Woman's Hour - Women in The Archers, Jill Dawson, Menopausal flooding

Episode Date: April 8, 2019

Radio 4’s soap opera, The Archers has long inspired a diverse and loyal fan base. The everyday tale of farming folk has tackled everything from unplanned pregnancy in the 1960s to the coercive control and domestic violence a couple of years’ ago. But with women still more likely to be found baking at Brookfield or gossiping in the post office, exactly how feminist is Ambridge? That’s a question tackled in a new book, Gender, Sex and Gossip In Ambridge: Women In The Archers. Academics, Nicola Headlam and Cara Courage, explain what drives them to give up their free time to organising academic conferences about The Archers - as well as listening to it - and they share a few of their thought-provoking conclusions.Heavy bleeding or "flooding" can be one of the symptoms of the menopause. What do we know about it and what can be done to help women affected? Jane speaks to Paula Briggs a consultant in Sexual and Reproductive Health for Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust and hears from listeners about their experiences. Jill Dawson is the author of ten novels and the editor of six anthologies of short stories and poetry. In her latest novel, The Language of Birds, she takes inspiration from the infamous Lord Lucan case, placing the murdered nanny at the centre of this shocking tale.Chemicals are an essential component of our daily lives, but some chemicals can severely damage our health or the environment. There is growing interest in the possible health threat posed by endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs). They can be found in our environment, food, and consumer products. What do women need to know about EDCs? We find out with Dr Sibylle Ermler, research Fellow at the Institute of Environment, Health and Societies at Brunel University and Elizabeth Salter Green – Director of CHEMTrustPresenter: Jane Garvey Producer: Caroline DonneInterviewed guest: Nicola Headlam Interviewed guest: Cara Courage Interviewed guest: Paula Briggs Interviewed guest: Jill Dawson Interviewed guest: Dr. Sibylle Ermler Interviewed guest: Elizabeth Salter Green

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hi, this is Jane Garvey and this is the Woman's Hour podcast. It's Monday the 8th of April 2019. On the podcast today we'll talk to the novelist Jill Dawson. You'll hear some very frank chat about the Archers and the way the Archers treats women and the leading female characters and a really important conversation about menstrual flooding. It's a symptom of the menopause that, I don't know, people don't talk about perhaps quite as much as they should. So we certainly do talk about it

on this podcast today. First up then to a conversation about the Archers, which has always had women at its very heart, but it hasn't always treated its female characters entirely fairly. What about the question of class, for example, and just how feminist is The Archers? Well, that was a question amongst many others posed at an academic conference on the subject of The Archers over the weekend. Here's a little bit of what happened at that conference. Let's play Name That Tune. Dum-dee-dum-dee-dum-dee-dum Dum-dee-dum-dee-dum-dum Dum-dee-dum-dee-dum-dee-dum

Dum-dee-dum-dee-dum Dum-dee-dum-dee-dum-dee-dum Yeah, incredible that. That's the sound of people at an academic conference on the archers over the weekend. And if you think you've had enough, believe me, you haven't, because we're putting the archers over the weekend. And if you think you've had enough, believe me, you haven't, because we're putting the archers through an intellectual washing machine this morning on the programme.

It'll be a vigorous cycle. But there's a new book out. It's called Gender, Sex and Gossip in Ambridge, Women in the Archers. And it's written by Dr Cara Courage, head of Tate Exchange UK, the Tate's platform dedicated to socially engaged art. Cara, welcome. Good morning. And Dr Nicola Hedlum's here too, research fellow at the University of Oxford.

Welcome to you, Nicola. Hello. And you were both at the academic conference over the weekend. Were you making those noises to Cara? No, I was taking a very diplomatic job of actually filming that. I wouldn't add my voice to that. Oh, I was singing, definitely. Who are the delegates? And I mean that nicely.

We call them our academic fellows because they have this forensic knowledge of the arches. There are over 5,000 listening hours in the room. Years, sorry. And they are from all walks of life. They are academics, they're professionals in their field, but more than anything, we are all the listeners. And we even allow a few men.

Oh, yeah, no, men are absolutely fine. Yeah, certainly fine to listen to the Archers. We even welcome them here as well, I should say. So let's talk about the subjects that you were discussing over the weekend. Nicola, the name of some of the papers. Oh, they were wonderful this year. I mean, to be honest, people do camp it up for the best title. So we have a long-running best title award,

which the first year was won by Cider with Grundy. But this isn't about Curry Alistair. Iris Murdoch was just a joy, and that won best title this year. It was a hotly contested category. Well, that's actually very serious because this is about a plot line. This is about Shula and Alistair. They've been married sort of averagely happily for some years now. What was that reference to Curry? Well, in the paper, this wonderful moral philosopher argued that because Iris Murdoch had love

placed as a kind of pinnacle of life and you work through and you find yourself in your relationship. And I think that was the point that Shula kind of got a bit lost and lost herself in that marriage and then made the choice to end it quite unilaterally. And so it was sort of presented as a defence of Shula's choice if it was falling short of this. But from the classic line of Alistair wanting to try and make things better with Shula's choice if it was falling short of this mark. But from the classic line of Alistair wanting to try and make

things better with Shula was his response to that was let's make a curry and no response was it's not about curry Alistair which was just beautifully loaded Is Shula popular? No. And why not? She's sanctimonious

holier than thou. She has been called out on her hypocrisy this week, which was we do a live listen on a Sunday at the conference and there were whoops and cheers in that with Jim really taking her to task. Now, Jim is her former... Jim is her ex, yeah, her former father-in-law who'd never liked her. Yes, and he went in with one of the best things about no longer being related to you, which is kind of... Yeah, and then it came. Okay of the best things about no longer being related to you, which is kind of...

