Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman's Hour: Tamsin Greig, bell hooks, Grandparents and childcare

Episode Date: December 18, 2021

Actor Tamsin Greig on starring as the formidable theatrical agent Peggy Ramsay in the revival of ‘Peggy For You’, at the Hampstead Theatre. She also talks about her role in “wild” hospital comedy Green Wing, playing Debbie in The Archers since 1991, and Friday Night Dinner.Journalist Ash Sarkar and Professor Heidi Safia Mirza discuss the legacy and significance of the American feminist author and activist bell hooks, who died this week aged 69.Deputy Chief Constable Maggie Blyth - the national police co-ordinator for violence against women and girls - unveils her new strategy and gives her opinion on whether misogyny should be made a hate crime.In November 2020 a family court found that the conservative MP Kate Griffiths' then husband, Andrew Griffiths (also a former conservative MP and former minister) raped, abused & coercively controlled her. These were civil proceedings, so the finding was based on the balance of probabilities, rather than the criminal standard of probable doubt. As is the norm in family cases, this information was private and not made public. But following a successful application by journalists, supported by Kate Griffiths, the details of this case, with both parties' names attached, were published last week. Andrew Griffiths has denied allegations made by his ex-wife and ‘adamantly denied’ rape. We hear from Dr Charlotte Proudman, the barrister who represented Kate Griffiths.The company SAGA has decided to give employees who've just become grandparents some special leave. They say it's about helping new grandparents celebrate but also it's to highlight how important older workers are, not just to the company but to families and wider society. One of our listeners, Linda, who looks after two of her grandchildren, talks about her experience.During a recent Business Questions in Parliament Jacob Rees Mogg took a moment to mark the feast of St Æthelgifu, and called the medieval abbess one of Britain’s leading saints. But was she? What do we really know about Æthelgifu and the other leading medieval women at this time? We talk to Florence Scott, a historian of early medieval England.

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Welcome to Weekend Woman's Hour. This is where I bring you the standout moments from the week just gone. Coming up, Maggie Blythe, the woman in charge of coordinating the national police response in England and Wales to violence against women and girls. Plus, one grandmother tells us about the joys of providing free childcare for her grandchildren.

When I was growing up working in the NHS, my mum looked after my children and that allowed me to pursue my career. And we grew up with the understanding that when my daughter came to have children because she wanted to be a doctor, that I would stop work and I would look after her children. And that was a choice. Plus, we'll be shining the spotlight on the underrepresented medieval women. That's coming up later. But first.

Now, agents are not supposed to be more famous than their clients. Unless, of course, you're the formidable, outrageous and often hilarious Peggy Ramsey. If you haven't already heard of her, Margaret Francesca Peggy Ramsey was one of the most celebrated theatrical agents in the UK until her death in 1991. A play about her life, Peggy for You, was written by one of Peggy's former clients as a tribute of sorts in 1999. 22 years since its premiere, the play returns to Hampstead Theatre in London this week. Olivier award-winning actor Tamsin Gregg plays Peggy. She joined Emma

to discuss the play and her career. I didn't know about Peggy Ramsey. I didn't know the play. It was sent to me by Hampstead, where I've worked twice twice before as part of their retrospective season this year knowing that it would be a revival I was really intrigued by the play and by the character it feels like a kind of love letter by Alan Plater to his former agent who he's with for three decades I think and it shows this extraordinary woman who doesn't seem to conform to any kind of human normality and I was intrigued by that and was also of course thinking how important it is for to help encourage people to come back to experience live theatre I thought this would be a good combination. You do it extremely well if I may say and I have to say a lot of leg on show at many points we see your stockings and suspenders quite a bit yeah no so Peggy was um with very loved she loved material she loved feeling material on her body

and would often just sit up on with her legs up on the desk and her skirt would just fall down to much higher than it should and she didn't mind didn't notice and thought it was hilarious if other people did mind um I mean I was. I'm wearing quite a lot of pants. Yes, that was that. I just, you know, radio is about painting images. So I just want to make sure we do that. And she is surrounded by men as well, isn't she?

Yes, she has her assistants, but all the playwrights that she's often talking about, her clients, it's a lot of men around her. And actually one of her clients, the very famous Simon Callow, I believe he was in the audience last night. Yeah, he was.

He was actually a client in a sense because she represented playwrights. She was a play agent. She helped Simon a great deal when he was beginning his own illustrious writing career. And in fact, he wrote this beautiful book called Love is Where It Falls about his passionate love affair with her and which was reciprocated, which was completely based on art and the flame of being alive. And, but she represented, you know, the greats through the 50s, 60s, 70s, but a great deal of men, with some notable women. But she did enjoy the company of men

and found what they wrote about to be more intriguing to her because she said they were showing things that she didn't know and she felt that women showed her things that she already knew. I don't personally agree with that, but I think it's important to investigate people who stand in a completely different place to you. Yes. And I mean, that was it. You know, there's a line in the play again. I'm not quite sure what's direct quotes and what's just inferred, but you know that she says it how it is.

