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Episode details

Radio 4,05 Oct 2026,56 mins

The Lost Children of Tuam, Ashley James on incontinence, Kemistry

Woman's Hour

Available for over a year

Monica Dolan is starring in a new film, The Lost Children of Tuam, co-produced by Liam Neeson. In it, she plays the extraordinary amateur historian, Catherine Corless, whose relentless pursuit of the truth helped to bring the story of hundreds of babies from an Irish mother and baby home being disposed of in a disused sewage tank to the world in 2014. She joins Nuala McGovern along with journalist Alison O’Reilly to discuss this powerful tale of community activism and how it led to an ongoing mass exhumation. Kemistry is what Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative party leader, is calling her personal brand of conservatism. Almost two years into her tenureship, she has set out her core principles in a 95-page essay. And at their conference in Birmingham yesterday, Badenoch also pledged to scrap the £100,000 earning limit for parents to claim 30 hours a week of free childcare, if her party is elected. Kitty Donaldson, Chief Political commentator at the i Paper gives her thoughts. Broadcaster Ashley James has gone public about the lasting effects of birth complications – including incontinence – and why she believes we need to speak more openly about it. To discuss, Ashley joins Nuala alongside NHS GP Dr Ellie Cannon, who specialises in women’s health. As the weather turns a little more chilly this week, you may be thinking about swapping cereal for something more warming, like porridge. Gina Saarberg has won the coveted Golden Spurtle at the World Porridge Making Championship, which took place in Carrbridge in the Highlands on Saturday. She tells Nuala her tips for a delicious bowl. Stage and screen actor Jane Asher, and Laura Main - best known for Call the Midwife - play The Queen and her dresser in By Royal Appointment, Daisy Goodwin’s play about the quiet power behind the monarch’s public image. It reveals how the Queen expressed what she couldn’t say — through colour, coats and the occasional hat — and how her dresser rose from lipstick advice to real influence. The play is currently on a UK tour – this week they’ll be at the Theatre Royal in Nottingham.

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