Woman's Hour - 30/07/2009

With Jenni Murray. Amy Molloy registered her marriage and her husband's death on the same day. Widowed at just 23, having nursed her beloved husband through terminal cancer, she then experienced a rather unexpected reaction to his death. Amy joins Jenni to tell her frank story of how she embarked on a series of one night stands in an attempt to deal with her grief. For those wanting a way to freshen up the family holiday, going away with friends and their children can seem like just the thing, with twice the adults and on-hand playmates for all the children. What's not to enjoy? Until your friends turn out to be on the brink of divorce and their children are allowed to stay up until midnight. Jenni talks to author Kate Figes and relationship psychologist Anjula Mutanda about the do's and don'ts of the joint family holiday, finding out why things go wrong and how to get it right. 'Three Women' is the only play Sylvia Plath wrote and is a remarkable account of three very different experiences of pregnancy. It is twenty years since it was last performed, but now a new production is opening at the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh. Jenni is joined by actress Louisa Clein, who plays one of the women, and Dr Jo Gill, author of the 'Cambridge Introduction to Sylvia Plath', to ask why Plath's poetry still speaks so profoundly about the joy and ambivalence many women experience when their children are born.