Category: The Conversation

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Beth Johnson, Professor of Television & Media Studies, University of Leeds

When Channel 4 premiered its adaptation of Barbara Taylor Bradford’s A Woman of Substance in 1985, the saga of Emma Harte – the Yorkshire maid who becomes one of the richest women in the world – was a ratings juggernaut. The new eight-part remake arrives with a curious mix of nostalgia and reinvention: an attempt to revive the glossy melodrama of the 1980s bonkbuster, while reframing its heroine for a contemporary audience.

Episode one establishes the drama’s central tension through a double timeline. In 1970s New York, the elderly Emma Harte (Brenda Blethyn) presides over a vast retail empire, but faces betrayal from within her own family. Meanwhile, the narrative flashes back to 1911 Yorkshire, where the young Emma (Jessica Reynolds) works as a maid at the aristocratic Fairley Hall. She begins a forbidden romance with Edwin Fairley (Ewan Horrocks), the master’s youngest son.

It is a structure that foregrounds destiny: we know Emma will triumph, but the question is how.

Taylor Bradford’s 1979 novel is one of the great rags-to-riches fantasies of late-20th-century popular fiction. Its appeal lies partly in the audacity of Emma’s rise: from impoverished servant girl to international business titan.

The new Channel 4 version leans heavily into that mythology. The opening sequence places Blethyn’s Emma in 1970s New York, where young journalist Jim Fairley (Toby Regbo) intercepts her with news that leaked medical records have sent the share price of her Harte Stores empire tumbling. By the end of the episode, she tells him her entire life has been revenge for the way his family once treated her.

The first episode lays the emotional groundwork for this transformation. At Fairley Hall, Emma is intelligent, observant and acutely aware of the rigid class system that constrains her life – a reality underscored by her mother’s dying advice to “get out and get on”. Her attraction to Edwin is therefore not merely romantic; it is a transgressive crossing of class boundaries.

The drama emphasises how precarious this relationship is within the Edwardian household, where servants and masters inhabit carefully maintained social worlds.

The episode also introduces the toxic atmosphere within the Fairley family, including a simmering love triangle between Adam Fairley (Emmett J. Scanlan), his wife Adele (Leanne Best) and her sister Olivia (Lydia Leonard). These aristocratic intrigues function as a mirror to Emma’s story, highlighting the moral hypocrisies of the ruling class she both envies and resents.

Melodrama with a modern sheen

Visually, the episode is sumptuous. Shot largely in Yorkshire, the landscapes and interiors evoke a heritage-drama aesthetic: sweeping moorland vistas, candlelit halls and meticulously detailed period costumes. The result is an unapologetically glossy period world.

Yet the storytelling retains the unabashed melodrama that made the original so popular. Affairs, rivalries and social scandal are introduced at a brisk pace, suggesting that the series intends to deliver the kind of sprawling, soap opera-style storytelling that once dominated Sunday night television.

Critics have already noted the show’s willingness to embrace these conventions. A Guardian review described the remake as “a lavishly absurd, cliche-packed tribute to simpler times”, acknowledging both its excesses and its entertainment value.

But there is also an attempt to frame Emma’s journey in more explicitly feminist terms. Her ambition is not portrayed as a moral failing but a necessary response to a system designed to exclude her. The rigid class hierarchy of Edwardian Britain defines the social boundaries Emma is determined to cross.

Much of the first episode’s success rests on Reynolds’ portrayal of the young Emma. She gives the character a mixture of vulnerability and steely determination, hinting at the formidable matriarch she will eventually become. Blethyn, meanwhile, lends the older Emma a commanding presence: sharp-tongued, elegant and clearly accustomed to power.

The interplay between these two performances helps ground the drama’s expansive narrative. In young Emma, we see both a hopeful-but-unconfident servant and the calculating mogul she will become.

Why Emma is returning now

Revisiting A Woman of Substance more than four decades after Taylor Bradford’s novel first appeared is not simply about nostalgia. While the 1985 TV adaptation became a landmark of glossy 1980s drama, the story’s appeal has always rested on something more durable: the scale of Emma’s transformation from servant to tycoon.

Episode one leans into that sense of narrative sweep. It offers spectacle, romance and simmering scandal, but also something slightly rarer: the slow construction of a life story.

Emma’s rise will unfold across decades, continents and generations, giving this drama a scope that foregrounds long-term ambition, rather than the tighter arcs typical of contemporary television storytelling.

By juxtaposing elderly Emma’s immense power with the precarious position of her younger self at Fairley Hall, the series foreshadows the distance she will travel – socially, economically and emotionally.

Whether the remake fully captures the addictive pacing that made Taylor Bradford’s novel such a phenomenon remains to be seen. But its first episode demonstrates why the story still has traction. Emma is a heroine defined not by romance but by determination, and the drama of watching her build – and defend – her business empire remains a compelling one.

Beth Johnson receives funding from the AHRC.

– ref. A Woman of Substance: Channel 4’s lavish remake revives the pleasures – and contradictions – of the bonkbuster – https://theconversation.com/a-woman-of-substance-channel-4s-lavish-remake-revives-the-pleasures-and-contradictions-of-the-bonkbuster-278219

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Richard Youngs, Professor of International and European Politics, University of Warwick

The US military operation against Iran has demonstrated in the most dramatic terms the need for EU autonomy in global affairs. Responding to the situation, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has called for a new EU foreign policy to guide the bloc towards “European independence”.