You know, it's there's no hypocrisy there from her in the sense of saying it straight. Yeah. She she described herself in a letter to Edward Bond. It's a beautiful book about a collection of all of her letters, many of her letters to her playwrights. It's called Peggy to Her Playwrights. And she writes to Edward Bond, who was one of her clients, that she felt like, for her, it felt like she was a wild cat trapped in a suburban house and people expect her

to not claw up the furniture. Well, I mean, how did she, the play is a day in her life. It's very busy. There's lots of things going on all the time. Lots of phone calls. As someone who loves a landline, I was very happy to see how much the phone was actually ringing and you don't have any of these technical glitches or not in the same way. But, you know, how did she get to where she got to? Because that's not included in the play. And it was a man's world a lot of the time. Yeah, well, she started, she grew up in South Africa and then came to London when she got married,

left her husband very quickly, but then became an actor. Well, actress, she would have called herself. And then a singer. So she sang in a touring opera company. So she was very much in that world. But on the side, she also earned money by reading plays for various different producers and then found that she had this extraordinary gift, which was spotted by a number of producers, where she could open up a script and read it and see it three-dimensionally. Now, I don't have that skill. I really struggle reading scripts and have

to have a lot of help. But she had this vision, this perspicacity, this kind of, she connected with the flame of the play. And it was spotted by these producers, the Christie's, the husband and wife team. They put her in an office and said, try and be an agent. She said, well, I'll try. And that's the office that they put her into at Goodwin's Court that you saw on stage. She stayed there for the whole of her career. It does look like a dream office. I mean, apart from this brown carpet with lots of stains that she describes and, you know, various people coming in or people being described as, you know, being sick and falling over and blood and all sorts of things.

But what are those London offices you kind of always hope if you're going to go into that world you'd end up with? There's a great line, there's many great lines, but there's a great line when she says, everyone needs a wife. And I wonder what you've made of that. I thought to myself, I know exactly what she means by that. Well, she actually says men don't need wives, women need wives. Which is slightly less PC.

A lot of things she said, she used to say, would not have been acceptable, would not be acceptable now. She would have abhorred council culture. You know, everybody needs help, right? We all need assistance. And the notion that only men need help is, you know, is a false one. So she was just looking at the hypocrisy of that, which I think is very intriguing. Yes. I mean, yes, you obviously do know the lines. I'm badly paraphrasing, so I'll turn to you for those.

No, no, no. But the cancel culture thing is fascinating because I wonder if somebody like her would thrive today. Or, you know, because a lot of the cancel culture is fictionalised in the sense of it's in a bubble, it's in a world, it doesn't pour into your real life. But some of it is now pouring into people's real lives and affecting their livelihoods. So I wonder if you think she could thrive today. I think she would have thrived anyway because she was so alive and was so interested in she was passionate about art and that flame never went out.

So I don't think council culture could have snuffed her out, really. I think it would probably have been oil on the fire for her and make her burn brighter. And I did mention some of your roles. You, of course, played the Jewish mother in the Channel 4 sitcom Friday Night Dinner. If Peggy was your agent, what would she have made of you, say, in a recent interview? I probably shouldn't have been in that show? Well, I think that what she would have thought about that was about honest reflection. And tell us why you said that, I should say. Well, actually, I think it was taken slightly out of context. And what I meant by it was that

if we were casting it now, we would have had very, very different conversations about the necessity for casting me in it and whether the casting should have been wider. But 10 years ago, who knew that those conversations were coming? We do things going, oh yeah, no, that looks like a really interesting role. And actually it's about a woman trying to survive in a wild family that seems to be falling apart, which I think at that time was a very resonant part of people's lives. So, yeah, I think it was a good byline. In terms of the headline that was picked for that recent interview. But yes, you're talking about the fact that perhaps it should have been played by a Jewish actor if people aren't familiar with the particular programme we're talking about the fact that perhaps it should have been played by a Jewish actor if people aren't familiar with the particular programme we're talking about.

I think it's just that's the conversation at the moment. You know, if it was being made now, we would, you know, I would, we all make very different choices depending on the weather that surrounds us culturally, right? Well, thinking of the weather now, I was thinking back to Green Wing, of course, the hospital comedy. And I was looking back at what you said about that at the time and thinking about hospitals now and the NHS. And actually, you said in the background of Green Wing was the idea that the NHS belongs to all of us. We have a responsibility to make sure it doesn't die on its knees.

And actually filming in a hospital, I know, will have had its challenges and also taught you a lot of things as well. Absolutely. It was an enormous privilege to be there. I mean, it felt awful that people, dying people, were being trollied past us. You know, that felt very intrusive. But you also were there, you know, looking through the window onto what people were actually doing to save people's lives. And the number of people who work in the NHS who have said to me,

watching Green Wing, it's exactly like that, which is slightly troubling because Green Wing is wild. Yes. And also you do need, I mean, I know there's lots of elements to that. And again, if people haven't seen it, but there's also the need for comedy in those dramatic times to be able to get through it. Listen, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to do this play, because I think if people are going to be bold enough to come out to the theatre and to experience live theatre, which I actually think is necessary for life, the whole coming together and experiencing things communally, I think we have lost that necessity because thank God we've got all this technology

and that has saved us through these last 18 months but the coming together and being together and experiencing something at the same time I think is really important and if you're going to also have fun there's something really precious about that. Well, I had a particular laugh when I went to the toilet in your play last night at halftime because at the interval, they actually have a big picture of you in the women's toilets on one of the cubicles.

So I deliberately chose to go in the Tamsin Greg cubicle. How do you feel about that? Well, a friend of mine sent a picture of it when she went to the loo and there was a big sticker on it that said out of order. So I thought, I said, yeah, that totally sums me up. I have to say, I just did chuckle that I was going to be talking to you in the morning. It's a very nice picture, though, and it's very nice you're on the front of a toilet door as well as on the stage. And you have said you have found some of the ways you've been described as reductive, whether it's as a comedy actress because of your roles in Green Wing or episodes, or even worse, funny girl. But I did note in an interview you said no one had described you in a way that you particularly loved as a descriptor for puffins.