Yeah. Okay, on to Susan Carter and class, because this is important. Also, actually, Catherine's pitching in here. Linda Snell is probably supposed to be middle class, but she can be pretty awful and is judged accordingly. The way we view Susan isn't because of her class, but because she's annoying. Okay, well, I'm not sure. Cara? Well, there's three chapters in the book that talk about this.

And one of the people that talk about it is Charlotte Connor, who plays Susan. She's also a researcher, psychologist. And the issues of class come up into it. And the other chapters as well are saying, you know, the view of the gossip of the working-class matriarch, it's easy to throw mud at that kind of character. But Susan is far more complex than that.

It is right that, you know, if other women of a, as we perceive, higher class in the archers are gossiping, we don't call it gossip, but also something like Brian. Brian is a huge gossip, and we would never, ever think to call him that. But Susan gets that kind of flack very, very unfairly, I think. Is it because, well, go on, you were going to say something. There's just too much to say about Susan.

I mean, we could talk about Susan all day and all night. So as a research psychologist, she is the academic archer, as in she works as an academic. The actress who plays her. Yeah. And so she came and joined us last conference and wrote the chapter up. And it's just delicious, right? And so she came and joined us last conference and wrote the chapter up. And it's just delicious, right?

Because she's moving between being Susan, being Charlotte, being an observer. And really, it's actually on YouTube, the piece, and I really recommend it. She's absolutely amazing. And we're quite consistent. The people that we absolutely love, we love Susan and we also love Linda. And she came on Friday night and we had dinner with her. Oh, I can't imagine such a thing. It was amazing.

Alan on Twitter says, I think it was Tony Benn who once said the archers should be called the Grundies and their oppressors. It was Neil Kinnock. Oh, it was Neil Kinnock. We mention it all the time and we agree. Now, there is, in my chapter in the book, I talk about informal labour in the archers and the way that women colonise the lower status connective bits of the village, so through voluntary work and speed watch and all those things. And that's very much about that, that the Grundy women really need to use any capital available to them in order to advance their position.

And Susan's gossip is exactly that. The knowledge she has is power. She wants to advance herself. And I don't blame her for that at all. A couple more comments here. Alan says, the way women are treated, I've always believed it depends on the writers. Sometimes Pat has been a militant feminist,

but not so at other times. Now, I think that's interesting. We address this. In my chapter, I'm talking about her sort of supposed activism being quite shallow. So actually, through the Helen and Rob storyline, I did get quite deranged by Pat because I don't know, you know, there might be one or two feminists listening. Like being a feminist isn't talking about burning your bra at Greenham Common. It's about being an ally if somebody else is going through something. And her daughter was taken from her by a manipulative man. And partly because she felt that her radar weren't really working for him.

But she stepped back and let a big space develop into which that whole storyline. But then you have Olwen come in later, which was her trying to appease herself with that guilt. To try and save this past friend of hers who was homeless. I'd be better just... There'll be some people who are just thinking, what are these women talking about? A character who came in, played by Alison Stedman, I think. Yes!

Describe her. She was very opinionated, very, well, as you might classically... Pat's conscience. Yes, Pat's conscience, absolutely. But Olwen didn't let Pat off anything at all. So that part of Pat that has sort of mellowed over the years into something sort of quite perhaps safely middle class or what have you, Olwen did not let her get off on that.

And Pat found it really, really hard. And in the end, just sort of, again, just had to step back from that. And she was trying to ingratiate herself all the time. I'm still that person. It was horrible. one listener says i don't like the fact that a woman can't just be in her own right you've got to be paired up or there's something wrong with her can't you just be single with no kids absolutely we so agree with that working women my god say we uh yes that's i mean that basically is where we started was that we don't see reflections of us because we work long hours, do big jobs and all the rest of it and are child free.

So, in fact, Charlotte, again, when she came to talk to us, said, oh, there's a really intense flurry of plot around you as you get sort of paired up and have children. And we were, oh, God, we had a paper about that the weekend. The unplanned pregnancy and choices in The Archers. Absolutely brilliant. The Bechdel test. do The Archers fail it? They pass, well, by episode over the five-month period of the research, it passes around 40% of the time. That actually isn't that bad.

When you see, you know, pass rates in films are really decreasing at the moment. The Archers isn't doing that badly. And when you think that there are so many family relationships in that programme, so the women will naturally just be talking about the men anyway. A 40% pass rate is pretty good. Yeah, it's not bad. Well, room for improvement.

Oh, absolutely, of course. Room for improvement always, but you may have seen in publications that we were accused of calling the show sexist, and that's not how we would go. It made for a good headline though, didn't it? It did. Can we talk about the Archer family then? No, do we? Patricia Green, who plays

Jill Archer, one of my favourite guests on Women's Hour. I've also had Peggy who plays June. No, got that wrong. June who plays Peggy. This is all very real for me. Was also on the programme. Two formidable acting talents, I should say. But you're going to tell me, I think, that Jill Archer is a terrible mother.

