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Woman's Hour: Baby banks, Mercury prize nominee Georgia, Pat Hume, Author Luan Goldie

05/08/2020

Baby banks, Mercury prize nominee Georgia, Pat Hume, Author Luan Goldie

BBC Radio 4 - Woman's Hour, Baby banks, Mercury prize nominee Georgia, Pat Hume, Author Luan Goldie

The rise of families visiting baby banks. Mercury prize nominee Georgia.

The Duchess of Cambridge has spearheaded a campaign to persuade retailers to donate items to baby banks around the UK. New figures from the three big charities – Baby Basics, Little Village and AberNecessities have published figures which show the number of families with children under five who’ve needed their help has risen significantly since the coronavirus crisis began.  How are they managing to cope? We hear from Lauren Elrick who has a fifteen month old daughter and uses Abernecessities in Aberdeenshire. Sophia Parker, chief executive of Little Village Baby bank in London and Tracy Thorn, an NHS Family Nurse. 

For the first time in its 29-year history, female artists and female-fronted bands have outnumbered men on the shortlist for the Mercury Prize. Alongside Dua Lipa and Laura Marling, Georgia has been nominated for her second album ‘Seeking Thrills’. She joins Jenni to discuss her music, the transcendental power of the dancefloor, and being nominated for the Mercury Prize, 25 years after her father.  

This morning the funeral  of John Hume, the Northern Irish politician and Nobel Prize winner will be held.  He’s survived by his wife and professional partner, Pat. Who is the woman for whom the The John and Pat Hume Foundation for Peaceful Change and Reconciliation was formed? We hear from Eimear O'Callaghan, former BBC News Editor, and Monica McWilliams, Emeritus Professor at Ulster University. 

Luan Goldie has written a new novel called Homecoming. Set in London and Kenya over a period of twenty years, it is a story about love, family and friendship. Luan is a primary school teacher and her last book, Nightingale Point, was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020 and she won the Costa Short Story Award in 2017.

Presenter: Jenni Murray 
Producer: Dianne McGregor

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