So here goes. Tamzin Gregg, are you a bird of comic solemnity? That's such a lovely phrase I saw it actually on the cover of uh National Geographic when they did a special on puffins and um you know when when a puffin becomes uh the mid point in any story I'm always happy but it did say puffin bird of comic solemnity and um I I there's something that in me that resonated with that. It relates. I would be very remiss if I don't say one word to you before you go and leave us on Woman's Hour today.

The Archers. Two words, rather. It's still happening. You are still Debbie. I'm not her. So she does exist, but she exists in Hungary. And sometimes I connect with that character orally and sometimes I don't. At the moment, it's quite difficult to to participate.

But she's off at the moment in Hungary, as you say. Debbie Aldridge, we're talking about farm manager. But what has The Archers meant to you in your career? Because it has been a bit of a constant. Yeah, well, I went into the show in 1991 for six weeks, apparently. And here we are three decades later and she's still bobbing in or being talked about mostly. It's, you know, I have an enormous affection for that job that came my way out of the blue. And I also have an enormous affection for radio. I had the enormous privilege of working with Paul Ritter

for a 10-part series on radio, which was his last job before he died. And I think if I hadn't had that experience on radio right at the beginning, I wouldn't have been drawn to produce that beautiful piece of work that so illuminates Paul's enormous talent. Of course, who played also your husband in that comedy, the sitcom Friday Night Dinner.

And I know that particular radio production meant a lot to his family. Yeah, absolutely. And was, you know, so beautiful being on, you know, the drama that was on Women's Hour, because it was about people writing letters to one another, connecting, who were strangers. And it spoke so profoundly into the pandemic experience of how do we continue to connect when we're being removed from each other,

you know, because of circumstances, but also because of fear. You know, fear is such a divider. To keep connecting, to keep writing, to keep gathering together to share in stories, I think it saves lives in a different way. Tamzin Gregg and Peggy For You is on now until late January. Now this week, the groundbreaking author and feminist Belle Hooks passed away. She was 69 and died at home in Kentucky.

She was considered a trailblazer in feminism and published 40-odd books. Her real name was Gloria Jean Watkins, but she adopted her great-grandmother's name, Belle Blair Hooks. Yesterday, I spoke to two of her admirers, Ash Sarkar, an academic and contributing editor at Novara Media,

and Heidi Safia Mirza, who went to talks that Bell Hooks gave and is Emeritus Professor in Race, Gender and Equalities and Education at University College London. Heidi started by telling me all about Bell. Bell Hooks really influenced my work in the early 80s. She was writing in the 70s and 80s. She's one of the titans of black feminist thinking. And she was above all, she described herself as a teacher and she has influenced generations of teachers and scholars around the issues of black feminism. feminism, her core beliefs were around what we call intersectionality now, but looking at racism, sexism, but within the understanding of white supremacy and capitalism. And this was the power of her work for me, the way in which she combined ideological beliefs that were grounded in the exploitation of others.

So capitalism could not exist without slavery and racism and sexism. So it is that triangle, if you like, that she made me aware. And also, you know, she's of the generation of Angela Davis and the Komahi Collective, all of this very early black feminist thinking. It was amazing. How was she when you met her? What was she like? So in the 80s, we used to have a very vibrant, actually, black radical group. It was around the black bookshop, New Beacon Books, and it was called, we would have annual conferences um on um on race and um and so they were they were we had conferences in london um they called the the radical bookshops uh you know so we were we would be sitting in rooms we won't uh they weren't big conferences they were just like almost sitting in a circle and exchanging ideas she was was an incredibly powerful speaker.

I'm sure that many people will be looking up her on YouTube. And she took no prisoners. I mean, she was vociferous in her positioning. And she was attacked many times in her life verbally. I mean, you know, for her for her views, for her strong views around sexism and white feminism, the relationship that that black women weren't brought into the into the white feminist. And yet she's remained stalwart that feminism that embraced all of us was the way forward. Let me bring Ash in on this. Do you think Bell Hooks has got the recognition she deserved here in the UK, Ash?

I think it's impossible for Bell Hooks to get the recognition that she deserves because it is difficult to think of a scholar whose work has been more influential across multiple fields. So I encountered Bell Hook's work three times. The first was as a kid on my auntie's bookshelf, and I can bet that she bought that book from New Beacon Books, which Heidi just talked about, was Ain't I a Woman, which is her treatise on race, class and gender.

And it was the first time as a woman of colour that I read anybody talking about what that was like, and that you can't separate race from gender, that you can't separate class from those things as well. And that something specific happens to black women, where they are so dehumanised within white supremacy and capitalism and sexism, that they're excluded from being considered women at all. And it was the first time I heard someone put language to that. And the second time was when I was at university and I was studying English literature. And then I discovered bell hooks, the scalpel sharp critic. And this is when you get the take no prisoners bell hooks. I was reading her essays where she was tearing apart Harmony Kareem's kids.