She is. I mean, they both are as matriarchs. They're really psychologically unhealthy, enmeshed families. OK, take that on, please. Well, I mean, the Hedlum hypothesis states that the archers should die, but long live the archers. Right. So the actual main families are pretty insufferable. And yes, we lay and apportion quite a lot of the blame in the twin matriarchs of Peggy and Jill for various reasons, who at times can be interesting, but also at times are policing everyone's behaviour. And very passive aggressive that will not let their children flourish

have their own opinions even just leave the house so that they're not great examples of motherhood. So please don't misunderstand this isn't an ageist point just based on some of the slightly

outlandish positions that they've taken in the last few years. Oh, outlandish? I think that's a bit unfair. They're morally upright. There's no doubt they both care passionately about their families. Yeah, get out of the road, though. I mean, how can anyone sort of emerge as a functioning human out of either Brookfield or Bridge Farm?

I mean, let's face it, some of this enmeshedness that you hear has to be coming from them, right? They have to set a tone. Let's have a go at Ruth. Oh, yes. Ruth Schmoose. I mean, she was performing a relatively feminist function when she appeared because she was...

No, she's very much a working woman. She basically runs the place because David's a bit up in it. But she doesn't do the cooking. Well, again, David. You said something then. Go on. No, I mean, Ruth is just, she's just quite an annoying character.

And I think it's, yeah, she's not well liked really, I think, amongst the listenership at all. It's partly to do with her voice, which is another paper that we had at the conference today. Sorry. No, people do say it like that.

What's wrong with Ruth's voice? Before, her pronunciation, Toby, all of that kind of thing, Twitter goes alight. Oh, no. But as our resident linguist Rob Drummond always tells us, if you criticise somebody's accent, you're normally criticising more than just their accent.

I think we know exactly what people are criticising. I want fans of Ruth Archer to contact Woman's Hour, please. In their droves, the Ruth Archer fan club. I'd like to meet all three of them. Rebecca says, I'm absolutely behind Jim when it comes to Shula, but the response to Lily's job

was ridiculous compared to the care heaped on Freddie and Natasha's debt, which had to be mansplayed to her husband. Yeah, well, these are the livest of the live issues.

So lots of chat on Twitter about how some of the opprobrium for Natasha from Tom, I would have walked out of there straight away. I think that even if she has debts that she hadn't disclosed, the fact that his immediate, his go-to is condescension, kind of just horrid way of describing and discussing. There was an awful thing as well, like his voice when she was saying it,

her debts are from clothes and going and spending meals. That was so weighted. But there was a thing on Twitter about how, oh, everyone's just down on her because she's the wrong sort of woman. So we kind of spent a lot of time, what is the wrong sort of woman? Well, the wrong sort of woman tends to get up and leave Ambridge and to seek their fame and fortune elsewhere. Yes, like Hazel, like Brenda, all gone but not forgotten.

Women of property, women of means. They get out. They exercise the choice of the aeroplane out of there. Right, well, I have to say you've both upset a lot of listeners, which is excellent, exactly what we intended. So thank you both very much. Let's have a spirited debate. I want fans of Ruth in particular.

Oh, hang on, somebody has said they are a fan of Ruth oh no it's just people trying to impersonate this is very unfair because you can't impersonate on Twitter it doesn't work and also Felicity Finch

who plays Ruth is a fine upstanding woman works for us sometimes here on The Hour and she's an absolute legend so I will not have it said well you should probably give her our book

I think yeah well I'll pass it on thank you both very much. More of this sort of thing in the Woman's Hour podcast available later. So many of you will be thinking, well, it's not for me or it's completely nailed on for me today. That will be available later. Thank you both very much, Nicola and Cara. Thank you.

Now, the menopause is something, I mean, Lord knows we've discussed the menopause on this programme. But I was really interested by something that cropped up in my own life relatively recently. People experiencing menopausal flooding. This is effectively really heavy and quite sudden bleeding. About 25% of women at this time in their life get this thing. It can be during the perimenopause or part of the menopause itself. Paula Briggs is a consultant in reproductive health at Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust. Paula, good morning to you. Good morning. Now, I'm going to just read a couple of emails that came in on this subject,

because we had a lot when I mentioned that we were doing it on Twitter last week. This listener says, it happens to me, has done for the past few years. I haven't let it stop me going out, but it does mean using two tampons at a time plus pads as well. I've had to deal with leaving stains on restaurant chairs and on clothes, clots, splashes on bathroom floors. I can't just abandon my reception class. The biggest tampon and two night-time sanitary towels usually sufficed until I could get to the loo at lunchtime. I had to be really careful with wardrobe choices. Night-time flooding was embarrassing and unpleasant. I had to buy a new bed. All this, it just seems to be something that so many women, Paula,

just think they've got to put up with. But it isn't true, is it? No, and I think it's really good that awareness is being raised that heavy menstrual bleeding is a very common symptom of the menopause transition. I think it's really difficult with bleeding for women to understand what's unacceptable because they don't know what other women are experiencing. What happens in the menopause transition is that ovulation doesn't occur regularly and so the lining of the womb becomes too thick and because

