Woman's Hour - 06/05/2009

With Jenni Murray. What happens when you have one child, but your second fails to materialise? Unfortunately, just because you have produced one healthy baby, it doesn't necessarily mean that you can do it again. Believed to affect as many as one in five couples, 'secondary infertility' is an increasing problem. Jenni Murray hears from one mother whose need for a second child has taken over her life, and from a gynaecologist about why this happens and what can be done. Discussing the legacy of the feminist and thinker Mary Wollstonecraft, who was born 250 years ago. The author of 'A Vindication of the Rights of Woman', she had two children; the first, Fanny, was born out of wedlock and the birth of her second daughter, Mary - later Mary Shelley - led to her death from septicaemia. After she had died, her husband published a full and frank account of her life which seriously harmed her reputation. It was only in the 1970s that serious consideration was once again given to her work. Jenni looks back at the life and work of the novelist Marilyn French, author of 'The Women's Room', who died recently. Plus actor Diana Quick talks about her early days at Oxford University, her life as a jobbing actor, and about travelling east to learn about her father's family in India during the Mutiny.