Woman's Hour - 23/09/2009

With Jenni Murray. Shirley Williams was born to politics. As well as being influenced by her mother, the author and pacifist Vera Brittain, her father George Catlin, a leading political scientist, encouraged her to have high ambitions for herself - including daring to climb the bookshelves in his library. She fought her first general election at just 24 and was elected as MP for Hitchin in 1964. A member of the Labour cabinets of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, she left the Labour party after 35 years of membership to co-found the Social Democratic Party as one of the Gang of Four'. As her autobiography, Climbing the Bookshelves, is published, Jenni talks to her about her extraordinary life and career in politics. We are now well into party conference season, with eyes currently focused on the speech by the Liberal Democrats' leader Nick Clegg. While it is an opportunity to rally the troops, the end-of-conference speech is also a performance by which party leaders can expect to be judged more widely. But what makes a good party leader? Among qualities we might judge them on, would charisma or conviction win out? It's more than ten years since Tony Blair galvanised the women's vote, so what do today's leaders need to offer to get women on side? Jenni is joined by The Guardian columnist John Harris and broadcaster and columnist Amanda Platell, who was a former press secretary to William Hague. Since winning the Young Musician of the Year award in 2004, violinist Nicola Benedetti has played for the Queen and with top orchestras across the world. She plays live on her Stradivarius in the Woman's Hour studio.