You know, she was getting into what we think of as the Western canon and just with utter precision and this really withering turn of phrase. She just laid it all out there. And then the third time was... So she managed to stretch across generations then by commenting on things that were very current, very relevant and talking to the young generation. Absolutely. She maintained an engagement with pop culture throughout her career. She very famously wrote a critique of Beyonce's Lemonade where she was suspicious of this kind of representation politics. And she

said, look, this is capitalist moneymaking at its best. And I think to speak to that issue of crossing generations, that third time which I encountered bell hooks was actually many of my male friends were reading The Will to Change. It's this generation of millennial and the one below, you know, Zuma men, trying to unpick how they've been socialized and the way in which patriarchy has atrophied their emotional experiences and inhibited their ability to connect with other people. And one of the things that she talks about in The Will to Change is that women uphold patriarchy too. And we also create some of the patriarchal expectations which constrain and restrict men. We are talking about her quotes because, as I said,

I started the programme, you know, her quotes are all over social media and lots of people are discovering bell hooks for the first time through her quotes, and you're right. Heidi, they probably will be Googling her and watching her speak um do you have a favorite quote by her i have several favorite quotes but i just want to come back on this um this uh this sudden awakening to bell hooks in the mainstream media i well of course we must celebrate our wonderful black feminist icons but where have we been for the last 40 years 50 years 60 years where have we been no one's heard of i mean i've written black british feminism

you know and and it's it's not anything that has been celebrated suddenly she's on bbc news i thought oh my god since since when is this awakening and this appropriation of black women as soundbites? You're asking me to give a soundbite when her work of 40 books, you know, is so deep and so influential to women that are marginal. So one of the things that she, if you do ask me for a quote, she does talk about being in the margin. And she says, marginality is a place of power. I'm not quoting it exactly, but she says, marginality is a place of power where we can recover ourselves. So we don't always have to belong in the mainstream as Black women. I just thought she would be so amazed that she was on mainstream news because she said, we have to stay in our places of marginality and build our strengths, build our capacity.

And that's what really influenced me. She gave me that understanding that I am good enough and my ideas, no matter how radical or how out of the mainstream, can have power. And we can teach. She was a teacher, ultimately, and she was a Buddhist. And she believed in love and the power of what she called teaching to transgress. This is the name of one. You know, you can transgress by positioning yourself in your ideologies and your beliefs. I have to say, Woman's Hour is absolutely the place we need to be talking about her and we need to be raving about her.

Ash, I am going to ask you for a quote. Come on, one from you. You know what, I'm going to pull a quote from my favourite Bell Hooks essay. The essay is called Love as the Practice of Freedom. And the quote is, without love, our efforts to liberate ourselves and our world community from oppression and exploitation are doomed. Because when Bell Hooks talks about love, she's not talking about something insipid or hippy dippy. She's talking about this antidote to nihilism. And that actually, rather than thinking of the struggle to liberate ourselves as a destructive struggle, one of killing, one of maiming, one of trying to dominate other people,

what love challenges us to do is to think about the dignity of every human being and to imagine communities, societies and relationships where we do not dominate one another. Ash Sarkar and Heidi Safia Mirza discussing bell hooks there. Now, the Deputy Chief Constable Maggie Blythe, who was appointed to coordinate the national police response in England and Wales to violence against women and girls, has this week unveiled her new strategy. She's aiming to give those 43 police forces a uniform approach and to make women and girls feel safer in their daily lives.

Maggie started by telling Emma about the new plan. We know that we have got a fundamental shift to tackle violence against women and girls that is needed. It is a cultural shift, it is a fundamental change in the prioritisation of VORG offences, violence against women and girls offences, that is needed. And we've outlined in three pillars how we're going to go about that. One of those is the relentless focus on perpetrators. And what I've heard loud and strong from organisations and individuals before I came into role, and certainly since I've been in role, is the investigations that we're involved in too often make victims feel that they are the focus of the investigations, not the offenders, usually the male offenders.

And our policing powers and our policing duty needs to keep that focus on male, usually male, perpetrators and offenders. So we will use all of our policing powers to keep that focus to make sure that we're reviewing at local level the risk that anyone who is alleged of an offender. What does that mean? So I understand a change of emphasis and no disrespect, I have now heard that from several parts of the police force, especially in the year that we have just gone through with regards to some of those cases. I outlined those high profile cases which have shaken a lot of women's faith in the police. But what does it mean police forces will create lists of violent men? Do you already have those lists?

We already risk assess all of the offenders that come to the attention of policing. That happens all of the time. So what's new? So it's a cultural shift in terms of the prioritisation of how we staff and resource offences against violence, anything that is about violence against women and girls. So that will be using specialist investigators.

One of the things that we're putting at the heart of our new approach is a new initiative that was started in Avon and Somerset known as Opseteria, which looks at and invites in an evidence base to how rape and serious sexual offences are addressed. We know that having specialist investigators, having an offender focus to any investigation. This is the first time we are looking at a national framework for violence against women and girls.

We know that there's a lot of activity that happens. Is that extraordinary? It isn't extraordinary because we are 43 different organisations. And so one of the things that is important... But it's not new violence against women and girls, is it? It's not new. Why did it take what Wayne Cousins did for this to happen? I don't think it did just take that,

but I think it was a watershed moment because of the manner in which Sarah Everard was killed by a serving police officer is shocking and has rocked policing. But also the manner in which coming into the public eye have been so many cases of murdered women. For anyone working in domestic abuse or serious and sexual offences for years, we'll know that this is tragically so common, but it is now in the public eye and perhaps also...

So more coverage, not more offences. So it took for the police to be shaken by the response of the public and the coverage of the media to pull its finger out and give you this new job? I think it has taken the tragedy of the murder of Sarah Everard to bring this into the public's mind. But it has also taken what's happened through the pandemic for a greater understanding of what happens behind closed doors and for policing to work with other sectors to say that we now need to have a fundamental shift because the level of this epidemic in terms of violence against women and girls, what the data is telling us in terms of a threat assessment is so significant that we know we need to make some change.