But it is not enough for the EU simply to set itself against the Trump administration. It also needs to resolve a muddled “illiberal liberalism” that afflicts the way it has begun to pursue European autonomy. The EU can’t currently seem to decide whether it seeks independence so that it can preserve the liberal order or so that it can move beyond it.

The second Trump administration has supercharged the EU’s push for independence. It has prompted European governments to get far more serious about reducing their military and security dependence on the US and to reduce their broader external trade vulnerabilities. This is now the unrivalled driving force behind most European foreign and security policies.

But criticising the current US administration does not in itself amount to a vision for the EU’s place in the radically changed international order. Current debates have become unduly narrowed down to a focus on decoupling from and standing up to the US. This creates a false sense of comfort, as reacting against Trumpian excess is more straightforward than defining a coherent order-based geopolitical vision. The EU needs to ask not just what it is against but what it is for, and this remains unclear – at least, beyond rhetorical cliches.

An overly self-satisfied celebration of incipient EU resolution against the US – over Iran, Venezuela, Greenland, tariffs – draws the bloc away from clarifying the ultimate goal of toughened European autonomy.

In all this, the EU shows signs of what in psychology is known as “downward coping syndrome”. It seems to be feeling unjustifiably righteous about itself in comparison with the abominably low-standards of predatory diplomacy and illegality set by the Trump administration.

French president Emmanuel Macron’s speech at the Munich security conference, in which he merely ran through all the ways in which Europe stands in favourable contrast to the US, was an especially egregious case of this. Commentators also repeatedly celebrated the superiority of European rhetoric on peace, freedom, and rules and democracy compared to Maga’s civilisational chauvinism. These perspectives set a very low bar and do not interrogate whether European policies actually follow through on their own stated principles.

An illiberal turn

In practice, the EU is itself retreating from the very same liberal norms that it rightly excoriates the US for having jettisoned. Even if this policy drift is, of course, far more subtle than what is occurring in US foreign policies, it raises questions about what the EU really seeks to do with its emerging strategic autonomy.

At present, contradictory logics abound as the bloc advances towards greater independence. The EU is striking partnerships with illiberal regimes like the Gulf states and autocracies in Asia ostensibly in the name of preserving liberalism. It courts other powers with desperate neediness apparently as a way of showing it has less need of others. It is adopting hard power supposedly to contain hard power. It is adopting distortionary trade preferences in the name of defending free trade.

In many ways, as the EU resists illiberal powers, it is becoming more like them and yet frames such resistance as a way of defending its traditional liberal identity. In this, it increasingly conflates two aims that are quite distinct: protecting itself and protecting progressive values in international politics.

While military capability is needed to dissuade territorial invasion, the EU needs other kinds of resources and action to wield influence over other powers for non-military aims. There is a risk of the military-defence turn becoming so predominant that it draws effort away from these other forms of leverage. It may be that ultra-realpolitik is what some people want from Europe, but then it cannot convincingly pitch its geostrategy as a defence of liberal order, peace and democracy.

These conundrums can clearly be seen in European responses to events in Iran. European governments are entirely correct to defend international law against military intervention. Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sanchez has been especially impressive in setting out this position. But they have failed to map out policies that lie in the vast ground between illegal military attacks, on the one hand, and indulgent inaction towards repressive regimes on the other. Repeating fealty to international law and standing back in moral self-satisfaction does little to help citizens who are suffering under regimes like those in Iran and Venezuela. A liberal European autonomy would surely entail more proactive engagement for democratic change, even as the bloc stands back from US military actions.

The complex and spiralling crises in Iran and elsewhere require the EU to show firm resolve against Trump but also a critical self-reflection. European governments need to define whether EU autonomy is to be measured in terms of a conceptually distinctive “alternative power” or the more visceral power politics that other powers are now adopting. Without this, European independence is a ship setting sail with no destination set.

Richard Youngs receives project funding from EU bodies through Carnegie Europe.

– ref. To win freedom from Trump’s America, Europe needs to overcome its ‘downward coping syndrome’ – https://theconversation.com/to-win-freedom-from-trumps-america-europe-needs-to-overcome-its-downward-coping-syndrome-277981

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ahmed Elbediwy, Senior Lecturer in Cancer Biology & Clinical Biochemistry, Kingston University

Good news: cancer death rates in the UK have fallen to their lowest level on record.

According to the latest statistics from Cancer Research UK, between 2022 and 2024 around 247 people per 100,000 died from cancer each year in the UK. This is down from a peak of 355 deaths per 100,000 in 1989 – a decline of nearly 29%. Researchers say the long-term drop reflects decades of investment in cancer research, prevention and treatment.

Much of this progress comes from major improvements in several common cancers. Over the past ten years, deaths from stomach cancer have fallen by 34%, while lung cancer deaths have dropped by 22%. Ovarian cancer deaths declined by 19%, breast cancer by 14% and prostate cancer by 11%.

These gains reflect several factors working together. Advances in cancer screening, a growing range of new and effective treatments, and earlier diagnosis have all played a role in improving survival.