women don't release an egg they don't have any progesterone which would balance the situation and so when they do bleed it's fairly chaotic often with flooding and clots and it's embarrassing for them and makes it difficult at work and there are lots of different treatment options available. Are you more likely to have to go through this if you have fibroids or have had them in the past? Yeah so for most women the bleeding is dysfunctional, it's hormonal but for other women there are physical causes and you know that highlights the need for proper investigation and management of bleeding at this time. Right so what can women do? I think if a woman thinks her bleeding is

heavy or unacceptable she should go to her GP in the first instance. There are really clear nice guidelines about management options. Mirena is first line and not all women want to have a Mirena fitted that's a coil yes a hormonal intrauterine system but there are also non-hormonal drugs which can be used and other hormonal treatment options but other methods of managing this time which are not dependent on drugs, things like endometrial ablation, which is a way of destroying the lining of the womb. And that would all depend on the right investigations having been done beforehand, things like ultrasound and hysteroscopy. In your experience, how long do women put up with this before they seek help?

Far too long. And I think that's because they don't know that it's a specific problem that occurs around this time. It happens at extremes of reproductive life. Young women, when they start having periods, again, don't always ovulate and sometimes have very heavy bleeding. And then it happens again towards the end of reproductive life. So in the end, it is actually tragically still all about education, isn't it? Absolutely, yeah. So I suppose it slightly boggles my mind that we're still at the point where women are still not being told the facts about what might lie ahead for them.

Yeah, and I think knowing what might lie ahead means that women will go for help much sooner. And I think sadly also sometimes women go for help and they're told actually that it'll be going away soon because they're almost menopausal and that's not right. And we have, as I said, very clear guidelines now from NICE about how we should manage these problems. And yeah, but would every GP know about the guidelines

and be sympathetic necessarily? Not necessarily. And that's why, you know, programmes like this which will reach lots of women, are so important. Can I just read a couple more emails to you, if you don't mind? Here's one listener who says, I've had a period for the last three weeks intermittently so heavy that a super plus tampon lasts less than an hour. A couple of weeks ago, I had to give a lecture, I am a lecturer, she says, about anatomy theatres, revenge, tragedy and the body. And I could feel the blood soaking into my tights

before the end of the lecture. Not a good day. There's just one illustration of somebody, a woman essentially at the peak of her professional powers, who is worried sick about this. You just feel so vulnerable, don't you? Yeah, and there's nothing good about bleeding women who have chronically heavy periods will often become anemic and that can lead to depression and what you know along with the other symptoms of menopause make it virtually impossible to cope at work right um and then you might be forced to take time off or even just not go out of the house which some women are telling us they're doing. Yeah, I think that happens to lots of women. Right, here's another listener who says, my experience of this reminded me very much of having a miscarriage.

I have lost two babies and I felt like I'd dealt with it. However, this incredibly heavy period bleeding stirred some deep feelings of grief and really made me think about my life and my experiences. That's very sad as well. Another one, everyone thinks the bleeding becomes lighter, but for many of us it doesn't. I am literally flooded for two to three days of every month. It makes me severely anemic and leaves me very tired.

I recently did a long train journey and was terrified that I would leak. I mean, this living in fear is also a constant. Actually, Paula, what practical steps can you take just having a tampon in at all times isn't really a solution is it? No definitely not I think being aware that it's not just Mirena

there are other treatment options in the past we all knew a family member who'd had a hysterectomy but we hardly do any hysterectomies now because there are such fantastic alternative treatment options. And I think also having the message that this is really common, we all, I think, are aware of hot flushes and night sweats as being common menopausal symptoms,

but raising awareness that heavy menstrual bleeding is also a common presenting problem that can be managed to improve quality of life. And it's not just about the woman herself, it's about her family and her colleagues who would also suffer as a result. But obviously the woman is the most important. Just a really basic question to end with, if you don't mind. Where is that tipping point between something that you might be expected to put up with

and something you should never expected to put up with and something you should never have to put up with well for me actually i don't think anybody should have to put up with heavy bleeding at all i you know i think the tipping point should be brought forward so that women are informed um that this may happen that they can be treated um that's what's the important message. HRT helpful or not? Can be helpful. So what women who are in the menopause transition would be provided with normally would be sequential hormone replacement therapy that induces a withdrawal bleed. So it's not a period, but it's often lighter and more manageable and that's an important choice for the women who don't want Mirena

with ADVAC oestrogen and I think this is all about choice and as you said about education and information raising awareness but nobody should have to suffer like that and it's a case of going through the treatment options and at the very end of that there will be a small number of women for example who may have very large fibroids of going through the treatment options. And at the very end of that,

there will be a small number of women, for example, who may have very large fibroids who do need to have a hysterectomy, but they're few and far between. Yeah. The hysterectomy, you say it's going out of fashion effectively or it's gone out of fashion. Is that challenged at all? Well, I don't know that going out of fashion

is the right term. It's really been superseded by other less invasive choices and you know we would have to justify why a woman was having a hysterectomy to ensure that she had been offered other choices. When you mentioned fibroids there are now drugs to treat fibroids, so medication which is least invasive, and other procedures like uterine artery embolisation. And I just feel that it's crucial that women are given the right information and allowed to make the right choice for them. Thank you very much for taking the time in what I know is a busy working day to talk to us, Paula. Thank you.

