Margaret Atwood; Cook the Perfect Dal and East London Suffragettes

Should attacks on sex workers be treated as hate crimes? That’s the approach in Merseyside and thousands of people have signed a petition to roll the scheme out across the country. We discuss the merits of this approach with one of its chief architects, Detective Super Intendent Tim Keelan. Jenni also hears the views of a sex worker in Edinburgh, where the police have adopted a very different approach.

Curry has been adopted as a national dish but to most British people Indian food is the orange glop they get in restaurants. But according to Meera Sodha, real Indian food, cooked at home by British Indians, is very different and largely an unknown cuisine: fresh, healthy and quick to make. And while it has a reputation for being complicated, Meera wants to show just how easy Indian cookery can be. She joins Jenni to Cook the Perfect Daily Dal and talk about how what started as a personal project 14 years ago to preserve her mum’s recipes, many of which had been passed down through the generations, ended up being published as a book:  Made in India. Cooked in Britain: Recipes from an Indian Family Kitchen.

Margaret Atwood is the award-winning author of more than forty books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. In June, 1987 she was interviewed by Sue McGregor for Woman’s Hour when the Handmaid’s Tale was published in paperback in the UK. We hear a part of that interview and discuss how relevant that classic feminist novel remains nearly three decades later.