Here’s an extract from the report:

Because women are generally not accustomed to staying on much after the age of 50 there is a feeling women do not want to” (industry interview). A former BBC senior editor (male) said:“You may get a woman who goes off because she says she’s made to feel she can go no further. Has she been told this or does she feel this herself?”

It is hard for women to single-handedly challenge these dominant discourses and so, rather depressingly, some women choose not to try.

And they conclude:

…we argue that the way female newsreaders are presented, supports and reinforces patriarchal norms and specific discourses of gender, despite the advances made by feminism in the 20the 20th and 21 st centuries. They also reinforce the dominant (male) discourses of beauty which provides limited role models for women.The pressure on female newsreaders to look physically attractive and young is part of the wider patriarchal power structures that dominate our society, as well as media organisations. We wonder, therefore, whether we will ever see a woman with grey hair reading the news.

While it makes for a depressing read I do find it heartening that barely a month goes by now without some serious piece of research emerging which clearly shows that women are disadvantaged when it comes to senior roles, and influential roles in society. Pregnancy is still an enormous setback to a woman’s career, largely because we still view childcare as a women’s role and have not set up the world of work to accommodate this most basic of human activities.

By the way, the report also makes mention of Miriam O’Reilly and her successful case against the BBC for ageism. I have an interview with Miriam O’Reilly here which I think you’ll find interesting.

Photograph: Ian West/PA

So many people at the wedding came up to me and said how wonderful it was to have such a happy gathering, and how good to see people again that we care about but somehow have managed not to see for months at a time, even years in some cases.

No surprises then that this morning I found myself thinking once again about people who are important to us. Sometimes it’s family, sometimes it’s friends and sometimes it’s neither like a work colleague who has really helped us out. They may not even realise how much you value what they do for you, how much you appreciate them. Perhaps it’s time to take a few moments to change that…

A Quick Personal Development Exercise

Give yourself a five minute breather and try this exercise. Don’t take too long over it but jot down what comes into your head and edit later. Take a sheet of A4 paper, turn it landscape. Divide it into three columns headed, Home, Work, Anything that doesn’t fit on the other two columns, let’s call that one Misc!

In each column try to get at least three names of folk who support you, help you in any way at all, sustain you, make you smile when you think of them, whose company you enjoy, who radiate and make you feel better about life.

And then think to yourself, when did I last see them or talk with them? When did I last spend some really ‘good’ time with them? When can I see them again?

And then do something about it. Simples really!

By the way, if you are looking for a whole day of personal development and a chance to top up your motivation, check this out, my RenewYou course, written with women’s personal development in mind, now booking!

Why Do You Defrag?

I have no idea. I only know that if I do it from time to time it makes my PC work better than if I forget to do it for some time. It’s a sensible piece of maintenance to keep my computer working well and allowing me to do what I want to do. So I do it.

I also know that when my pc crashes it sometimes needs a reboot, or in technical parlance, switching off for a minute. Then miraculously when I switch it on again the gremlin has usually gone.

Life Imitates PC…

Or possibly the other way round, it matters not. There are some things you need to do as a human being to keep yourself from slowing down; you know what they are. And you know that you need to do them. Are you?

And sometimes we literally just grind to a halt, and then nothing but a full reboot will work. Switch off for a while, take a break and return refreshed. That’s what holidays are for yet in our technological world that gets harder than ever.  You have to make a very concerted effort to genuinely switch off, leave the phone in a drawer, turn off the internet, bid adieu to Tweeting, and give yourself a reboot. You’ll work all the better for it!

What’s your favourite way of defragging?

I’m talking about Louise Mensch who spoke out this week about the level of vitriolic  abuse she received on Twitter after she defended the Murdoch empire (see this Guardian article )

She highlighted a serious issue about Sexism in Britain today. Yes, people have the right to disagree with her views. Yes, if you put yourself up there as a public figure you must take the brickbats along with the plaudits.

But no one should be subjected to the hateful sexist comments made about her on Twitter. What is horrifying is that so many were about the fact that she is a woman and were of a sexual nature, relating to the sexual violence they would like to subject her to. I can’t even bring myself to repeat them but she saved some of them in her Twitter account under ‘favourites’. And they are clearly not just from ill educated louts. (Although there is an argument to be made that anyone with those attitudes falls into that category-I’ll make that argument).