It's a pleasure. Thank you. Really appreciate it. Take care. Paula Briggs, a consultant in reproductive health at the Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust. And I can see on Twitter that a lot of people have found that helpful. And just to emphasise, there are no taboos here, certainly not about the menopause. So if there's anything you want us to talk about at BBC Women's Hour, we will do our utmost to make sure that we do talk about everything freely, because it's so important to get the information out there.

Now in our parenting series, on Wednesday of this week we're going to be looking at children with food allergies. If your child has recently been diagnosed with an allergy do contact us via the website bbc.co.uk slash womanshour. What was their first allergic reaction like?

What did you do? What's helped and how are you living with it all so that's on Wednesday of this week. Jill Dawson's latest novel is called The Language of Birds and it was inspired by the infamous murder of a nanny Sandra Rivett at the so-called Lord Lucan affair. In her novel Jill imagines two nannies, Rosemary and Mandy, who go down to London for adventures and get caught up in a tale of domestic violence. Rosemary is psychic and hears voices, and in this reading, she hears the voice of her friend Mandy for the first time. The night it happened, the Thursday when Mandy went down to the basement kitchen,

I was in Belgravia. I was washing up and a bubble of liquid popped on a long wooden spoon and I looked at it. And I can remember standing by the window staring out at a great drooping cherry tree that Lady Jane had in her London garden. And it was dark, so I couldn't really see the tree, just shapes. Quarter past nine. Instead, I saw I was seeing Mandy's little navy court shoes for no reason at all, as if they were in front of me, seeing them right there in the black pane of glass. I mean truly vivid, shiny, navy patent, small, scattered, footless. That was the word that popped into my head because she wasn't wearing them. Then footloose and fancy free. Her voice came at me with a slicing pain in the head and a scream

and a shock like the first time when the swan spoke to me and then a chilling icy trickle. It was a lovely sweet voice Mandy's was, young sounding, saying my name over and over. Rosemary, Rosie, she called. Help me. I asked Jill why she'd chosen to write a book about a case that everybody knows about, or at least thinks they know about. Yes, we think we know it. 1974, Sandra Rivett was murdered. But what I discovered is that there was a great deal of attention paid to Lord Lucan. I mean, the Evening News offered a crate of champagne for a fictional account of his whereabouts. So can you imagine the pain of the family of the victim, that their daughter's murder was being made into a kind of competition. And I was thinking that's a story that hasn't been told. In fact, at the inquest, Sandra's

aunt said this has been all about him, meaning Lucan, and our poor Sandra has been forgotten. Do you feel okay about writing about this case, bearing in mind that you've already said that the central character should be the poor murdered woman and here we are revisiting all this again and I'm assuming she does have family who are still alive and she does mourning her she does and it's very much the story of Mandy and Rosemary actually created characters they're from a different place but it is based on a different age no I would say it's the life of two young women who worked as nannies, and one of them meets a tragedy. My two girls, Mandy and Rosemary, come from the Cambridge offends. Mandy is an only child whose parents live in a caravan. And it's very much about

her escaping from the mistakes she made and wanting to start a new, exciting life in London because she's a girl full of adventure and actually full of hope. She's taken a few knockbacks but doesn't give up on things. And for her, Upstairs Downstairs was on the telly at the time, very, very popular, and this Upstairs Downstairs existence, very glamorous. She was, you know, she's thrilled by it.

I do think it's very, one has to be sensitive and it's a very delicate thing to write a novel about the story when there are living relatives. But so many others have done it about Lucan, you know, making him almost the hero of the piece, the protagonist. In fact, one reviewer claimed, my Lord Morven wasn't charming enough. I mean, I think he was about as charming as he deserved to be. This is a different story that I've wanted to tell about the lives of girls, you know, the lives of birds, the language of birds. Your Lord Lucan figure, Lord Morven,

it is interesting that Rosemary, who is the perhaps more gullible friend of Mandy, is rather taken by him, actually. They do meet and she's rather drawn into his dizzy world. Well, I think being a working-class girl and coming to work for an aristocratic family would have been absolutely dazzling. And that's one of the things that Rosemary's very taken by. And also, I think you have to show that, I mean, whenever there's a

murder or victim of some awful violent atrocity, people will often say of the perpetrator, he seemed like a nice guy, such a quiet man, because people don't know unless they actually experience the person in a, you know, rage. How can they know what they're capable of? And I wanted to show that Dickie, Lord Morven, to all intents and purposes, was, you know, perfectly nice chap going about his business, rather angry at his estranged wife. But, you know, perfectly reasonable. What's really striking about the book is that actually everything has changed and nothing has changed because I actually don't think things would be any different if such a dreadful crime were to occur next week. Well, depressingly, I agree.