You've also said today increased use of domestic violence protection orders and stalking protection orders and swifter action on breaches. How are you going to actually increase that? Because aren't you then at risk of more failed prosecutions, which could undermine your work? This is a really, really complex area of work. What we're announcing today is to keep that focus on risk of the men, usually men, but the offenders that we know at local level, to keep reviewing that risk, to make sure that we're taking the opportunity to use all of the policing powers available to us and working with partners, other orders available to manage that risk in the community to make sure that there is a constant review of the risk that some offenders present. What are the police not doing now they're going to be doing this? What are the UD prioritising to prioritise this? Because we have also been told by police officers that staff shortages,

pressure on the pandemic has led to all sorts of issues within the police. The pressure on policing is immense and the pressure coming out of the pandemic, not just on policing, but all statutory services is immense. And the workforce that deal in this particular area around serious and sexual offences, domestic abuse, is a workforce that is absolutely committed to make a change and to make people, to make women and girls feel safe. I know that because I've often been out and about with those teams. We have new officers coming into policing through Uplift and we want to be sure that this area of work is a priority to those new officers.

What's being deprioritised? We cannot deprioritise any work within policing. We have to constantly review where the threat sits at a local level and at a national level. Nationally we're saying that violence against women and girls has to be top of the list. It also has to sit top of the list with a range of other priorities. But we want to make sure that those offences that harm women and girls are on a daily level reviewed and understood by the police. Just finally, I know your time is precious, that you have a lot to do this morning, but very, very briefly in that tape, in that report, we heard from Cheshire Police Force,

using some of the new Safer Streets money to try and use technology to improve the situation for women and girls the idea of sending a woman a video call link if they call 999 they can then click on be connected and recorded if they feel unsafe do you think that's the answer? I think the answer is a cultural shift in how violence against women and girls is prioritised that's why it's really... Opening your email getting 3 or 4, managing to get yourself on. You're in the middle of something happening to you.

Is that not slightly ludicrous? We need to make sure that there's a system-wide response to VORG. Part of that will also be ensuring that we have the relentless focus on the men that present the risk to women and girls, which is what we've been talking about this morning. The third element, though, is a range of initiatives. Do you think that's a good use of money? It will be one of many initiatives that... What's your view on that one initiative? Is it a good use? If in that local police area, the decision by a range of agencies working together

to listen to women and girls is that is a way of keeping women and girls safe. That may be one priority of one initiative in one part of the country. What my framework is looking at is how can we evidence what is working? How can we make sure that we roll that out on a national level? And looking at some of the programmes like how we tackle rape and serious sexual offences, the opposite area, looking at specialist resources where we can, looking at reviewing risk of the offenders that come to detention of the police every day, looking at working in partnership with a range of other specialist organisations and victim-led organisations at local level

to commission support services for victims to encourage them to stay with the system and through the criminal justice process to get and bring perpetrators to justice. How helpful would it have been for the government to have made, or we don't know yet, but how helpful will it be if the government decides to go against the Law Commission and make misogyny a hate crime? We will await and see how the government responds to the Law Commission report from last week.

Again, I think it's really important that it's about prioritising those crimes that impact on women and girls. Do you need a new crime? We need to use the powers available to us first and to do that properly and efficiently. Can I get your opinion? You are in charge of coordinating these police forces' response to women and girls and safety. Do you think misogyny

should be a hate crime? I want to listen to what the Law Commission says. We don't make the laws, we enforce them. It's out for a week, I'm sure you've read it. I have read it and I want to listen to the government response. You've listened to what the Law Commission has to say. Do you agree with it? They do not think that misogyny should be a hate crime. Maggie Blythe, I'll ask you again. Should misogyny be a hate crime? I think we should first and foremost use the laws and the powers that are available to us because I think they're in terms of public order. Of course you think that. You're a police officer. So we need to use those well. Do you need a new one? I don't think we need new powers. I think we need to use the new ones well.

And we need to continue to ensure that violence against women and girls is an absolute priority for policing and for other sectors. May I get an answer, yes or no? Should misogyny be a hate crime? It is a simplistic response to a much more complex problem. Could I get a steer? From your perspective as the police chief's council, the National Police Chief's Council on Violence Against Women and Girls, should misogyny be a hate crime in England and Wales? So what I'm doing to respond to that is an analysis of where police forces are recording misogyny as a hate crime to understand the impact it's had on those police forces, those victims, those witnesses reporting in. So you don't know yet?

So we don't know. We will conclude that in March 2022. We will talk then. Based on then, I can come back and tell you. The Deputy Chief Constable Maggie Blythe speaking with Emma. Still to come, we hear about the medieval women we should know more about. And if you've missed

any of our programmes, you can always catch up for free on BBC Sounds. And if you'd like to talk to us about anything, then please email us via our website. In November 2020, a family court found that the ex-husband of Conservative MP Kate Griffiths, Andrew Griffiths, also a former Conservative MP for the same Staffordshire seat and former Conservative minister, raped her in her sleep,

abused and coercively controlled her. As is the norm in family court cases, this information was private and not made public. But following a successful application by journalists, supported by Kate Griffiths, the details of this case, with both Kate and Andrew Griffiths' names attached, were published last week. In the recent judgment, judges from the Court of Appeal referred to the mother's rights to tell her story. Andrew Griffith has denied allegations made by his ex-wife

and adamantly denied rape. You may also recall that Andrew Griffith resigned from the government in 2018 after sending text messages of a sexual nature to two female constituents. Emma spoke to Dr Charlotte Proudman, the barrister who represented Kate Griffiths, who began by explaining how journalists help make this case public. So we had the fact-finding, we had all that information, which was found to be true, all of the facts. And then two journalists, extraordinarily, made an application to the family court and they said they wanted to

report this decision. They said it was important that this decision was reported because it might give other women hope and would may even encourage them to come forward and would understand the workings of the family justice system when it's dealing with some of the most serious allegations because as you've rightly mentioned, family proceedings are in private. So it's very rare to know what happens behind closed doors. Yes. I mean, you mentioned there, and as I mentioned in my introduction, Andrew Griffiths has denied these allegations. These were civil proceedings in a family court. The finding wasn't based on the criminal evidential level, finding on the balance of probabilities rather than the criminal standard of probable doubt. Did Kate want this in the public domain? She is an MP.

