You're listening to the London Review of Books podcast. I'm Thomas Jones. My guest today is Mary Wellesley, the author of Hidden Hands, the lives of manuscripts and their makers, and a presenter with Irina Dmitrescu of several close readings podcast series for the LRB on medieval women, medieval beginnings, and currently medieval humour. The latest episode of that on Old English Riddles is out now.

But today Mary and I will be discussing her piece in the current issue of the LRB,

a review of Mother Tong, The Surprising History of Women's Words by Jenny Nuttall.

Hello Mary and thank you very much for talking with me today.

Hi Tom. It's so nice to be here.

Wendy Donegar, reviewing a translation of the Mahaburata for the NRB a few years ago, observed that English, unlike Sanskrit, lacks precise sexual terms that are neither obscene nor medical. But as Jenny Nuffles' book makes clear, Mary, that wasn't always the case, was it?

Yes, it's one of the things that's really wonderful about this book is this very rich

history of a terminology for particularly female anatomy and other aspects of kind of female

experience, some of which have survived in modern English, some have changed and some have

just completely disappeared

for reasons that are somewhat obscure.

And you begin your piece talking about, well, about different words for women's genitals.

I mean, even the word denizens is one of these words, isn't it?

That's sort of one of these Latin words that's been introduced as a way to talk about things without using English, as it were.

Yes, exactly.

And that's one of the things that Nuttall talks about is how much of this vocabulary is very kind of overtly medicalised and Latinate and reflects the influence of, I mean, this is a bit of a simplification, but basically as women's medicine and

specifically kind of childbirth, midwifery, gynecology, became increasingly the preserve of

male medical doctors rather than kind of community midwives as it would always have been up to

that point in around the 17th century. You have the proliferation of this kind of community midwives as it would always have been up to that point in around the 17th

century, you have the proliferation of this kind of terminology that is very latinate and

and sort of prosaic and strange. I mean, that word genitals, I always find it so odd that it's in the

plural, like as though there are several.

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