I actually wrote a novel about a woman escaping a violent relationship, Trick of the Light, 23 years ago. And this one is about, if you like, a girl who doesn't escape a violent situation. And in those intervening 23 years, you know, statistics show two women a week still murdered by partners and ex-partners. You know, we've a long, long way to go to change attitudes towards victims who are frequently, if not blamed for their own death, sort of cited in it. You know, they're too sexy, they're having an affair, they're nags. There are reasons we are led to believe why women get murdered, rather than the reason of men's violence or men's, you know,

sense of sort of ability to do so, unfettered. And coverage, we know, let's say there were some sort of, of I obviously hope there isn't but if there were a similar incident in the next couple of months or years in Britain I could pretty much guarantee that the coverage in the media would be pretty much the same as it was well what do you think? I think it would I think there are some attempts to change that I see things on social media where people examine how murder cases are reported and look at how often they talk about the man being a nice guy holding down a job. Caring. Yes, caring, rather than actually saying violent man murders, you know, someone who is kind of there's something

about trying to make excuses for him that I think is problematic. And in a case such as the one I've written about, the fact of the huge class distinction obviously plays its part. She's a working class girl, he's a member of the aristocracy. But so does a terrible bias towards, you know, sort of the drama that his escape, you know, from justice seemed to provoke in people. I'd say just quickly that my novel is very much about two young nannies who are alive. There isn't a corpse in the novel until very near the end, very sort of briefly mentioned.

It's not actually especially about that. It's about the lives that they were trying to have before one of them was tragically cut off and there is another really tragic element to this isn't there about another yet another murder it's unbelievable yes and that's also based on a true one so the other murder that happens 10 years later is another nanny who worked in the household so that in the novel she's called louise but that was based very much on a small detail in the Lucan case that another woman who had been a nanny and whose testimony about him had been both invited and then discarded you know people had asked her what was he like and she'd said he was frightening

and he had his own key and I didn't like him but she was considered not a reliable witness curiously because 10 years later she was murdered and in her own case she it was suggested that she was a nag a nightmare and somehow this discredited the account she gave 10 years previously I mean extraordinary but I show it shows the logic of the victim blaming and how far that goes, I think. Does it make, I mean, bearing in mind you have already written about this, as you say, over 20 years ago. Are you mildly despairing or are you just going to keep, you might have to write another book like this in 23 years time? I hope not. I hope not. I do get despairing when the alternative narrative is frequently played out.

I think we are being fed a line, if you like. There's so many dramas where women are equally likely to be murderers. And actually, it's a very rare event, as we all know. But we should also say, of course, that men are four times more likely than women to be murdered. Yes, exactly. And also that the victims of murder, you know, it isn't very likely to be a stranger in the way that is presented, often come from the same community in all cases for men and women. So I think the sort of drama where it's a serial killer picking off somebody because of the letters of their name, those ones really do irritate me. I don't find it entertaining. And another quick point is there's very few murders in Britain, actually,

statistically every year. So the family... Not on telly, of course. No, of course, the families of murder victims are few and far between. And they're not in a position to be articulate about how they feel about how things are presented, because they're in grief and often, you know, remain so for a very long time. So I did want to give a voice, if you like. I mean, I was really struck by Sandra Zant saying, it's all been about him and everyone has forgotten our poor Sandra. So despite this being another story about two fen girls, I did want to honour that, really.

That's the novelist Jill Dawson. The book is called The Language of Birds. Back in February, the Environmental Audit Committee launched an inquiry into the impact of toxic chemicals in everyday life. The chair of the committee is the MP Mary Cray, who said the use and control of toxic, toxic chemicals in everyday products is a pressing environmental issue with serious implications for human health. Well, one sort of toxic chemicals to be looked at are the so-called endocrine disruptors or EDCs. They're in the environment, they're in food and they're in things like scented candles and shampoo. So how concerned should we be? Dr. Sybil Ermler is a research fellow at the Institute of Environment, Health and Societies at Brunel University. Welcome to the programme, Sybil. And Elizabeth Salter-Green

is director of ChemTrust. This is an environmental charity funded by, amongst others, Greenpeace and the WWF. If we can just get an absolute definition from you, Sybil, what are we talking about here? What is an EDC? So endocrine disrupting chemicals are chemical substances that can alter the function of the hormonal system in humans and also in wildlife and that then in turn can have a negative effect on on health. But where would we find them in our everyday life? So they are mostly man-made chemicals but they're also chemicals that are found in in plants and yeah so we're exposed to them via water via the air via our food and they come from food packaging, also from additives

that are actually added to food and then in consumer products like cosmetics, also cleaning products. So anybody listening today to this program, they are surrounded by EDCs. Yes. So it's just, I think the important thing to point out is the levels of these chemicals that we're exposed to. And then we have to make sure that the levels are safe. And we're exposed to all of them. Right. And we always have been? Or are we now exposed to higher levels than at any other time? I think we haven't always been, but we have been in the past ever since man-made chemicals came on the market and I think they're getting more and more, but they might be less hazardous because they are now made to be safer

and to be less adding up in our bodies and our tissues. So we need to find out how well they accumulate in our bodies and if the levels are safe. Elizabeth, what precisely are you concerned about? I think one of the greatest concerns that ChemTrust has is that our endocrine system, our hormone system, those two words mean the same thing, is an incredibly finely balanced one. And that system, our hormone chemical messaging system, is profoundly connected to our nervous and our immune system. And so any chemical that can come along and muck up our hormones has the possibility to be very detrimental to our sexual development, our growth, and possibly most worrying for in utero development is neurological development of the fetus developing in utero.