So to anyone who says to me we don’t need feminism anymore, that there really isn’t an issue if women take advantage of all that’s on offer, I refer you to Louise’s twitter account, and I applaud her for drawing attention to something that we as a society need to address. And that’s a first!

You may be interested in Are You Asking For It?

Money has become such a big indicator of success, disproportionately so; even in my lifetime (I’m 56) I’ve seen that change. Of course, how much people earn has always been a significant indicator but worth and value was also accorded to other professions where pay was not paramount, like teaching and health professionals. (And in full disclosure, I’m a qualified social worker, a carer, and worked in NHS for many years so, yes, I’m biased). I’m not going to get into an argument about the how and why that changed but look to the 1980s for your answer.  And I’m not looking to the past with rose tinted spectacles; I don’t want to live in the 1950s despite the current trend in all things retro. There’s no way I’d want to be a grown up woman in that era!

Women and Money

This emphasis on money has had a knock on effect on women in particular. As we have valued less and less anything that doesn’t generate ‘loads of money’ the caring aspects of life have systematically been devalued too. This article from Deborah Orr in The Guardian puts it very well, although it makes for grim reading. Ufortunately if you work within the field of caring, are a parent needing child care, or are a carer and need help and support you are faced with this reality every day.

Men Suffer Too

In my consulting capacity I also work with men who suffer from the ‘aggression is good’ assumption. Men who are openly kind and caring are generally seen as less appropriate senior management material than those who are more aggressive. Like many women they also fall foul of the very macho male values in some workplaces. I’ve written on this before, but the world of business was designed by men when only men were in the workplace. Men, naturally enough, designed it to reflect that. Many business values and mores by and large reflect very male attributes, what Professor Simon Baron Cohen might call ‘the extreme male brain’. (See Is Being Nice Bad for You?).

If this style of behaviour doesn’t come naturally to you you are always at a disadvantage. Hence women trying to behave like men, (remember shoulder pads  and pin striped suits anyone?) and ‘soft’ men being derided too. As I reflect on the many management courses I attended I realise that most of them were based on the male perspective, for example, when I first did assertiveness training it was of the ‘I win, you’ll lose’ variety, very adversarial (the eighties again). We were being given a very clear message about what was valued.

Would Gender Equality Mean a More Caring Society?

We know that when boards and companies employ significantly more numbers of women i.e. not a token one, everyone benefits. Yes, the bottom line goes up, but also working practices and styles change which benefit men and women. I frequently work one to one with women who are considering stepping off the career ladder because they feel uncomfortable with the way business operates, many to set up their own businesses. (I also work with women who work for companies very different from the ones I am describing, who love their work and don’t feel excluded or ostracised. For them the issues are much more general and relate to their own career development.)

Society needs people who professionally care for others; the fact that this is mainly women should not be allowed to downgrade its value. That’s bad for all of us, whatever gender. We need a more gender equal society, we need more women in Government, we need a real debate about what matters to us. We need to make some changes.

You might also like to read Men Cause Conflict-Women Befriend? and Neuroeconomics – Put Women in Charge

It’s earned her plenty of plaudits and admiration (count me in) but there has been a lot of criticism too, such as Rowan Atkinson’s little outburst a few months back. Obviously I’d like to talk with Miriam about that time, but I also want to hear a little bit more about the woman behind the infamous court case.

Jane: Miriam, let’s get the BBC case out of the way first. You were incredibly brave to take them on? Did you get much support from colleagues within the corporation itself?
Miriam: When it was first announced in November 2008 that myself and three other middle aged women were being dropped from Countryfile as it was moving to prime time, there was a lot of support from women at the BBC in Birmingham. Several expressed disgust that we were being dropped and agreed this was an age issue. It was only after I started legal action in 2010 that all, bar one woman, distanced themselves from me.

Charlotte Smith was one of the female presenters who were dropped from the programme, and she was very brave as she came to the Tribunal and made a statement in support of me. Charlotte was still working at the BBC so it was an incredible thing for her to do. She told me she couldn’t have lived with herself if she hadn’t stood up and told the truth about what had happened. You say I’m brave, Jane, but in my eyes Charlotte was the brave one.

