Adjoa Andoh is British actor who has graced stage and screen and is perhaps best known as Bridgerton's Lady Danbury - but you may not be aware that in addition to being a director and producer she is also a writer. She has collaborated with the award-winning British composer Julie Cooper on the title track of a new album called Continuum. Julie wrote the music and Adjoa responded with a poem called "Hold out the Heart" capturing the emotions of the pandemic and timed to the ebb and flow of the music. Adjoa and Julie join Emma to talk about composing the album and their musical journey during lock down.
This week the US Mint began circulating quarters honouring the writer, poet, performer and activist Maya Angelou. She is the first black woman to ever feature on a US coin. But four other women have also been commemorated by the American Women Quarters Program So why have they been chosen and what is the history of women appearing on coins? Ema Sikic is World Coins Specialist for Baldwins.
Prime Minister, Boris Johnson is under pressure to state whether he broke his own Covid rules at PMQs with some of his own MPs venting their frustration to their consituents, the media and online. The Prime Minister has so far declined to say whether he attended a drinks party at Downing Street during lockdown in May 2020. But the journalist Claire Cohen has written about the wave of fury felt by some women about the fact that Sarah Everard was lured into a car by former Metropolitan police officer Wayne Couzens on the pretext that she had broken lockdown rules. A new app to protect women that has the backing of the Home Office has been criticised, Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a journalist who says it wouldn't have stopped her attacker.
The BBC’s latest hard-hitting true crime drama, Four Lives, recounts how police failings led families to fight for justice after the so-called 'Grindr killer' Stephen Port murdered four young men. Emma is joined by Sarah Sak, the mother of the serial killer’s first known victim Anthony Walgate and who is played by Sheridan Smith in the three-part series.
Skin issues in adolescence can shape lives. Dr Tess McPherson is the current president of the British Society of Paediatric and Adolescent Dermatology (BSPAD) and an NHS dermatologist working in Oxford. She has developed a specialist service for adolescents to support their skin and the psychological impact of their conditions, which has been running for 10 years. Maia Grey is an acne positivity blogger who is now 27 but has lived with acne since her early teens.