Go on. Well, and many of these chemicals that come onto the market are not tested for those very endpoints because, of course, one can't test on pregnant mummies. That would be utterly, utterly unethical. Well, first of all, Sybil, is that right? Yes, that is right. And at the moment, we don't have for all of those endpoints the proper test system. So that's what we're working on to develop those test systems so we can make sure.

OK, just to be very clear then, Sybil, there's no doubt in your mind that we should be looking into this, that the Environmental Audit Committee are doing the right thing. Yes, I agree. OK, Elizabeth, go on because I think you had more to say. Yes, I think what we do currently under chemicals policy, under chemicals legislation, is that legislation lags behind the most up-to-date science. Like those people at the Institute at Brunel, like people studying and publishing in The Lancet, they're flagging chemicals all the time. Oh, we're worried about this flame retardant because of its neurological impacts.

But it takes decades for the chemicals legislation to catch up. And so that is ChemTrust's role is to highlight that gap, that lag, and to say, come on, pull your fingers out and get this chemicals legislation up to speed and more efficient to protect humans and wildlife, and particularly future generations of humans and wildlife. Right. I mean, is there any doubt in your mind, Sybil, about the idea that, in fact, women are more vulnerable here because we tend to, for example, consume more products, we're encouraged to consume more of these products?

Yes, I think that's one side of it. And the other side of it that, as Elizabeth said, exposure during foetal development is quite important. So the exposure of a woman is actually also exposure of the fetus because a lot of these chemicals can actually cross the placenta and go into the fetus. And then we have the really important developmental windows for the fetus. And then it's in later life only that we see those effects. I think that's why it's important that we safeguard women from exposure to those chemicals.

How can we safeguard women? I think that's where proper regulation comes in, that we make sure that we're not exposed to those chemicals in the first place or exposed at safe levels. And then, of course, consumers can look at what they're exposed to and what they consume, but I think that's where it gets really hard to make those decisions. It does get hard because I don't know about you, Elizabeth,

how much time have you got to actually check the ingredients of every single product that crosses into your household? You're absolutely right. So the first major thing is for regulation. However, I think there are lots of things that consumers can do. And I think, you know, try not to give your kids plastic toys. Try and give them wooden toys, things that they aren't going to put in their mouth and chew and get the plastics leaching into them. I think another very good area is till receipts.

Don't, you know, hold on to those. Very quickly, why not? Well, because till receipts are made of bisphenol A being replaced by bisphenol S, a nasty hormone-disrupting chemical that has links to diabetes, obesity, coronary heart disease, and hormonally driven cancers like that. I mean, that will terrify some people. Sybil, is that correct? That is correct, but again, we have to make sure that the levels we're exposed to are considered as well. So things actually...

But it's true with the till receipts and it's good to avoid exposure to those. I have no idea about that. And I think railway tickets as well are another thing, are they? Yeah. Different receipts are kind of composed of different levels of chemicals and paper. So it's... Right. But I think the important thing here to know is that there might not be

a safe level if you think about a fetus developing in utero it is sensitive to chemicals not in parts per million or billion but parts per trillion and therefore there might be no safe level for you to be exposed as a pregnant woman to that bisphenol a and especially when you are exposed to so many tens of chemicals all at the same time. Are they adding up? Are they throwing you over the threshold for effect? Well, yeah, but we're made up of chemicals. We are chemicals. There are

chemicals everywhere. I think we have to be a little careful not to terrify the living daylights out of everybody listening. Thank you both very much. Elizabeth Salter-Green, Director of ChemTrust, and you also heard from Dr. Sybil Ermler, who's from the Institute of Environment, Health and Societies at Brunel University.

So we're back in Ambridge for more frank chat about the archers. Cara and Nicola are here. Now, dynasties, who are the next generation? Who have you got your money on? Well, Nicola has a whole hypothesis on this. Go on, let's hear it. Right, so my first academic culture paper, so something that I have done a lot of is social network analysis,

so really complicated diagrams of power and authority and peripherality and centrality, or this is all the social scientific gumph. But I applied it to Ambridge, and we had 94 people who were connected by birth or marriage, which is kind of amazing really because that's not even when you get into who's friends with whom who sleeps with whom who drinks with whom right so that was the fully extended kinship network of the village terrifying

and potentially wrong I think wrong on a number of levels but anyway so you build this network which I did I say painstakingly and then you can play around with it. And I did it, I think it was five years ago, when we didn't have any of these odd blow-in babies that have sort of emerged out of all these extremely loosely attached people who seem to, I mean, I don't mean to sound like Mary Whitehouse, but what was wrong with finding a chap you liked, living together for a bit and then producing a child within the conventions?

I mean, chap, chap, lady, lady, that's all fine. are these but i don't have let that blow in go and i shouldn't have done what do you mean blow-ins so what is going on with pip and toby right so they've they had so they had they have had a baby together but they're no in no sense really parenting it as a family the only isn't that modern life well it is it is. There is that. But it's not the only thing, the only story. I mean, I know people that have had children. Fair enough. I know people that have had children and then got divorced. But it's not that there's nobody as a family unit in our generation. Not at all. I mean, quite the contrary, in fact. So then they had, they almost went there with Tom because he and Kirsty almost had their child.

