Actor Vicky Knight, Conscription, Author Lesley Pearse

Woman's Hour

BBC

Society & Culture

4.1 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 19 March 2024

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves is today delivering a speech in which she’ll promise to ‘reform the Treasury’. If Labour were to win the next General Election, she would be the first female Chancellor the UK has seen. But what would her economic plans mean for women? And how do they compare to the current government’s? Economic Adviser Vicky Pryce and Journalist Lucy Fisher join Emma Barnett to discuss.

Bestselling novelist Lesley Pearse has written 31 books and sold over 10 million copies worldwide. But she didn’t start writing until her mid-30s, and it would be another 13 years before her first novel was published. Now Lesley has written an autobiography of her extraordinary life – from a difficult childhood to making shepherd’s pie for David Bowie. She joins Emma to tell her story.

Denmark is set to become the latest country to extend military conscription to women. This comes as Russia has warned the war there could spin out of control and expand geographically. What’s it like for women living in the Nordic countries, three of whom have now introduced female conscription? Emma speaks to The Guardian’s Nordic Correspondent Miranda Bryant and Nora Tangseth from the Organisation of Representatives of the Norwegian Conscripts who is in the Norwegian Army.

The new film Silver Haze is based on recollections of real events in actor Vicky Knight’s childhood, including when she survived an arson attacked aged just eight. Vicky talks to Emma about blending her real childhood experiences with the narrative of the film, and why she wanted to tell her story.

Presenter: Emma Barnett Producer: Lottie Garton

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and trust me you'll get there in a moment but if you're a comedy fan
0:05.2	I'd really like to tell you a bit about what we do. I'm Julie Mackenzie and I commission comedy
0:10.2	podcast at the BBC. It's a bit of a dream job really.
0:13.0	Comedy is a fantastic joyous thing to do because really you're making people laugh,
0:18.0	making people's days a bit better, helping them process, all manner of things.
0:22.0	But you know I also know that comedy is really
0:24.4	subjective and everyone has different tastes so we've got a huge range of comedy on offer
0:29.6	from satire to silly shocking to soothing profound to just general pratting about. So if you
0:36.2	fancy a laugh, find your next comedy at BBC Sounds.
0:41.0	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:45.0	Hello, I'm Emma Barnet and welcome to Woman's A from BBC Radio 4.
0:50.0	Good morning and welcome to the program.
0:52.0	Today we are going to try to get to grips with the
0:55.2	plans of the woman hoping to be this country's first female Chancellor as Rachel Reeves steps up.
1:01.3	The actor and health care assistant Vicky Knight will be here to explain
1:04.8	why she is reliving the experience of a fire in her grandfather's pub which
1:09.4	left her badly burned and bereaved in a new powerful film.
1:14.0	And as Denmark extends military conscription to women for the first time,
1:18.0	we look at the detail and question what this means for equality and security. But I'm also going to be joined today by a
1:24.7	novelist who has turned her writing energies and focused towards her own life.
1:29.0	Leslie Pierce who once made Shepherds Pie for one young David Bowie and has fond memories of the summer of love in 60s London
1:36.2	has also faced her own share of heartache having struggled to make ends meet and giving up her firstborn son
	...

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