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‘Dearest Albert hardly left me at all, & was the greatest support & comfort’ - Queen Victoria commending her husband, who was present at the birth of their first child. In Confinement: The Hidden History of Maternal Bodies in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Dr Jessica Cox writes about the perils of childbirth in the past. She's joined by Dr Laura Sellers, programmes curator at the medical history museum in Leeds The Thackray. We also hear from the dramatist Testament, whose play Daughter was nominated for the Prix Europa and Hannah Silva, whose book My Child The Algorithm is a memoir of queer parenting which started out as a radio play written using text generated by a machine-learning algorithm. The discussion is hosted by New Generation Thinker and historian at the University of Leeds John Gallagher in a recording at The Howard Assembly Room in Leeds as part of the Â鶹ԼÅÄ Contains Strong Language Festival.

Testament's play Daughter is available here:

/programmes/m0011545

Producer based in Salford: Nick Holmes

You can find a whole series of Â鶹ԼÅÄ programmes recorded at the 2023 Contains Strong Language Festival on the festival website and available on Â鶹ԼÅÄ Sounds. They include Radio 3's new writing programme The Verb, a Drama on 3, the music magazine programme Music Matters, Radio 4's discussion programme Start the Week and a special episode of Radio 3's The Early Music Show.