Laura Wade eavesdrops on conversations between men and women from the past to examine some of today's thorniest gender issues

Recent high profile campaigns around issues such as sexual consent, harassment and assault, the pay gap and power imbalances between men and women have encouraged many of us to re-examine everyday gender relations. In ten programmes covering the last 500 years, playwright Laura Wade eavesdrops on encounters between men and women in great literary works to shed light on some of today’s most pressing issues.

7. Constance Chatterley and Oliver Mellors in D.H.Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover
It's so common to joke about Lawrence's 1928 classic that we easily overlook how ground-breaking his treatment of a sexual relationship across the class divide was. Dr Erica Wickerson from the University of Cambridge discusses the meaning of this radical novel both on publication and at the time of the famous R vs Penguin Books trial in 1960. In the light of contemporary notions of "assortative matching", she he and Laura consider whether difference of class is still an issue in relationships today.

With readings by real-life couple Adrian Lester and Lolita Chakrabarti

Laura Wade is an Olivier Award-winning playwright, the author of “Posh” and “Home, I’m Darling”. Her recent adaptation of Jane Austen’s unfinished story, “The Watsons”, transfers to the West End in 2020.

Producer: Beaty Rubens Show less