The only baby at that time, a couple of years ago, was Mungo, who was born to a stable couple. And that is, you have to remind me, Linda's? Linda's stepdaughter and Lillian's son, James. Now, the point, this is important. Get to your point. What? now the point this is important get to your point what the point is mungo if you put mungo in the center of the network then the matriarch power shifts to linda and lillian i mean how marvelous is that linda and lillian then become the twin grannies the granny power and we shift

because they then connected pip to the Fairbrother thing and they've put the Archers back central. So it was a road not travelled. But this is the point, is that the main families, the main Archers families are the awful characters and the peripheral characters are more fun. Well, there's a clue in the flaming title, isn't there? I know, the Archers family will never leave the Archers.

No, no, no, no. Of course the Archers should be in the archers, but we could have had I have great hopes for Mungo. I have great hopes. There's also the fall of the House of Aldridge though, so if we're talking dynasties, there's going to be some very, very ripe stuff happening there. Rory. Rory is a very

interesting character, but the politics between Kate and Alice as well. For Peggy's money. I mean, inheritance all the way around. Is that why they're taking Peggy shopping? I want to believe people are just nice. Is it just to get their mitts on her money? Well, no, but she's played so much politics with her money. Think of the Tom stuff.

That was all rooted in, I choose you over your father. You know, you're a lovely businessman. I mean, let's face it. I mean, he wouldn't get a GCSE in business studies. His business plans are total nonsense based on fantasy. But Granny said that he was special boy, special boy going to get all the money. And it's completely destroyed his personality and character

as far as I can see. And Kate is, well, our age. Yes, literally my age. And yeah, she's taking Granny shopping so she can have somewhere to live, which is atrocious. And Granny then turns on the working class woman who's done for her for years in order to make a cheap point about Kate can't use a dishwasher.

I don't think so. Can I just ask, are there taboos? No, is there a place the archer should have gone, plot-wise, and hasn't? Is there anything, any modern phenomena it has failed to embrace or acknowledge? So one of our early papers was about the leaving of the Tuckers because their baby was Downs

and Catherine Wandsworth Cole argued really powerfully that if we have this retained thing where you only have disabled characters as narrative prosthetic devices for your speech and you put them in a cupboard somewhere else, they go to Birmingham to school, then you're never going to be able to have the full spectrum of people that are differently abled in the village. I hadn't thought about that. That is true. That character left and that could have been. Yeah. And Catherine, she still tweets us hashtag bring back Bethany because Downs families should be visible in mainstream society. Good point. And Catherine, as a professor of disability studies, I mean, this isn't a joke for her at all.

No, it's not a joke. But I think with all the storylines, depending on who you are and what your life's focus are, you can be dissatisfied and not think that the storylines are going far enough in any particular aspect. What about ethnicity? Well,

I mean, Usha, there was the bit where Roy was a sort of covert, quick far-right activist and then that all stopped when he grew up a bit. So Usha had a rough time getting to the village as a Hindu lady that then married the vicar. I hadn't heard from her eithericar. Yes, it's...

I hadn't heard from her either recently. No, she's been very quiet. Yeah, she's been in a cupboard as well. There was a paper on ethnicity, which... So there's only one non-white character and we haven't heard from her for a long time. That's right. I think that's right, yeah.

But the countryside is whiter than the cities, so, you know, we don't want to... But I grew up in a countryside, and when I go back to see my family, it is a lot more diverse and mixed than I remember growing up. It has changed, and it is changing. It's not set in aspect. It's not this bucolic image that people have. And The Archers does reflect that a lot but yes

it has been criticised for not having a diversity there and yeah I'd say I agree and again lesbians invisible lesbians there's been a lot of talk obviously. Well whispers reach me that it's not impossible for a leading character

to possibly be about to plunge into late life lesbianism? Well, bring it on is what I say. It might make Sheila interesting. Oh, God. Look, I've met the lady who plays her. She's absolutely charming. Listen, I think they're all lovely people.

And actually making them odious and kind of difficult is partly their skill as actors and actresses, right? So I think there's particularly, you know, having met Carol and Charlotte, the skill of those women and taking written words and turning it into characters that feel like they've got a real life and a backstory. And in fact, that was one of the things that Carol was talking about on friday wasn't it she had like alter ego enemies from the past before she moved to manchester moved to manchester moved to ambridge who she used to kind of as foils for her saying different things that's exactly like dorian proofrock would have said to me in sunningdale we were really like oh wow she has an inner life that character well quite can i just have one more reference to the curry just one of you say that line oh it's not about curry alistair well it wasn't as well delivered that time um cara and nicola thank you both very much can we all just acknowledge how much pleasure the whole thing

gives us uh i love it i love the archers uh woman's uh back program and podcast tomorrow boy you while you're here have a listen to this, would you? Forest 404 An environmental thriller for BBC Sounds I'm so sorry Meet Pan For what? She lives a few centuries from now After a data crash that wiped out most records of life A shock

So when she finds an old recording of a rainforest She has no idea what it is Forest 404 Nine part thriller. Nine part talk. Nine part soundscape. Starring Pearl Mackie, Tanya Moody and Pippa Haywood. With theme music by Bonobo.

Subscribe now on BBC Sounds. Subscribe now. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. 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 was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know.

It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC 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.