger stance, that don't translate into resolutions at the UN Security Council that actually calls out the UAE as a backer of the RSF or designates the RSF as a terror organisation which activists have been calling for, though we have to say that

would impede humanitarian access and may be a problem elsewhere. So there is this very apathetic approach and often Sudanese people feel like Sudan is mentioned to deflect from Gaza, to deflect from other conflicts that need intervention as well. Well, we did contact the foreign office for a response, but they couldn't provide anything in time for this program. I'd also like to know Yusra, how you balance professional detachment with your personal connection to this war. I don't think it's possible, honestly, Anita. I think that I have changed massively through the course of this war, and I hope it's for the better. But I also, I'm very lucky to be able to go back again and again with teams that genuinely care. I'm very

grateful to Sky for being able to provide that kind of coverage and support. When a lot of channels have chosen not to cover it at all. So I think this is how I get through the war, is being able to go and meet people and speak to them and understand what's happening on the ground and share that and share that in a way that is completely unhampered or unclouded by everything else where it's just their voices reaching people in their homes. And that is what I can offer. And I'm glad to do it. Yusra Elbegir there. And to remind you, you can go to BBC Action Line for Sources of Support. Now, are you a fan of words, their meanings and origins?

The lexicographer, Susie Dent, best known as the Queen of Dictionary Corner on Channel 4's Countdown, has created a whole year's worth of words, most of which you've probably never heard of, or you existed in a freshly published almanac. It's called Words for Life, and each day you can read an entry, digest its meaning, and maybe laugh at its sound. A daily fascination, it says on the cover. Well, Susie joined me this week, and I asked her how this book came about. I am such an eavesdropper.

So my whole life has been spent just tuning into other people's conversations and writing the results down. So my life is just littered with notebooks. And so I'm just a kind of linguistic magpie, really. I swoop on these things. And then I take these words off and look at them from every angle. And so it's just a joy to bring them together and share with other people because I have so many favour. And so many of them, as you say, from the historical dictionary. And perplexingly, they just disappeared.

I have no idea why. But it's a sort of one woman attempt to bring them back. Come on, we love it. We've got a lot of support. You've got an army of people behind you, including our listeners. I'm going to start reading out some of your messages in a minute. But you just use the word eavesdropper. Yes.

Where does that come from? Okay, so the eavesdropper was originally someone who stood beneath the eavesdrop, or the eaves drip, as it was once called, of their house. So they were just standing below the gutter and tuning into their neighbours' conversation essentially because they would be slightly out of view and covertly listening in. So the Eve's drip was where the water would drip down and it provided, you know, if you ducked behind it, it provided a nice little place. I told you all this was going to be delicious.

This is brilliant. Where do you get all the words from? If they've disappeared, how do you find them? Well, the OED is, will always be my Desert Island book. it is just full of magic and drama and adventure and the most incredible journeys a word that I know we overuse but honestly when it comes to words they are incredible

and you can map the very first meaning of a word and take it all the way through to the present day and it's just a joy and what I really enjoyed was the words that different languages have that we don't exist in our own language because it's so specific because language tells us so much more about

you understand a culture through language as we know so can you give us some delicious words. Actually the one I said in the intro, which I don't actually know how to pronounce, which is the word for the sorrow before dawn. Oh yes. Well that's from Old English. Yes. And it's

Ucht Kairu. And I just find so much reassurance in the fact that a thousand years ago people had the same experience of waking up in the dark hours and problems just loom unimaginably large. And you just think I can't cope with these. And then the sun rises, dawn breaks

and they shrink back into proportionally think it's okay. Ocht Kauru, yeah, the grief of the pre-dawn, essentially. I need to ask you about the tricks suffix, because this is Woman's Hour. How much was it used in the past? And what's left of it? Yeah, it's a really interesting one. So predominantly you will find, when it comes to occupation's jobs, you will find that

the male name is the default and the female is just a bit of an add-on. But the difference in status is also quite remarkable. So you have a governor, which is somebody who is of considerable power, The female equivalent, the governess, who of course was fairly subservient in households, similarly master. And then you have a mistress which inevitably took on kind of sexual connotations. Even the word hussy actually originally meant a housewife. But again, promiscuity kind of crept in. But this tricks suffix was applied in Roman times to female barbers or editors.

You had an editrix. You had a creotrix. You had an avatrix later on. And the only one that has survived is dominatrix. Love it. Strong. It's strong. It's strong.

But, yeah, it just, if you look at, you know, epithets for women through the ages, they are the recipient to the male gays as opposed to the ones with power. Could we bring it back? Can you bring old words back? I suppose it's just usage. No, you definitely can. And some of them are really making headways. So there's a lot of momentum behind a word that I'm always banging on about, which is Epricity,

which is the warmth of the sun on a winter's day. Oh, yeah. There's now a restaurant called Epricity. where the forecasters are talking about it and it was recorded only once in 1628 until the last few years. Where was it recorded in 1620? It was in a glossary from the 17th century.

