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Woman's Hour

Weekend Woman's Hour: Gisèle Pelicot and Mother Courage

Woman's Hour

BBC

Society & Culture

4.13K Ratings

🗓️ 6 June 2026

⏱️ 58 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 2024, Gisèle Pelicot waved her legal right to anonymity for the trial of her then husband, declaring that shame has to change sides. Her then husband had drugged and raped her and invited other men to rape her, filming as they did so. He was found guilty of her aggravated rape, along with 46 other men. Gisèle has now written her memoir, A Hymn to Life and joins Nuala McGovern to talk about her decision to have an open court, the devasting effect on her and her family of her ex-husband’s actions and finding love again in her 70s.

New Ground is the UK’s first purpose-built co-housing community for women over 50, designed and developed on their own terms. The women moved in ten years ago, and the community is still going strong. But what’s it really like to live this way? Kylie speaks to two residents, Jude and Ann.

Hannah Murray is best known for playing Cassie in E4’s teen drama Skins, and as a regular in the HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones as Gilly. But behind the scenes Hannah was struggling with her mental health, and she found herself involved in an organisation that offered courses in magical healing. The following year, Hannah was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She’s since retired from acting and written a memoir about those turbulent times, called The Make-Believe – A Memoir of Magic and Madness.

A newly qualified doctor, Charlotte Buttercase, has said she was subjected to repeated sexual harassment and intimidation while studying medicine at the University of Manchester. 32 other female students have now come forward to report similar abuse. Charlotte joins Nuala alongside Henry Budden, the co-chair of the BMA medical students committee.

Mother Courage and Her Children is Bertolt Brecht’s 1939 tale of a wartime profiteer who prefers to see herself as a savvy survivor and devoted mother. Currently on stage at the Globe in London for the first time, Nuala speaks to playwright Anna Jordan who has adapted the story for a modern audience. Why is this story one for retelling now and why does it continue to be performed more than 80 years later around the world?

Produced by Kirsty McQuire Presented by Kylie Pentelow

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.

0:07.2

Things just swirling around my head.

0:09.6

Am I really the product of this?

0:12.1

Astonishing secrets uncovered by at-home DNA tests.

0:17.0

Little did I know what more was to come.

0:19.5

I'm Jenny Clemen, and in the new series of The Gift, we'll hear more stories emerging

0:25.2

out of the ever-expanding global DNA database.

0:28.8

They did know that I was different.

0:31.7

You had kids together.

0:33.0

Yeah.

0:33.5

Then you met.

0:34.3

Then we met.

0:35.2

The Gift.

0:36.1

Listen on BBC Sounds.

0:39.2

Hello, this is Kylie Pentalo and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast.

0:44.3

Hello and welcome to the programme.

0:46.4

Coming up, med school misogyny, the newly qualified doctor campaigning for a formal review of sexism at her university.

0:55.7

The UK's first co-housing community for women over 50, we hear from two residents 10 years

1:02.1

after they moved in. Plus Hannah Murray of Game of Thrones fame on her mental health, so-called

1:09.1

magical healing and documenting it all in her memoir,

1:13.3

the make-believe. And playwrights Anna Jordan on adapting mother courage to honour her late mother

1:20.2

and cherishing her parents' love letters in verse. But first, a defining image of 2024 was that of Giselle Pelico.

...

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