Yeah, no, she absolutely did. And that was an enormous part of the process. That was something that the court placed great emphasis on, quite rightly so. What Kate said is that she had a right to self-determination and a right to self-identification. She had the right to tell her story. And she wanted to use her extraordinary platform as a powerful woman, as a member of parliament, to champion other victims of domestic abuse. She meets women in her constituency all the time that have been through the family courts. And she wanted to be able to say to them, I understand. Yes, because I did mention again, also in my introduction, there's quite a lot of detail here to navigate. But Andrew Griffiths was a minister and he resigned that position after a, I believe it was a Sunday Mirror report,

which said he'd been sending explicit sexual messages to two women in his constituency. And she then, Kate, then went and ran for his seat or what was his seat, which actually wasn't the only woman to do so actually in that election, but just as an additional detail. She now becoming a public figure and becoming a public advocate, she has actually, prior to us knowing any of this, been talking about domestic violence and women's rights. And I suppose it's just part of an extraordinary tale, if I could put it like that, that is her real life. Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, she ran, when she stood as an MP, on a platform saying, I'm a victim of domestic abuse and I want to support other victims. And that was all the information that she gave at that time. And you're right. It's important to remember that when Andrew Griffiths was raping his wife behind closed doors, he was a minister. He was championing bills such as the upskirting bill. He was supporting initiatives around women's rights and yet was

doing this to his wife behind closed doors. If a powerful man can do this, anybody can. And haven't we learned anything from Me Too about holding men accountable? And that's part of making sure that this judgment is published. So that, you know, Kate is an MP, and continuing their separation, she continued to suffer post-separation coercive control, which shows that anyone can, no matter how powerful you are or how poor you are. You know, I represent women from all walks of life, women with no recourse to public funds, women who are millionaires. And they all have one thing in common. They are victims of domestic abuse. And it cuts across various different backgrounds. I was just going to say in terms, I mean, of course, as I have said, but I'll say again, he continues to deny these allegations where is is their case up to

now this has been made public because it's been made public a long time after yes I mean he might continue to deny them but I think that says an awful lot about Andrew Griffiths because the court has found this they've said that it's more likely than not that he did these things to her some of most heinous things but you know the case is not over. Far from it. The family court, despite making findings of rape and, as I said, abuse towards the child, the family court ordered supervised contact. So that contact continues in a supervised contact centre with Andrew Griffiths, even after the findings are made.

And not only that, Kate, as a rape victim, has to subsidise her rapist contact costs. So there is a cost incurred for supervised contact. So you have to have someone present to watch what's going on to make sure it's safe. She has to pay half of that, which I think is inexplicable. It is nothing more than abuse that's ordered by the family court. So we appealed that decision and we are waiting for the outcome.

But the proceedings very much continue. And sorry, to what end? So it will be to finalise their personal arrangements and then also this particular appeal you mentioned? Yes, so it will be to finalise the appeal and it will be ultimately for a final decision to be made about whether Mr Griffiths is safe to have contact with the child and if so what sort of contact can be ordered and one needs to also take into account the impact that any contact would have upon Kate as a victim and having to facilitate that contact and take her child to contact with someone who she knows loses their temper. Dr Charlotte Pryman, just finally, I know you've got to go

and keep fighting these sorts of cases. We've spoken about this sort of thing before, these areas, these women before that you represent. And I know you're speaking on behalf of your clients, of the MP Kate Griffiths today in this extraordinary case to us, which is very important too here. But what impact do you think this particular lifting of the veil around the family court could have?

I mentioned that one of the judges from the Court of Appeal referred to the mother's right to tell her story. I know that there are many other women that are going through this in the family court that effectively feel that they've been gagged. They feel that they've been silenced in a way that Kate described, being silenced in the relationship and then that silence continuing in the family courts and not being able to say anything that's happened within that proceedings. And I hope that potentially it could result in more women seeking the right to self-determination, seeking the right to be able to say what has

happened in the family courts. And I also want to see, and I know Kate does, the law changed. She wants to see a presumption of no contact in cases with an abusive parent for contact. And I fully support that. And I think that's right that that happens. Dr. Charlotte Proudman speaking with Emma there. Now, last week, the insurance and travel company specialising in older customers, Saga, sparked debate with its decision to give employees who've just become grandparents some special paid leave. We know that there are millions of grandparents, mainly grandmas, providing free childcare across the country.

