Emma Barnett, 38, the main host of BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour since 2020, has recently returned from her second maternity leave. She was born in Manchester and her journalism career began at Media Week in 2007; since then, she has written for the Daily Telegraph, the Sunday Times and the Independent, and presented shows for LBC, BBC Radio 5 Live, BBC Newsnight and Bloomberg. Her book, Period: It’s About Bloody Time, came out in 2019. Married with a five-year-old son and a daughter aged nine months, she lives in Brixton, south London.
In a column before your maternity leave, you mentioned writing a letter to yourself for when you returned to work. Did you read it?
I nearly forgot. Two days before my first show back, the Russell Brand story broke. The day before, I was in contact with one of his anonymous accusers, setting up the logistics of speaking to her on Monday, so only when I was going to bed, quite pumped for the morning but also nervous, did I remember.
What was in it?
Variations of my password, good luck messages from listeners, stuff from interviews before my leave that I’d really enjoyed. Mostly, it was a description of how I’d felt doing my job, for which I was grateful. It’s really important to remember the “work you” because maternity leave is like a wilderness. It’s a land where time bends.
Was this leave different?
The first time, I felt like a stranger in my own life. I tidied tyrannically, trying to cope with the fact that everything else wasn’t how it was meant to be. This time, I decided it was a feminist statement for the house to be a state.
It’s been a tough week on Woman’s Hour. You’re Jewish, and on Monday alone, you interviewed the son of a woman abducted in Israel, followed by a survivor of Jimmy Savile’s sexual abuse. How do you cope with tough subjects?
I get into a zone. I don’t personally process a lot of information I’ve taken in until much later in the day when the children are in bed. Last night, I was out watching a film premiere for an interview and suddenly I felt really heavy by nine o’clock. I realised I’d not really stopped to go through everything. I have to decompress. I’m going to have those reactions as a human being.
At 17 you did a work experience shift on Woman’s Hour with Jenni Murray in Manchester. What did you learn?
I remember being there when she was writing the Woman’s Hour script, which was great. Then I think we went to the canteen and had a bacon sandwich. Don’t show this to my rabbi.
Your career rocketed quickly. Did you always want to be a journalist?
As a teenager, I was trying to experience a lot of different things. I wanted to be a surgeon because I really liked it when they brought sheep lungs into biology. I liked the gore. At university [in Nottingham], I did lots of theatre and directed plays like Equus, which I also acted in. When I was young, I wanted to be a fishmonger, possibly because I loved fish and chips. I went fishing for the first time in my 20s and loved it, but I don’t think I’ve had the premium experience yet. Since having children, I’ve somehow developed this need to be completely alone for one day, and noncontactable, with a rod.
Would you do a female Gone Fishing?
I need to find another woman to make the sequel. Maybe me and Claudia Winkleman, although I haven’t told her yet...
In early 2022, you wrote about your many attempts at IVF and miscarriage. What compelled you to do that?
I was completely and utterly broken. This will sound stupid, but I didn’t think you could lose a baby after five rounds of IVF. I sat down on my rug in my living room and made two decisions; the first to write an article about how it felt when it wasn’t working. I wanted to show I could do my job, be a friend, be a wife and communicate that with other people who needed it.
What was your second decision?
To say yes to a request to go on Michael McIntyre’s BBC quiz The Wheel [laughs]. I just wanted to do something ridiculous and fun – if I’d been asked then to go on Strictly, I’d have said yes. It turned out to be really stressful, as I had to get a question right about female leaders in politics to set up the contestant, Becky, to win £90,000, and she’d had such a tough time financially during Covid. We still talk on Instagram. I can’t describe the joy that went through my body when she won.
Your book Period documented your struggles with endometriosis and adenomyosis [when endometrial tissue grows into the uterus’s muscular wall]. You interviewed a scientist last week whose work will help diagnose the condition quickly. How did that feel?
My body’s been such an instrument of torture. I haven’t really said this anywhere, but I’m still really ill with it. I rarely mention my own life on Woman’s Hour as I don’t think it’s appropriate, but that brilliant woman was so unassuming and quiet that I had to say: “I want to give you a hug.” I like to be the person I really am on the radio, to have a relationship with guests. But my main job is not to make friends. It’s to help tell the truth.
Which recent interviewees have brought you the most joy?
Marina Ambramović – she was so drolly funny – and Chimamanda [Ngozi Adichie]. She’s straight talking, warm, relatable and clever. And I loved talking to Emma Thompson last summer about pubes. After the show, she said: “What a moment that was.”
Emma Barnett presents Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio 4, Monday to Thursday