When did you first realise that you had to act on this? Did you realise quite how big a story it would be?
As I say, we were told in November 2008. The programme was to be relaunched at primetime in April 2009. When I found out that all of the middle-aged women were being dropped I was really angry, and said so to senior members of staff, reminding them that ageism was against the law. I was told to ‘keep my head down’ that I ‘couldn’t win’ on this issue. Moira Stewart and Arlene Phillips had already been dropped from programmes, so there was a lot of controversy in the press when it came out that we had lost our jobs too.

Because I had been outspoken at the BBC, it was wrongly presumed that I had leaked those stories to the press. As a result, the work I had been given on Radio 4 (I’d presented Woman’s Hour, File on 4 and Costing the Earth), started to be withdrawn. I was writing articles for the Countryfile magazine at the time and that work was also withdrawn. It was when the last programme I had been commissioned to present was pulled in November 2009 that I picked up the phone and called the employment lawyer Camilla Palmer. Camilla thought I had a strong case so I decided to fight the BBC.

What happened was so wrong, and no-one was doing anything about it. I felt that unless someone took a stand they could continue treating older women in this way and get away with it. As a journalist I had to tell this story. I decided to go public at the time because I felt this was an issue that needed public debate. Sadly, none of the women (except Charlotte) felt they could openly support me because they were afraid for their jobs. I can’t blame them. I didn’t ask for this fight, it came to me. It was my decision to stand up to ageist attitudes at the BBC, I couldn’t expect other women who had financial responsibilities stand with me. I did have a lot of support from the sidelines at the BBC. And since I won my case, even more so.

Who or what sustained you most through this difficult period?
Knowing that I was doing the right thing kept me going. My mother always used to instil in me that if something was wrong I had a responsibility to put it right, there was no point waiting for someone else to come along and do it because they might never appear. When I told her about the Countryfile decision the first thing she said to me was ‘what are you going to do about it’. She died shortly afterwards but when I was going through the awful experience of the tribunal I felt her strength.

After you won your age discrimination case the BBC actually gave you a 3 year contract. How was it returning there after all the publicity and furore surrounding the case?
I hoped for the best. The BBC had apologised and I accepted their apology. 99.9% of staff, particularly the women, were wonderful to me and supportive. Sadly some of the men, particularly those who had been caught up in the tribunal or who felt angry that I had won my case, made my life difficult. I was sidelined and ridiculed by some. I realised nothing I could do, even when the programme I was co-presenting was getting record viewing figures,  would ever be ‘good enough’ for the executives who had been drawn into my case.

After nine months there I was told I wouldn’t be getting the programmes I was contracted to do, because a senior executive had ‘forgotten’ to tell producers I was available for work. I went to see the Director General, Mark Thompson, and gave him a candid account of what had been going on.  I was not going to be sidelined by them. They wanted to take away my voice in the hope that my profile as a campaigner for equality would die away and the issue of ageism would be buried. I wasn’t prepared for that to happen. I left so I could campaign for the Women’s Equality Network and speak out about inequality in broadcasting, which I continue to do. The DG said he would write to me later in the year with work offers but I’m not holding my breath. If they didn’t give me the work I was contracted to do then I’m sceptical they will offer me work when they don’t have to. Sadly these men at the top of the BBC don’t like strong women. They are not used to being challenged. This has to change if we are going to have true equality at the Corporation.

What have been the three most positive things for you to have come out of this bruising (but ultimately triumphant) encounter?
The first is the incredible women I have become friends with as a result of my case. Although I lost friends at the BBC I have gained far more and these will be lasting friendships. I have made friends through the Women’s Equality Network, but also with inspirational women from other walks of life who got in touch with me during the fight and afterwards.

I have also realised what a wonderful family I have and how much unselfish love and support they have for me.

I’ve also learned that, win or lose, if you stand up for something you believe in you will always triumph as a human being.