In prostate cancer, for example, breakthroughs in hormone-based therapies have helped slow tumour growth. Perhaps the most dramatic improvement has been in cervical cancer, where deaths have fallen by 75% since the 1970s. This is largely due to national screening programmes and the introduction of the HPV vaccine.

A major driver of falling cancer deaths has been screening. The NHS cervical screening programme has been particularly effective, detecting cancers at very early stages, and often identifying pre-cancerous changes before cancer develops.

The success of the HPV vaccine, introduced in 2008 and now given to millions of people, has strengthened this progress by preventing infections that can trigger the cellular mutations leading to cervical cancer.

Screening has also improved outcomes in other cancers. Programmes for breast and colorectal cancer help detect disease earlier, when treatment is more likely to succeed. Similarly, the introduction of PSA testing has improved detection of prostate cancer.

At the same time, advances in cancer research have transformed treatment options. Targeted therapies and personalised medicine are increasingly common, allowing doctors to tailor treatment to the biology of an individual patient’s tumour. Hormone therapies that block testosterone, for instance, have significantly improved outcomes in prostate cancer.

Immunotherapy is also advancing rapidly. Researchers are exploring preventive vaccines for cancers such as lung and ovarian cancer, raising the possibility that some cancers could eventually be prevented before they even develop.

Public health measures have also played a role. Policies such as smoking bans, alongside greater awareness of cancer risk factors, have contributed to falling death rates for several major cancers.

However, it is worth noting that while cancer death rates are falling, the total number of people dying from cancer is still rising. This is largely because the UK population is growing and people are living longer.

As we age, mutations and cellular damage accumulate, increasing the risk of cancer. The rise in deaths from some cancer types is now prompting researchers to focus more attention on these diseases. Many are linked to late-stage diagnosis, because symptoms often appear only once the disease is advanced. Expanding research and clinical trials in these areas could make a significant difference.

The cancers bucking the trend

Some cancers have actually seen deaths rise over the past decade. Deaths from skin, intestinal, bone, gallbladder and eye cancers have increased by 46%, 48%, 24%, 29% and 26%, respectively. Liver cancer deaths have risen by 14%, while kidney cancer deaths are up by 5%.

There are probably several reasons for these increases. Some cancers are harder to detect early, while others have fewer effective treatments. Lifestyle factors may also be contributing, including greater use of tanning beds and diets high in ultra-processed food. Meanwhile, mortality rates for cancers such as thyroid and pancreatic cancer, as well as some skin cancers, have remained largely unchanged.

Even so, the overall trend remains encouraging. Experts believe that with continued investment in research, clinical trials and NHS capacity, cancer mortality could fall further. Current projections suggest a decrease in death rates of around 6% between 2024-26 and 2038-40 within the next two decades.

While challenges remain, the latest figures highlight what sustained investment in research, prevention and treatment can achieve. As screening improves, therapies advance and prevention expands, further progress against cancer may be within reach.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Cancer deaths fall to historic low in UK – this is probably why – https://theconversation.com/cancer-deaths-fall-to-historic-low-in-uk-this-is-probably-why-277883

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jen Harvie, Professor of Contemporary Theatre and Performance, Queen Mary University of London

Earlier this month, former English National Opera artistic director John Berry said opera in the UK needed to “attract good writers and tell better stories” that could tap into the zeitgeist, making the art form more contemporary and accessible. But is this kind of approach enough to capture the attention of new and younger audiences? In the same week, actor Timothée Chalamet caused a furore when he dismissed ballet and opera as art forms that younger people “did not care about”.

Often regarded as an “elite” art form, opera undoubtedly has an image problem in that it is seen as the preserve of rich older white people, which risks alienating those who feel it excludes and is not for them. At the same time – like much of the arts – opera is under attack from funding cuts and needs to attract new and more diverse audiences if it is to survive long term. So what is the position of opera in the UK and what does it need to do to secure its future? We asked four experts in the field.

Embrace a greater range of influences

Jen Harvie, Professor of Contemporary Theatre and Performance, Queen Mary University of London

John Berry’s comment raises crucial questions: more generally, what should the arts do? And for opera: what should a traditionally “elitist” art form do? My answer: publicly subsidised arts have an ethical duty to reach as wide an audience as possible.

This doesn’t mean the arts should dumb down – a horrible, patronising phrase. It means traditionally elite arts like opera must adapt to broaden their appeal. I am not alone in my view. Research commissioned by Arts Council England on opera in 2024 says the same thing: that opera’s audiences are usually white, older and richer than England’s general population.

To expand audiences, opera must embrace a greater range of influences, from musicals to concept albums and music videos. It should commission new English-language librettos and mixed spoken/sung operettas. It should commission stories that resonate with audiences across all ages, classes and ethnicities. At the same time, opera’s funders must support both formal innovation and arts education, to facilitate access to opera.

Opera is full of extraordinary performance, music, song, storytelling, stagecraft, costume and design. It faces an ethical responsibility – and an opportunity – to share these riches with more of us.

Transform the operatic ecosystem

Edward Venn, Professor of Music at the University of Leeds

Beneath its attention-grabbing provocations, Berry’s call for the evolution of opera contains a deceptively simple question: how are we going to
encourage writers? Clearly, opera benefits from showcasing authentic creative
voices that speak to a wide audience.

