Woman's Hour - 12/06/2009

With Jenni Murray. Anne Fine is best known for her children’s books – one of her most famous creations was immortalised on film as Mrs Doubtfire. She has won numerous prizes and was awarded the OBE in 2003. She also writes for adults and her new novel, ‘Our Precious Lulu’ examines the fractious relationship between two step sisters. Which heroines would make your top five list? Jenni is joined by biographer Vanessa Collingridge and by Lisa Potts, the nursery nurse from Wolverhampton, who in June 1997 won the George Medal for saving the lives of a number of children from a man with a machete. Today millions of Iranians go to the polls in an election which has been described as the most important since the Islamic Revolution 30 years ago. The campaign has been electrified by the presence of one of the leading candidate’s wives. Dr Zahra Rahnavard has been seen alongside her husband, the reformer Mir-Hossein Mousavi. They’ve even been spotted holding hands - a big deal in Iran. She’s verbally laid into the sitting President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, accusing him of lying, humiliating women, debasing his office and betraying the principles of the revolution. Jenni is joined by Christine Toomey, Journalist with the Sunday Times who has just returned from Iran having spoken to a number of women there & Baroness Haleh Afshar Professor of Politics at York University, who was born in Iran. They will be discussing the extent of her influence, and the growing frustration of Iranian women with the present government, in a country where over 60 per cent of University students are female. Artistic inspiration can come from surprising places and for Sue Moffitt, a painter from Northumberland, it leapt out at her from her brother’s milking parlour while she was working with his award winning dairy herd. She started painting life size images of the cows she was milking twice a day and then started focussing on large canvases featuring mainly the heads and shoulders of cattle. That was ten years ago; now Sue is an internationally acclaimed animal portrait artist with a thriving rural gallery, and her work is about to go on sale in the States. Caz Graham has been to Hexham to meet Sue and some of her very friendly cattle. Including drama: The Pillow Book.