Miriam, what were your aspirations as a young child growing up on an Irish farm? Did you always know you wanted to work in journalism?
When I was eight I asked my parents for a tape recorder for Christmas. No-one was safe from my microphone! I had reams of taped interviews with family and friends. I didn’t really understand what journalism was but I was really interested in people’s opinions and stories. I was fascinated with the word ‘why’.

Have there been other events in your life that ‘prepared’ you for this most recent episode?
Apart from my mother’s influence, I learned when I was very young that you have to stand up for yourself. We left Ireland for England when I was six. In those days there were still signs outside B&B’s which said ‘No dogs, no blacks, no Irish’ – it’s shocking to think of that now. I didn’t believe I should be judged as a lesser human being because I was Irish, I was very proud of where I came from and who I was.

My parents worked really hard to establish our family here. My father held down three jobs – no-one gave us anything for free, we worked for it. I think that experience has made me into the person I am, so I wasn’t prepared to let the BBC treat me differently just because of my age.

What was your first ‘proper’ job? Do you remember what you were paid and what your main duties were?
I left school at 17 because I knew I wanted to be a journalist and I applied for several apprenticeships on local newspapers. I was eventually successful, but before I joined the Kidderminster Times I was lucky enough to be offered a job at Central TV in Birmingham as a general dogsbody. However, I pestered enough people to be given opportunities to get experience in the newsroom and on TISWAS, which was a children’s live TV show hosted by Chris Tarrant. It was great fun.

I joined The Kidderminster Times as a cub reporter in 1978 on a salary of £43 pounds a month. We used to be paid in cash in a little brown envelope. I covered marriages, funerals, fetes, local council meetings, and the local magistrates court. It was a fantastic grounding in journalism. I was paid as I learned and was sent to college to study. I look back with great fondness at that time.

Who was the biggest influence on you in the early days? Did you have a role model or mentor?
Not really, although I did have a very romantic view of journalism at the start, and was inspired by journalists like Harold Evans of the Sunday Times, and Woodward and Bernstein who exposed the Watergate scandal.

Did you plan out your career? Or was it more reactive?
I never planned a thing. I freelanced at the BBC in Birmingham at the weekends while I was still working on my newspaper and it worked out so well I was offered a staff job. For most of my career I was given opportunities through recommendations. I just did the work I loved, even if it wasn’t high profile, because the work was always more important to me than being a big name at the BBC or earning a large salary.

Who do you most admire in the TV world of current journalism? And why?
Orla Guerin, the BBC’s foreign correspondent, because she’s an extraordinary journalist, and Alex Crawford at Sky News. Her reports from Iraq were riveting.

You have been in journalism/TV at a really interesting time for women; both in your profession and reporting on events. What has been the biggest change re women that you’ve seen in your career?
This is a hard one to answer. I’m afraid my response isn’t a positive one. I think our present culture pressurises women into judging themselves and others by how they look rather than who they are and what they can contribute to society. We have a glass ceiling in the work place that many women find impossible to break through. Women are still lagging behind on pay. Older women aren’t given enough respect in society. I wish my answer was different but sadly here we are in 2012 and women still aren’t treated equally to men.

What advice would you give to any woman thinking of entering journalism today.
Trust in yourself that you can be as good as any man. Keep an open mind at all times – and LISTEN to what people are telling you.

If you could have any career you wanted, what would you choose?
Journalism.

And what’s next for Miriam O’Reilly? What adventures await you now?
Well, if I wait for the phone to ring with job offers from broadcasters I’d wait forever, so I’m setting up my own on-line magazine for older women. I hope to launch Certain Age in the autumn. It’ll have news, features, lifestyle, health, and beauty, all of those things expected in a magazine but targeted at women of a certain age who aren’t catered for adequately at the moment.

Miriam, I wish you huge success with your new venture. Please do let us know when it launches and we’ll add it to the ChangingPeople blog role and let readers know through the newsletter. Thank you!

And you know they’re doing something right when the boring misogynists come out of the cupboard and start having a go, as they have at the very excellent Mary Beard (pictured -she presents the excellent Meet the Romans on BBC 2.). Predictably some ignorant chap has had a go at her for daring to be herself on TV. He managed to compound the insult by suggesting she was akin to a person with disfigurement or disability, showing his antediluvian attitudes to disability in the process. Clearly only his idea of perfection should be allowed out in public. Mary has done an excellent job of defending herself so I need say no more than quote something from her rebuttal article:

And what is beauty after all? Is it someone who is Botoxed to the eyeballs, or someone who feels beautiful under their own skin?