But the answer does not lie in enticing the latest Netflix sensation to pen a libretto. Rather, evolution requires the whole operatic ecosystem to transform so that those performing, directing and creating operatic stories better reflect our society.

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This article is part of our State of the Arts series. These articles tackle the challenges of the arts and heritage industry – and celebrate the wins, too.

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The opera industry is working hard within the considerable constraints of arts and education funding cuts and a wider cost-of-living crisis to effect such a transformation. But there is still a long way to go before the demographics of performers replicate those of wider society, and longer still for the creative teams backstage.

The industry tends towards creative reworkings of canonic repertoire rather than financially more risky new commissions. This means opportunities for composers and writers to produce new work that speaks to contemporary issues become vanishingly rare.

Sustainable evolution comes from nurturing a diverse, rich talent pool; such diversity can in turn result in a wealth of authentic, compelling operatic stories. But this requires creative risk-taking at a time when opera companies can ill afford to do so.

Develop new writers, composers and audiences

Jennifer Daniel, Senior Lecturer in Musical Theatre at Edge Hill University

To “own the zeitgeist in the performing arts”, as Berry suggests, opera does need to develop its form, its artists – and crucially, its audiences. Is that really about drawing big names into the writing process? Opera librettists are distinctive – they create musically, often in established partnerships with composers (such as Alasdair Middleton with Jonathan Dove).

They take on dramaturgical responsibility for musical storytelling, often finding ways to write less. Writing an opera can take years, is seldom profitable, and skills most often developed for the love of it rather than acclaim or financial reward. Opera writers really want to write opera. And companies such as Opera North have made the case that the publicly funded opera company has the public responsibility to develop those distinct artists in developing the form.

Just as important, audiences also have to be developed in readiness to receive. In the best cases, companies’ outreach and education work extends our understanding and enhances our reception of opera, including the challenging and the new.

Such initiatives are applied across an incredibly broad social and age spectrum by companies such as Opera North, ENO, Royal Opera and the rest. The balance of cost and popularity means that relatively few full-scale new operas are produced. Small, agile productions can be hugely innovative and accessible if we can tear ourselves away from the grandeur of the mainstage auditorium.

But concurrent and equally important to the development of new work is the development of a wide audience. There must be a commitment to ensuring that each generation anew is culturally primed and able to access an art form – from the 1700s right up to the present moment – that is live, spectacular, unmediated and essentially human. If “opera if wants to own the zeitgeist” in an age of AI, technology and unprecedented mediation, this is, perhaps, where we should place our attention.

Invest in well-conceived outreach programmes

Kiera Vaclavik, Professor of Children’s Literature & Childhood Culture and Director of the Centre for Childhood Cultures at Queen Mary University of London

When I was a teenager my class got on a coach to London to take part in a workshop with Glyndebourne Opera, where I sang and found out about Dvořák and his gripping mermaid story, Rusalka (1901). In the evening, we went to see that story performed. I was not much of a singer and there was no way I would have seen an opera otherwise. Nor would I have been able to make much sense of it without the workshop. The entire trip cost £5 and I’ve never forgotten it.

Opera companies don’t need TV writers as much as they need well-funded and well-conceived outreach programmes. They need to be operating within a culture where, from birth, children have opportunities to experience the sheer wonder of sound that a voice can produce. Fortunately, companies like HurlyBurly in shows like You Are The Sun are already offering this with great skill and care. We need children to be regularly singing, shouting and using their voices.

Young audiences can’t tell what they like or don’t like unless they get to experience it for themselves. Invest in outreach. And as the massive success of an artist like Rosalía suggests, don’t underestimate their eclecticism and openness.

Edward Venn has received funding from the AHRC.

Jennifer Daniel has received funding from the AHRC, Opera North Futures, and the Fund for Women Graduates.

Kiera Vaclavik has received funding from the AHRC Follow-on Impact Fund.

Jen Harvie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. ‘Opera needs to attract good writers and tell better stories’: four experts on how opera can survive, thrive and reach new audiences – https://theconversation.com/opera-needs-to-attract-good-writers-and-tell-better-stories-four-experts-on-how-opera-can-survive-thrive-and-reach-new-audiences-277934

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ann Marie Creaven, Associate Professor, Psychology, University of Limerick

Our relationships shape our health in many ways. Friends and family can provide support during difficult times and encourage healthy habits. But not all relationships are positive – some can be a persistent source of stress.

A new study published in the journal PNAS asked what happens when the stress in our lives comes from the people around us. The researchers focused on difficult ties in people’s social networks – individuals they called “hasslers”.

The researchers wondered whether difficult relationships might affect ageing in the same way as other chronic stressors.

Stress is not always bad for us. Short bursts of stress can help us learn coping skills, become more adaptable and trigger hormone and brain changes that prepare us for future challenges. But long-term stress – such as poverty, discrimination or unemployment – can wear down the body and speed up ageing.

Participants were asked to name people they spent time with, talked to about personal or health matters, or who influenced their health habits. Crucially, participants were also asked whether there were people in their network who often caused them stress or made life difficult – the hasslers.

