Women of the World

On 18th December 2025, the offices of two of Bangladesh's biggest newspapers, The Daily Star and Prothom Alo, were surrounded by mobs, attacked and set on fire. At The Daily Star, journalists were forced to take shelter on the roof of the building as smoke billowed through the li ...  Show more

The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed by Iran for more than a fortnight, preventing vital supplies of oil and gas from leaving the Middle East and sending global fuel prices soaring. Some 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas is usually carried through the n ...  Show more

In the second in our season celebrating The Exuberance of Youth in this centenary year of the BBC, Harriett Gilbert talks to world-famous Chilean writer Isabel Allende about her extraordinary novel, Eva Luna.Eva Luna is the story of an orphan who beguiles the world with her remar ...  Show more

Proust as an agony uncle, Romeo and Juliet rewritten as 21st century Welsh teenagers in a new drama by Gary Owen, the Lesbian coming of age novel by Rita Mae Brown that inspired the lead character in Willy Russell's Educating Rita to change her name and a new book inspired by the ...  Show more

George Eliot was a leading novelist who scandalised Victorian society by eloping to Germany with a married man and living in unlawful conjugal bliss. She dedicated her books to ‘her husband’ and wrote of 'this double life, which helps me to feel and think with double strength' ...

Harriett Gilbert talks to internationally acclaimed Egyptian writer Nawal El Saadawi about her classic novel Woman at Point Zero.Recorded in 2009.Written over 30 years ago but still resonating clearly today Woman at Point Zero is a dark and powerful account of the life of a young ...  Show more