Woman's Hour - 30/03/2010

Woman's Hour with Jane Garvey. Including: From ancient times, plants and flowers have been used symbolically as well as for their medicinal and nutritional values. Now a new exhibition at the Geffrye Museum charts the history of their decorative use in the home - through paintings, catalogues, letters, horticultural publications and novels. Jane visits the exhibition and talks to its curator, Christine Lalumia and art historian Charlotte Gere. David Yelland, former editor of The Sun, has written his first novel, The Truth About Leo. It's based largely on his own life experience and is, he says, "the story of what might have happened to me and my son if I hadn't stopped drinking alcohol". David Yelland talks to Jane about his turbulent life from being bullied as a boy with alopecia to becoming an editor of the Sun at the age of 35, feeling powerless despite his ostensible success, his addiction to alcohol , losing his ex-wife to cancer, his eventual recovery and life now. In 1948, Susana Gil, a 22-year-old Argentine secretary and interpreter married the English composer, Sir William Walton. He was 46 years old and at the height of his powers. After Sir William's death in 1983, Lady Walton became custodian of her husband's professional work. She fiercely promoted his music, and in 2001 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Nottingham in recognition of the work she had done to maintain the legacy of her husband. So how best do you safeguard the reputation of a loved one? How do you keep their artistic reputation alive? And what cost may this have on your own identity? Jane is joined by Lady Deborah MacMillan, the widow of the choreographer Kenneth MacMillan and the composer Michael Berkeley. The death rate of women giving birth in the US is worse than in 40 other countries, including nearly all the industrialised nations. That's the claim made by an Amnesty International report entitled 'Deadly Delivery' which says America's approach to maternity care is "disgraceful and scandalous". Between 2004 and 2005, more than sixty eight thousand women died in childbirth in the US. And severe complications that result in a woman nearly dying, known as a 'near miss' increased by twenty five percent between 1998 and 2005. Jane speaks to Angela Burgin Logan whose diffcult birth left her with ongoing health problems Nan Strauss who co-authored the report by Amnesty International and Professor Timothy Johnson, Chair of the the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, at the University of Michigan.