Only those reported as often causing stress were classified as hasslers. People who only occasionally caused stress were not considered hasslers. Importantly, the same person could be nominated in multiple categories, meaning that a single relationship could serve several social roles.

People taking part also provided saliva samples to calculate two complementary measures of biological ageing. The first measures your biological age relative to your age in years. In other words, is your body older or younger than your numerical age? The second measures how quickly you are ageing right now.

Almost 30% of participants had at least one hassler in their social network, with about 10% reporting at least two hasslers, confirming that hasslers are reasonably common and “negative” ties are part of our social worlds.

This is certainly worth noting since negative ties and their effects are understudied in comparison to positive or neutral ties. Each additional hassler was associated with roughly nine months higher biological age, and with a slightly faster pace of biological ageing (1.5% faster).

Since the saliva samples were only measured once, we can’t be sure how this builds up over time, but if the pace of ageing is faster for the rest of your life, it certainly feels worth reflecting on.

This effect was strongest when the difficult relationship was between family members, rather than between friends or acquaintances. This might reflect the challenges in extricating oneself from family relationships.

Family ties are the hardest to cut

It’s a lot easier to slowly distance oneself from an acquaintance than to discard a relationship that may have existed for your entire lifetime and which is embedded in other close relationships. Besides, most relationships aren’t purely positive or negative. Even the most stressful family relationships can have some positive aspects – and vice versa.

Only 3.5% of friendships were classified as hasslers, compared with almost 10% of parents and of children, supporting the notion that hasslers are more difficult to discard when they are part of our families.

Interestingly, negative relationships with spouses and partners did not show the same association with accelerated ageing. One possible explanation is that occasional conflict or stress within these partnerships happens alongside substantial support, which could mitigate the physiological consequences of these negative interactions.

Also, hasslers were less likely to appear across multiple domains of interaction – such as both a confidant and a companion. In contrast, supportive relationships often spanned several domains of social life.

Once relationships become difficult, people might gradually reduce the number of ways they interact. Or, high-conflict relationships may be less likely to develop into deeply embedded ties that we engage with in multiple ways.

Nonetheless, it’s worth considering alternative explanations before we ditch our hassler ties. Experiencing accelerated ageing could make people feel more poorly, and perhaps more irritable.

Irritable people might more easily interpret interactions as “hassling”, meaning that accelerated ageing could be contributing to perceptions of hasslers, rather than the other way around.

Similarly, depression can both accelerate the ageing process and contribute to generally negative evaluations of different aspects of life, including relationships. Not all of us are equally likely to have hasslers in our networks. Women, smokers and those with greater histories of life stress in childhood tended to report more hasslers.

Extra hasslers were also associated with poorer evaluations of one’s own health, more anxiety and depression symptoms, more long-term health conditions and higher body weight, suggesting that difficult ties are relevant across several aspects of health.

Negative social ties might act similarly to other chronic stressors in our lives, influencing health and wellbeing, with accelerated ageing as one potential pathway identified in this study.

Although it’s important to nurture our social connections, these findings suggest we should also reflect on those connections that often bring “hassle” to our daily lives.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Difficult friends and relatives could be making you age faster – new study – https://theconversation.com/difficult-friends-and-relatives-could-be-making-you-age-faster-new-study-277925

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Laura O’Flanagan, PhD Candidate, School of English, Dublin City University

Director Silvio Soldini’s wartime drama The Tasters is a gripping and deeply affecting film. Inspired by the testimony of Margot Wölk, who claimed in 2012 that she had been forced to taste Adolf Hitler’s food during the second world war, the film examines survival and moral compromise among those caught inside the machinery of the Nazi regime.

The film is adapted from Rosella Postorino’s 2018 historical fiction novel The Women At Hitler’s Table (also known as At The Wolf’s Table in the US), itself inspired by Margot Wölk’s account.

At its centre is Rosa Sauer (Elisa Schlott), a young woman who leaves Berlin in 1943 to live with her parents-in-law in rural East Prussia while her husband fights on the Russian front. Hoping to escape the bombing of the capital, she quickly finds herself facing a different danger when Nazi soldiers arrive and force her into a van with several other women from the village.

They are taken to the nearby Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s secret headquarters, where the women are ordered to taste every meal prepared for the Führer to confirm that the food has not been poisoned. They sit together under guard to eat dishes prepared by the kitchen staff and then wait under supervision to see whether anyone falls ill.

The film unfolds within a muted visual palette that reflects the bleakness of its rural wartime setting. The countryside is drained of colour and the interiors appear subdued. This restraint extends to Hitler himself, whose presence is constantly acknowledged but never shown. The unseen dictator hangs over the film and shapes the lives of the women without ever appearing to them.

Elisa Schlott delivers a quietly commanding central performance. Her Rosa is observant and uneasy, a woman trying to understand a situation imposed on her without explanation. Schlott conveys the character’s anxiety through small gestures and careful silences, creating a performance with steady emotional weight which anchors the film.

The ensemble surrounding Schlott is equally impressive. The other women gradually come into focus, each drawn carefully with her own complexities. Emma Falck gives a strong performance as the wide-eyed and optimistic Leni, while Alma Hasun is compelling as the guarded Elfriede. Their shared circumstances create moments of closeness as well as distrust, so that survival becomes a matter of constant adjustment.

