Factual

Original version

BBC Radio 4 FM

BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

BBC Radio 4

Radio 4

Radio 4 (FM)

Woman's Hour

Magazines & Reviews

Podcasts

Factual: Life Stories

Factual: Health & Wellbeing

Women's voices and women's lives - topical conversations to inform, challenge and inspire.

BBC Radio 4 LW

Woman's Hour: 09/04/2010

09/04/2010

BBC Radio 4 - Woman's Hour, 09/04/2010

Jenni Murray discusses a new biography of Myra Hindley.

Jenni Murray discusses a new biography of Myra Hindley. We also visit Montreal's ice hotel and mark the centenary of Olive Shapley - one of the most important women in broadcasting.

Jenni Murray discusses Myra Hindley, who is still viewed as Britain's most notorious female killer. Her name will always be linked to the Lancashire Moors where four of her five victims were buried. Carol Ann Lee - who has written extensively on the Holocaust - has now written a biography of Hindley. But what more is there to say about the woman who helped kill five children and went on to divide public opinion, as she kept campaigning for release? She talks to Jenni Murray.

Next month will see Laura Chinchilla sworn in as leader of Costa Rica. She's the fifth woman to be elected president in Latin America over the last two decades and follows closely on the heels of Chile's Michelle Bachelet and Argentina's Cristina Fernadez de Kirchner. So how significant is this apparent progress, in a region which is so mired in machismo and patriarchy? 

Olive Shapley is one of the most important women in the history of the BBC. She joined the Corporation in 1934 and revolutionised the way radio was made. as well as presenting Woman's Hour, she interviewed ordinary people, many of them in the North of England. For the first time miners, housewives and the unemployed were heard on the wireless. Their accents were branded 'incomprehensible' by some of the London critics. She let people speak freely - previously, all radio output had to be scripted in advance. She was also a radical in her private life - she opened her Manchester home to single mothers in the 1960s, and then welcomed the families of Vietnamese boat people in the 1970s. 

And - we visit Montreal's ice hotel, the destination for choice if you want a very cool wedding.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Woman's Hour

09/04/2010

Genres

Brand

BBC Radio 4 FM

About BBC Radio 4