But at what cost? One of our listeners spoke to Emma about this. Linda Bracewell is from Lancashire and has three grandchildren and looks after two. She started by telling Emma what her daily life is like as a grandparent. I have two children, but we live geographically close to my daughter. And she's a medic working for the NHS, long hours and gone through Covid like everybody else. And her husband also works in the NHS long hours and gone through COVID like everybody else and her husband also works in the NHS. When I was growing up working in the NHS my mum looked after my children and that allowed me

to pursue my career even though my husband wasn't around a lot of the time to help me because he worked away a lot and we grew up with the understanding that when my daughter came to have children because she wanted to be a doctor that I would stop work and I would look after her children. And that was a choice that I was lucky enough to be able to make and took early retirement when her child came along. So I look after her two children on a very regular basis and a very flexible basis. And it's very important that I do both for me and for her and the children and you took early retirement I did I was I was very fortunate um I had my own pharmacy practice which I ran for 23 years um and I'd achieved everything I wanted to do in my career

um and so when I was 57 I decided to to sell the business and retire because first grandchild had come along, my daughter's little boy had been born. And I decided that what I wanted to do was have complete flexibility to be able to be around when she needed me and when she needed me to have the boys. And how much are we talking here? You say it's very flexible. Give me a bit of an insight. What hours and how is it for you? Don't hold back. Go for it. Well, it all depends whether she's on call or whether she's doing what is a sort of a normal week. But a normal week, as we all know, our junior doctors work incredibly hard. And we're very, very grateful to them in particular at the moment um but you might be scheduled for a shift between nine and five but in reality that means you want to be there by quarter to eight so you've got your act together by the time things take over and when the clock

ticks over at five o'clock there's no way you're ready to leave because there might be relatives coming in who want to talk to her and I need her to feel that she doesn't need all she needs to do is send me a text I'm running late mum and I'm there and if needs be put the boys to bed whatever it happens to be um and and it's it's a team effort it's a team effort and we've worked all our lives we're all NHS workers the whole extended family are and we understand what it takes to be a member of the NHS care team and how important it is that she's able to do her job properly without worrying about what's happening with the children.

Do you all get on well? We all get on amazingly well. There are two pairs of parents, myself and the in-law grandparents. Yes, how's that relationship? Is that good? Absolutely amazing. They don't get jealous that you're the other primary carer? No, no, no, no. Well, to be honest, we really do share things out.

Because that's quite important. I've just got a message. Can I read you this? Julia says, at the age of 72, I'm about to become a gran. Not something that's ever interested me until now. I'm completely caught up in the excitement and suspense. Only one problem, my son lives in another country with his partner who was born there.

Her parents will be the hands-on grandparents and I'll be the absent one who sends the birthday card. I'm wondering if I should follow my son to his new country. I would say go for it, without a shadow of a doubt. My pressure is that I have a son who lives on the outskirts of London because that's where he got a job, that's where he formed his life, so he's nearly 300 miles away. And I have to try really, really hard to spend time with the grandson down there.

And it's really important that we do that. But in order to do that, I have to make sure the diary up north works as well. So I rely on the other grandparents to cover and that sort of thing. So it works out really well because we work hard at it. But your son also doesn't get bothered by how much free childcare and support his sister's getting?

He's very, very, very, very fortunate that his wife's family live close by and they've basically done exactly the same as us. Right, so he's got it elsewhere. The question I want, I think it's brilliant to be having this conversation from your perspective and from this perspective, although some may be feeling

slightly more under the cosh than you and also they may not have been able to afford to stop working. So then they can't balance it. I'm very aware of that. But just a question from the perspective of your daughter, from how you see her life. And I suppose it's a bigger question about society. Could your daughter have continued working in the way that she wanted

and pursuing her career if you were not able to do this? The only way she could do it, and we've talked about this, the only way she could have done it would be if she had a live-in nanny because that's what a number of her colleagues have had to do when you've got both parents working flexible hours. Their hours don't fit nursery. They don't fit childminders. They've got to have this absolutely flexible hours. Their hours don't fit nursery. They don't fit childminders. They've got to have this absolutely flexible approach.

And the only thing they could have done, I think, is get a living nanny. That's just not something that they could ever afford. No, would they want to do that? Because they want it in the family. They want that care. They want it in the family, yeah. And we want to do it.

I have to say, there's an anonymous message here because, Linda, your situation, wonderfully so, is working out well. And, you know, it sounds like the Waltons, if you remember that. But we know we never row, we get on, nobody's jealous. I didn't say we didn't row. OK, that's like the after hours bit of this discussion. But no, I'm sure there are pressures, you know, jokes aside. You've got to make decisions and do some disciplining and all of that but there's a message here that says my son lives with us

and has shared custody of his two boys age six and eight the custody means in effect that I have two extra children I already have four a week as much as I love my grandsons it means that it is a chore at times rather than a joy to look after them and I feel that a lot of the delight of having grandchildren has been taken away and obviously obviously, that's, again, another particular scenario. But I think that is a bit of a theme with some of our listeners that they adore their grandchildren, of course they do. But they never perhaps expected the same role you've expected. Do you hear that amongst any of your friends? I've got one particular friend who has a daughter-in-law who's in the forces and her son works shifts and for long periods of time her grandchild ends up living with her when her daughter-in-law is abroad on

duty and I think what it does do when you spend a lot of time with your grandchildren is that actually you're not just the nice grandma who drops in and visits. You actually do quite a bit of what I would call parenting rather than grandparenting. So things like maintaining the same levels of discipline and having those challenging conversations with the grandchildren, which has to be done as mum and dad want it to be. But that is perhaps not necessarily what some grandparents see as their their role that was linda bracewell now lots of you got in touch with your thoughts on this topic jane emailed to say i was a mental health nurse for 36 years and retired

in august to provide care for my youngest grandchild who is two and a half this enabled my daughter to return to work following almost five years at home caring for her two girls. Paying for childcare was not an option. I have had a good career and felt it important to help support my daughter and her family, make a great future for them. No regrets so far, making unicorn cupcakes while listening to your programme.