Rivalries emerge and alliances shift as the women spend long hours together under surveillance. Bonds form through conversation and secret gestures of care, and even within a system that treats them as expendable, the women continue to recognise one another as individuals.

The Nazi soldiers are a constant threatening presence. Their authority over the women is absolute and the violence behind it surfaces in sudden moments. One lieutenant (Max Riemelt) begins to single out Rosa and the two enter a clandestine sexual relationship that offers brief escape for them both before the reality of their situation, and their own role in the horror of war intrudes.

Soldini’s patient, understated direction allows the story to unfold through confined interiors and careful observation. Composer Mauro Pagani’s impressive score carries an insistence beneath the action, evoking the war beyond the boundaries of the film. The conflict remains outside the frame, while the score intrudes at key moments and unsettles the fragile calm of the women’s routines.

In the crowded field of second world war films, The Tasters is a rare story that places women at its centre. These women continue their lives as best they can within the constraints of their reality. They talk and confide in one another, and small acts of kindness carry enormous weight in an environment shaped by control and fear.

Exploring the fragile humanity which persists within an oppressive system, The Tasters is a thought-provoking, compelling and quietly powerful film that will devastate you softly.

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org; if you click on one of the links and go on to buy something, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

Laura O’Flanagan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The Tasters: a quietly devastating film about the women forced to test Hitler’s food for poison – https://theconversation.com/the-tasters-a-quietly-devastating-film-about-the-women-forced-to-test-hitlers-food-for-poison-278222

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alison Taft, Course Director of Creative Writing, Leeds Beckett University

For Mother’s Day, we asked ten of our academic experts to tell us who they think is the worst mother in literature. From serious villains to children’s book baddies, these mothers subvert every maternal instinct.

1. Mummy, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman (2017)

Isolated, broken and wedded to routine, 30-year-old Eleanor avoids mirrors, not due to the physical scars she bears, but because she sees “too much of Mummy’s face there”.

Readers meet “Mummy” only through her weekly conversations with Eleanor, but as a critical voice she is unsurpassed: “You’re not smart, Eleanor. You’re someone who lets people down. Someone who can’t be trusted. Someone who failed.” We soon learn there are no depths to which this mother hasn’t sunk.

The novel serves as a stark reminder that a mother’s reach goes far beyond childhood. “The two of us are linked forever, you see – same blood in my veins that’s running through yours. You grew inside me, your teeth and your tongue and your cervix are all made from my cells, my genes.”

The novel’s message – that recovering from an experience so embodied is possible – offers hope to all those with less than ideal mothers.

Alison Taft is a senior lecturer in creative writing

2. Edith Stoner, Stoner by John Williams (1965)

Stoner was the first novel that gave me a book hangover with its devastating family dynamics and tragic ending. Edith is a chilling example of maternal dysfunction. I only realised in later readings that her emotionally repressed upbringing and potential abuse result in her perpetuating familial dysfunction.

Edith is initially indifferent and cold towards her daughter Grace, but her interest awakens when a bond develops between Grace and her husband. Grace then becomes a weapon: Edith systematically isolates the girl from her father by controlling her time and manipulating her affections. Over time, she manages to place a wedge between them.

Grace eventually grows into a struggling young woman. She’s an alcoholic and escapes her troubled home when she accidentally falls pregnant and marries. She becomes a distant, unavailable mother herself. The novel’s engagement with trauma cycles left me feeling heartbroken for days.

Christina Hennemann is a PhD candidate in English

3. Arabella Don, Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy (1895)

The conniving Arabella Donn from Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure illustrates the uncomfortable truth that being a bad mother can sometimes be essential for self preservation.

Hardy shows Arabella bathed in blood as she cheerfully slaughters a long-suffering pig, signalling her pragmatic refusal of feminine sentimentality. She approaches marriage, pregnancy and motherhood with similarly callous logic; as strategies for survival in a world offering women woefully little security. Arabella initially fakes pregnancy to trap Jude, and then blithely abandons her son when he proves inconvenient.

By conventional standards, Arabella’s maternity appears monstrous. Yet Hardy’s portrayal reflects a far more monstrous reality; selfless maternity is a dangerous liability in a society that neither protects women nor meaningfully supports motherhood. Arabella survives precisely because she is an appalling mother. Yet if we were to cast blame for her maternal failures, it lies less with Arabella than with the social conditions that make motherhood such a profoundly vulnerable predicament.

Angela Dunstan is a reader in English literature and visual culture

4. Samira, The Beginning and the End by Naguib Mahfouz (1949)

Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz’s novel The Beginning and the End presents widowed mother Samira as a figure often praised for her strength and virtue. After losing her husband, she takes on the challenge of holding together a family reduced to poverty. She is strict and disciplined and expects her four children to sacrifice for one another.

For me, however, she is a deeply flawed mother. Like other neglectful maternal figures in Mahfouz’s work, she cloaks her selfishness and emotional blindness in the language of duty and sacrifice.

Nefisa, the plain member of the family, is pushed into making sacrifices for her brothers. Samira directs all her concern and ambition toward her sons, while remaining blind to her daughter’s needs.

Nefisa becomes a seamstress, starved of love and deprived of any prospect of marriage. Left unprotected, she encounters unsavoury characters on her way to and from work, and eventually becomes a sex worker.

