Woman's Hour - 14/10/2009

With Jenni Murray. Since blowing away the competition on The X Factor, singer Leona Lewis has become an international superstar. She joins Jenni to talk about her rise to fame: from pizza waitress in London's East End to star performer, invited to sing at the Grammys, Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday party and to a global audience of over 1.5 billion at the Olympic handover ceremony in Beijing. Despite her new-found success, she still chooses to live in her home area, Hackney, close to her mum and dad. Despite a gradual increase in interest over the past five years, men still only account for 15 per cent of teaching staff in primary schools. Some primary and nursery schools have no men at all. We are used to hearing about the impact this might have on boys, but what sort of effect is this having on girls? Jenni is joined by former head teacher and senior lecturer in counselling, Phil Goss, to discuss. Sir Ranulph Fiennes is the first person to have reached the world's highest peak and to have crossed both ice caps, but what you may not know is that he also managed to finish writing a history of his remarkable family while on a recent trip to Everest. He joins Jenni to talk about the ancestor who sat on the jury that condemned Anne Boleyn, the relatives who inspired Jane Austen, and the redoubtable traveller Celia Fiennes, who rode side-saddle across England at time when the roads were full of highwaymen. Plus a report about Agatha Christie's home, Greenways in Devon, which opened to the public for the first time this year.