And another listener who wants to remain anonymous said, I have recently become a grandparent for the first time to a beautiful baby girl whom I adore. But since her arrival, I've been bombarded with friends, family asking me when I'm going to offer childcare when my daughter-in-law goes back to work. I see that the assumption is made. I'm semi-retired. I'm thoroughly enjoying the freedom I have to do some really interesting voluntary roles. And I love my home and garden. My son and his partner can afford childcare at a local nursery. And I honestly feel she will benefit more from being socialised there than being with me all day.

And of course, please keep your thoughts coming. You can email us via our website or contact us via social media. It's at BBC Woman's Hour. Now, during a recent session of business questions in Parliament, the leader of the House of Commons and Conservative MP, Jacob Rees-Mogg, took a moment from discussing corruption laws in Britain to talk about Britain's saints.

Take a listen. It is also the feast day of St Ethelgafoo, who was the daughter of Alfred the Great and became an abbess. And I'm more tempted to offer a debate to celebrate the virtues of one of England's leading saints. So what are the virtues? Who was St Ethel Gaffu? And is she a leading saint? While Florence Scott is a historian of early medieval England, she started by telling Emma whether Mr Rees-Mogg was right. I would say generally no. I think he gets some of the broad statements that he makes about her a little bit wrong. Firstly, we don't really know much about Athel Giffu. What we do know is that she was the daughter of King Alfred. And we pretty much only have one contemporary medieval source

that tells us anything about her life, which is a single sentence in the biography of her father, which simply says that her father built a monastery and appointed her as the abbess, so as the overseer of that monastery. Apart from that, we really have very little evidence. So to kind of call her a leading sin or to overstate her particular virtues, it's not really, it can't really be substantiated.

Might need to correct the parliamentary record there, Hansard, where it's all written down. Florence, I need to get you in there. You've called her the medieval Ivanka Trump. Is that due to, and I should say, you've got a whole blog about her. Is that right? No, so I have a blog about women in this period in general. Oh, sorry. And she features. Okay. Because it's great to get the facts from someone who's looked at this. Medieval Ivanka Trump, is this because of the inheritance you just discussed? Yeah, it's because as well as Abbas is having a religious role, they also have a very political role in this period.

So an Abbas would oversee a monastery, a huge amount of land that that monastery might own. She would be kind of in contact and discussing the issues of the day with people around the country. So the Ivanka Trump comparison was, you know, they have a lot of similarities. They were both born into privilege. They were both given political appointments by their fathers. So that was what that reference was. As power was transferred, and for some still is, how many female saints do we have in Britain?

It's very difficult to count them. And the reason for that is that in this period, there isn't really an official way of declaring someone a saint, of canonising somebody. So in the early Middle Ages, anybody who developed a cult who had, you know, after their death, miracles were reported about them could be considered a saint. We also have the issue that there are some saints that if you look into the historical evidence, were actually legendary figures, and they weren't, you know, historical figures. So I would say from this period, you know, this kind of pre-conquest period in England, definitely dozens. But, you know, it's very difficult to define who is and isn't a saint or who was and wasn't considered one at the time. This is why we've got you on, Florence.

Hannah says, my undergrad was medieval studies, but I've not indulged in far too long. Give me the good stuff, Florence, which is what you're helping us do today. Why this area of study for you? I think I find medieval women really compelling. And the reason is that we often have this idea that women in the past couldn't hold power and couldn't have influence. And I think women, women in the period that I study particularly, they are occupying some of the most important political roles in the country. You know, they are the politicians, they are influential. And, you know, unfortunately, a lot of the source material is very male focused. So we have to kind of pick out the strands where we can see this power reflected. But I think also what's interesting is the complexity of these figures, because, you know, I'm not one to look back on these idolise them because, you know, they were they were, you know, complicit with this unequal and violent society in which they lived. Just going back to Jacob Rees-Mogg and this comment, it must have been quite a surprise for you to perhaps hear that mentioned.

And I wondered what your reaction was to that. And are you going to tell Mr. Eastmorg that he's got his history wrong? Yeah, well, I think it's a problem that's a bit more complicated than just getting your history wrong. You know, I'm not a pedant. I'm not here to kind of just... Oh, you can be, you can be. You're on the right radio station for it. I think it's, you know, it is complicated.

A lot of these women have very, very similar names and even I get mixed up, you know, half the time. I think it's not the case that he got it wrong it's that I think people are fed up with politicians misusing history and you know we have to ask why a politician like Jacob Rees-Mogg might want to name drop a historical figure like Alphagifu um it could be that he admires her but I kind of doubt that if he has the basic facts wrong um I think, you know, when upper class privately educated politicians drop references to classical and medieval history, it's kind of like they're trying to assert themselves as intellectual gatekeepers of that history. So I think that

history should be kind of as inclusive as possible. And I think that, you know, if you're going to talk about somebody as being a great figure in history, you need to get your facts right. And that was historian Florence Scott. That's it for me. Thank you for listening. Enjoy the rest of the weekend. Emma is back from Monday morning. We are all driven by our needs and wants, and this can take us places we never expected. My body was craving a pregnancy. My mind was craving a pregnancy. And then that's what made me start looking up Facebook. You can get anything on the internet. Just like meet you and you just give them your sperm and

they just go back into their house. What? I'm Dr. Alex Kretosky and in this 10-part series I'm investigating the unregulated, unlicensed fertility market. a place of hopes and dreams and unchecked desire. I don't want to give you my full name. I don't want to give you my age. You're not going to be able to find my identity. I just want to get people pregnant. From BBC Radio 4, Mail Order. Listen and subscribe on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody.

Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby.

It's a long story, settle in. Available now.