Samira may seem a paragon of virtue, but her rigid morality and refusal to see her daughter’s suffering make her complicit in Nefisa’s tragic end.

Wen-chin Ouyang is a professor of Arabic and comparative literature

5. Mrs Wormwood, Matilda by Roald Dahl (1988)

Before “phubbing” – snubbing your child in favour of interacting with your phone – there was Mrs Wormwood, the mother of Roald Dahl’s Matilda.

Wormwood is in thrall to TV shows and TV dinners, looks not books. She is uninterested in her preschooler’s safety, let alone pastimes. While she plays bingo on weekday afternoons, four-year-old Matilda walks across town to the public library.

Mrs Phelps, a kindly librarian, is the first of two substitute mothers. She watches over Matilda while she reads, with concern but without interference, guiding her reading only when asked. Miss Honey – a mild, quiet and exceptionally empathetic teacher – stretches her clever little charge, while teaching the rest of the juniors to read.

When Matilda’s equally awful father gives her half-an-hour to pack for a permanent move to Spain, she arranges to be adopted by Miss Honey – with her mother’s blessing: “It’ll be one less to look after.”

Sarah Olive is a senior lecturer in English literature

6. Adora Crellin, Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn (2006)

The struggle for maternal perfection turns monstrous in Gillian Flynn’s novel Sharp Objects.

Adora, matriarch of the Crellin family, has Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome, a psychological disorder where, as the book explains: “The caregiver, usually the mother, almost always the mother, makes her child ill to get attention for herself.”

Adora is monstrous because she takes the cultural ideal of the devoted mother too far. She harms her children so that they must blindly accept her medicines and perverse care, telling them it is only then that she will love them forever. For rejecting Adora’s toxic remedies, her daughter Camille is emotionally neglected.

Both girls act out against this suffocating mothering through risky sexual behaviour, self-harm and crime. Flynn’s portrayal of Adora as the “perfect mother” undercuts the ideal that motherhood is a natural role for all women.

Ailish Brassil is a PhD candidate in English literature

7. The ‘new’ Bobbie, The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin (1972)

In the suburb of Stepford, Connecticut, local women’s husbands conspire to murder their wives and replace them with compliant robot duplicates. Bobbie Markowe becomes one such replaced woman.

The “new” Bobbie’s children appear happy with their changed mother who “doesn’t shout any more” and “makes hot breakfasts”. But the Stepford wives are not built for the complex demands of motherhood. These wife replacement robots are designed by their husbands to please and appease them, and this treatment is extended by Bobbie to her sons.

Although not as obviously harmful as physical or verbal abuse, this dynamic of constant indulgence warps the children’s understanding of mothers and of women in general. And despite her supposed gentleness, in “new” Bobbie’s garden the family dogs have been chained up – an ominous warning to any dependants who become too messy or inconvenient.

Faye Lynch is a PhD candidate in English literature

8. Rose, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong (2019)

As Ocean Vuong opens his semi-autobiographical novel, readers are introduced to a mother who appears volatile and abusive. Yet as the story develops, Vuong decodes the layered identity of this seemingly monstrous mother, revealing a woman whose life has been profoundly shaped by forces beyond her control.

As a Vietnamese refugee in America, Rose’s experiences of violence and poverty – as well as the way her limited English marks her as an outsider – showcase how trauma and displacement can distort expressions of love.

Through his letters, fragmented memories and poetic reflections, Vuong illustrates how his mother’s violence is embroiled with sacrifice, fearsome resilience and an unspoken wish to protect her son in a world that has caused her so much pain. The result is a maternal figure who represents a nuanced portrayal of motherhood under duress.

Vuong frames Rose as a cubist figure, presenting her from several angles at once, revealing complex and contradictory sides of her personality. Her maternal identity is inseparable from her experience of displacement, and its enduring psychological toll.

Clodagh Guerin is a PhD candidate in refugee world literature

9. Tamora, Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare (circa 1558)

There are few mothers in Shakespeare’s dramas, but Tamora in Titus Andronicus is one of the most memorable – for all the wrong reasons.

Tamora seeks revenge for the death of her eldest son at the hands of Titus. She is cunning and ruthless, scheming to wreak bloody havoc on Titus and his family. But this is Shakespeare’s take on ancient Rome, where might and masculinity rule, so violence breeds violence and the war hero Titus gets the last word.

In retaliation for Tamora’s crimes, Titus kills her wicked sons and, in the tragedy’s spectacular finale, serves them up to her baked in a pie. After this, Rome’s new emperor symbolically marks the regime change by expelling Tamora’s corpse from the city. Though Tamora has some maternal virtues – she is fiercely loyal at least – her vindictiveness, power and lust mean that she is destined for an unforgettable Shakespearean death.

Edel Semple is a senior lecturer in Shakespeare studies

10. Undine Spragg, The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton (1913)

Undine Spragg is a strong candidate for the worst mother in literature. Ruthless, ignorant and narcissistic, this anti-heroine marries four times in a self-absorbed project of social climbing and celebrity seeking.

When her son Paul is born, Undine’s reaction is so unimportant that it is missing from the novel. When he’s a toddler, she forgets about his birthday because she is at a party (although Paul’s father also fails to turn up on time).