It was like a Mayfly. It came and then went in a single day and now it's back. So I just am delighted by that. So yes, there's every chance for a usage. Words can come back. I think it is you. I'd love to think I had that power.

Have you really been on countdown for 30 years? 30 years? I think I'm in my 34th year. How is that possible? I know. It's because we've all kind of grown up with it, Me included, really. But, yeah, I used to say it was just me in the clock,

and then the clock was replaced. So I'm the oldest person on set, for sure. And is this a true story that you're actually working behind the scenes and they said, go on, have a go in front of the camera, but you said no initially? Oh, yes, I wasn't working at all in telly. I was working for the Dictionary's, Oxford Dictionaries, and they use an Oxford Dictionary on the show.

And my boss said, I think, you know, they need more people to do this, because many, many people went and acted as the word referees. And yes, I did say no quite a few times, because that wasn't where I imagined myself, you know, always had people below the radar. And he was very persuasive in the end, told me it would be good for my job.

And honestly, thank you, Simon, if you're listening, because I'm so grateful for that, yeah, all those years later. And do you ever reflect on the sort of, A, the popularity of the program, but also you. And just how, you know, well, it's our obsession with words and language, but it's specifically when you tell us your clever brain that is able to get all this information. I'm just so lucky that I've been able to be a mouthpiece.

I mean, I always laugh from people saying, the nation's favorite lexicographer because I think how many others do you know? So lexicographers need more profile. It's the best gig in the world, honestly, I promise you. I would recommend it to anyone. I mean, I love words, but I can't my, I just can't. Do you have a photographic memory? Are you able to retain information in a way that others can't?

Only when it comes to language. And I wouldn't say photographics, just that I'm with these things all the day. I live and breathe them. So, no, in other areas, I wish I could retain every fact. But no, there's something mystical about words that just sort of, you know, not to be cheesy. I just... No, no, I agree with you.

Why do you think that is? What is it about words? Well, they're just... Obviously, they're incredibly powerful. They are accompanied by so many sort of, you know, bodily gestures, but they have just eloquence, history, and as I say, so much... Just so much to them.

So every word has been to so many different places, has been in the mouths of so many different places. people. And I like to think that they're sort of touched by every single one of us. And English is a democracy. So famously, we don't have an authority saying, you can't use this or you can use this. It's down to all of us. Okay, I'm going to get to some of these messages. Sue's from Dorset says, hello, two words that my family say I introduced are skricky, which means grumpy, irritable, bad-tempered, etc. There's also a related noun, skrick, meaning arguments or disagreement. We sometimes forget that no one else will understand them and use them in public.

but I don't think we could or would give them up now. No, it's so, you know, it's so important. Just as teen slang kind of unites our teenagers and the whole idea of the outsiders won't understand them, it's the same within families, whether it's our regional, local words and our accents, but also the words that we come up with as families. And they're so important as a sort of tribal shorthand, really.

So I love that. And was it, skrick? Yeah. Yeah, it sounds scratchy. I think it's a good one. It's a great one. Anita, a word we always used when feeling humiliated. or made to feel small in public by something said by another was Sneeped.

Ooh, okay. I believe this to be a North Staffordshire dialect. I love that. It's a bit like snipped maybe. Yeah. It's been cut off. But I have not heard of that one. I will add it to my notebook.

Bay says my daughter calls me Motherene, which I love. It suggests she thinks I'm divine, all knowing, which of course I am. Of course you are, Charlotte in Whitley Bay. Another one here. As a child, I used to call all breakfast cereals Mongits. I don't know why, but Mungitz was taken up by my family and I've continued to use it. I'm now 72 and my son, Tom, used it for years, including when he stayed over at his friend's house, aged about 10, the friend's parents were mystified at breakfast time.

I'm not surprised. That's great, just making up your own language. Do you have made up words? Well, made up words, but also ones that I've inherited from the historical dictionary. So, for example, sausages in my husband will always be what the Victorian used to call them bags of mystery because he never know what's in them. And eggs are cackle farts as well. That was another all term for an egg. So, yeah, I like to borrow, borrow from the past.

Susie Dunt there. And her new book, Words for Life, is out now. Now, driving anxiety. Do you have it? Well, we'll be discussing this on Monday with Kylie Pentelow standing in for Nula. Journalist Mary McCarthy has been avoiding motorways for years, even planning her life around how to dodge them. And writing about it recently, she's discovered it's a far more common problem

than you might think, especially among women in midlife. That's all from me. Don't forget to join Kylie on Monday. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time.