Greta Gerwig on Little Women, Signe Johansen, Ursula Owen and Marlene Hobsbawm
Woman's Hour
BBC
4.1 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 20 December 2019
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jo March has been an inspiration for many women over the 150 years since Louisa May Alcott’s 'Little Women' was first published in 1869. Greta Gerwig is the director of the latest film version, to be released on Boxing Day - and it's already been highly praised, Greta talks about her life-long love for the character of Jo and her passion for bringing her to the big screen. Marlene Hobsbawm and Ursula Owen have recently published their memoirs, Meet Me in Buenos Aires and Single Journey Only. Both women are in their eighties and both were born to Jewish emigres families who settled in England before the Second World War. They both married at a young age, by the standards of today, to men on the political left. Both loved music and both adored their children. But, there are also significant differences. Marlene was married to one man for 50 years. Ursula had many significant relationships. Work and feminism played a large part in Ursula’s life. Marlene established her music career much later on. They join Jenni to discuss their memoirs. And, Signe Johansen’s new book 'Spirited: How to create easy, fun drinks at home' attempts to opens up the world of cocktails to everyone and celebrates coming together over drinks. She joins Jenni in the studio to make an Oolong, Whisky and Spice Punch.
Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Ruth Watts
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts |
| 0:06.0 | Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's R podcast for Friday, the 20th of December. |
| 0:13.5 | Two eminent women, Ursula Owen and Marlene Hobbsborm, both in their ages, have published |
| 0:19.6 | their memoirs, while look back on a long life at this time. |
| 0:25.5 | Look, the perfect today is, mix the perfect, senior Johansson's latest book is, |
| 0:30.5 | spirited, how to create easy fun drinks at home, most appropriate for the time of year, |
| 0:36.5 | and a serial, the final episode of Subterranean Home Sick Blues. |
| 0:41.5 | Now there's a lot of excitement in the air about the new film of Louisa May Olcott's |
| 0:46.5 | Little Women, which opens in the cinemas on Boxing Day. |
| 0:50.5 | It's the eighth time the story of the March sisters, published in 1869, has been filmed. |
| 0:57.5 | In the new adaptation, Sosha Ronan plays Joe the Inspiration for so many of us who wanted |
| 1:03.5 | to become writers, and the film is directed by Greta Gerwig. |
| 1:07.5 | Jane asked her why we needed a new film version of the novel. |
| 1:12.5 | When I reread the book, when I was an adult, and it had been a book that I had loved when |
| 1:17.5 | I was young, and the character of Joe March was the character that made me want to be |
| 1:21.5 | a writer, and made me feel like there was a kindred spirit for me in the world. |
| 1:26.5 | But when I read it as an adult, I was just completely gobsmacked by how modern it was, |
| 1:34.5 | and how pressing it was, and it felt like the entire undercurrent of the book, |
| 1:40.5 | the themes that were running under it, were about authorship, ownership, women, art, commerce, |
| 1:48.5 | money, and ambition, and those are the things I'm thinking about, and those are the things |
| 1:54.5 | that the world is thinking about, and I thought I wanted to re-look at it with those things in the foreground. |
| 2:01.5 | Okay, take us to your, I don't know, was it your adolescence when you read Little Women? |
... |
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