The final chapter of the novel opens on a description of the timid and tender nine-year-old Paul wandering alone through her latest residence. Undine’s lack of maternal feeling stands as an example of ultra-rich folly that has long thrilled and horrified Wharton’s largely middle-class readership.

Stephanie Palmer is a senior lecturer in English literature

Who do you think is the worst mother in literature? Let us know in the comments below.

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The ten worst mothers in literature – according to our experts – https://theconversation.com/the-ten-worst-mothers-in-literature-according-to-our-experts-275252

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Kate Moles, Reader in Sociology, Cardiff University

More than 7.5 million people immerse themselves in lakes, rivers, seas and lidos every year in the UK.

But getting in the water means getting in pollution too for most outdoor swimmers. Raw sewage was discharged into UK waters for 4.7 million hours during 2024. But sewage is only part of the water pollution problem. Rain washing into rivers and streams contains fertilisers, pesticides and animal waste from farmlands, forever chemicals from car tyres, plus drugs from our own bodies. Industry deregulation and privatisation have produced a water crisis.

Dirty Business, a new Channel 4 docudrama highlighting this crisis, is a welcome call for action, though not a surprising one for anyone who swims outdoors regularly.

Through our research, and in our own swimming, we have explored how outdoor swimming is not simply a recreational hazard to be avoided. Within outdoor swimming communities, negotiating risk, responsibility and vulnerability has always been central to this activity.

As one swimmer shared with us: “I have followed [the environmental charity] Surfers Against Sewage for many years. My first glimpse of a condom was as a child, swimming near a sewage outlet.” Through these experiences, swimmers learn to read the water around them, developing skills and knowledge that help them to keep swimming through it all.

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Read more:
Why wild swimming is better for your mental wellbeing than open-air pools

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Feminist philosopher and social theorist Donna Haraway writes about “staying with the trouble”: sitting with difficulty rather than looking away from it. For the swimmers we spoke to and swam with, this is exactly what getting in the water means. The swimmer’s body becomes a site where ecological crisis is felt directly.

One swimmer described how his understanding shifted: “My awareness of pollution massively increased as I started to swim. You realise [Lake] Windermere is polluted, Grasmere is polluted. Your eyes open to it. Your nose opens to it.”

Writing about surfing in the UK, cultural theorist Clifton Evers and health and wellbeing professor Cassandra Phoenix describe the sport as “polluted leisure”. Swimmers encounter this contradiction directly. They feel pollution in the water against their skin, in the smells of their swim spots and in the residues left on their bodies, kit and memories.

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Read more:
England’s sewage scandal hinges on lack of water industry regulation – new docudrama reveals how profit drives pollution

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To swim with the trouble of polluted waters is not to accept their degradation. Our research has consistently shown that outdoor swimmers refuse to look away. To continue swimming alongside pollution, swimmers draw on situated, embodied knowledge of their swim spots. They monitor sewage outflow maps, keep their heads above water or decide to stay on shore if the water smells wrong.

Through navigating pollution, outdoor swimmers are reminded that the health and wellbeing of our bodies is bound to the quality of our waters and is folded into wider relations of cause and consequence. Swimmers, like everyone in modern society, are implicated in the agricultural systems, consumer habits and infrastructural demands that contribute to polluted waters.

When we swim alongside microbial life, fish, algae, our waste and agricultural runoff, we experience what Haraway calls “response-ability”: not just the capacity to respond, but the obligation to do so. Indeed, as feminist cultural studies researcher Rebecca Olive has argued, taking care of our waters must move beyond aspiration: it must be about action.

Swimming with the trouble

Across the UK, outdoor swimmers are enacting that response ability: through collective action and protest, legal challenges and awareness-raising swims. Some get involved with citizen science and water testing or build progressive alliances that build communities of change, expertise and action.

As a result, bathing water designations are increasing. These are locations protected in law for swimming, and the only sites where investment in water quality has historically been approved and monitored. There are currently around 600 designated sites in the UK. Thirteen new sites were proposed in February 2026.

We often see the processes that bring about these changes led by outdoor swimming communities and others with a deep love for the water. For one swimmer we spoke to, London’s first potential bathing water designation was a “legacy”, an opportunity to care for a river that has given her joy, solace and rejuvenation.

Dirty Business is a demand for systemic change in the water industry, change that swimmers are fighting for. As writer and outdoor swimmer Ella Foote has explained, this crisis must not force us to sit on the shore. To accept that is to accept that shared waters are a sacrifice zone that has been degraded by private interests, abandoned by regulators and made inaccessible to the public.

To swim with the trouble of pollution is to immerse yourself in the relationship between human and ecological health – to feel it on your skin, to carry it home with you and to refuse to look away.

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Swimming, sailing, even just building a sandcastle – the ocean benefits our physical and mental wellbeing. Curious about how a strong coastal connection helps drive marine conservation, scientists are diving in to investigate the power of blue health.

This article is part of a series, Vitamin Sea, exploring how the ocean can be enhanced by our interaction with it.

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Safia Bailey receives funding from ESRC for her PhD research.

Kate Moles does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why we keep swimming in polluted waters – researchers – https://theconversation.com/why-we-keep-swimming-in-polluted-waters-researchers-277120