Mary, I salute you. I love watching you and, for what it’s worth, you fit my definition of beauty too! And salutations to the BBC for not cramming you into ridiculous outfits and turning you into identikit women. They surely have moved on since the Miriam O’Reilly debacle.

Divine Women

The second reason I am having a love-fest with the BBC at the moment is Divine Women. Divine Women is presented by another academic woman who is obviously comfortable in her own skin. But the topic of Divine Women is brilliant too. It’s taking a look at some of the ‘lost’ research on how important women were in religion before the past was rewritten; it’s gripping and fascinating stuff.

To give you an idea of its content, the first episode was titled ‘When God was a Girl. And it’s not presented by someone who has merely been chosen for their looks and youth but for their skills and abilities, you know, just like they’ve been doing for years with men! Bettany Hughes is clearly enjoying herself and her enthusiasm has made me buy a new translation of Sappho’s verse. It is so refreshing and it’s sending out such a positive message to the younger generation.

So for once, no brickbats to BBC, just keep on with this type of programming and these type of presenters and the love will keep on flowing!

Exercise

However, recent research from Mind, the mental health charity, shows that despite we women knowing the benefits 9 out of 10 of us aged over 30 don’t want to exercise out of doors because we feel too self conscious about our bodies. Some even go to the extreme of only going outside to exercise when it’s dark, missing out on sunlight and potentially putting themselves at risk. I find that very sad but not surprising. We are bombarded with images of perfect airbrushed women and girls from an early age; no wonder we don’t really know what real women look like any more.

The Mind Research

Mind’s research found women, rather than exercise when feeling low, were more likely to:

• Eat comfort food (71%)
• Listen to sad music (32%),
• Spend time social networking (57%)
• Go to bed (66%)
• Find a way to be alone (71%)

The Mind Survey (which had responses from  14500 people) also showed that:

• 2 out of 3 feel conscious about their body shape when they exercise in public
• Many doubt their own ability compared to others; 65% think it’s unlikely they’ll be able to keep up in an exercise group and almost a half feel they will look silly in front of others as a result of being uncoordinated
• 60% are nervous about how their body reacts to exercise – their wobbly bits, sweating, passing wind or going red
• 2/3 feel that if they joined an exercise group, other women would be unwelcoming and cliquey, with only 6% feeling they would be very likely to make new friends

That really is a sad indictment of the reality of women’s body confidence. Maybe we should set up an exercise group for the uncoordinated woman, and we’d all wobble, pass wind, glow, and go left instead of right together (that left right thing – I never quite got it!) and laugh in the face of body fascism.

Have a Nature Date

Beth Murphy, head of information at Mind said:
“We all know that walking, cycling, even gardening are good for our mental health, however for many of us exercising in the great outdoors can be incredibly daunting, especially if already feeling low and self-confidence is at rock bottom.
At these times you can feel like the only person in the world experiencing this, but Mind’s research highlights that far from being alone, 90% of women are in exactly the same boat.
It’s time we start talking about how exercise makes us feel. We urge women to take the first step, invite a friend on a nature date and begin to support each other in taking care of our mental wellbeing.”

So, women, you know what you have to do. Throw self consciousness to the wind (possibly literally), find a friend, go for a wobbly, windy walk together and feel great!

Postscript - As an aside, did you see the wonderful Dr Mary Beard replying to her detractors on Twitter etc? She is currently presenting an excellent history programme on BBC but a lot of the chat about her centred not on her abilities as a historian, or her ability to get the Roman message across. No, it was all about her grey hair, for heaven’s sake! Her response? This is what a 57 year old woman looks like, deal with it. Go Mary!

Photo courtesy of Gymnastic leotards.net

As I sat at the table with a big grin on my face (I love having the ‘yoof’ around) I was struck again by the differences in how men and women talk to each other. Men are generally very comfortable with a competitive, faux aggressive style of talking and are continually mocking and insulting each other.  Hence the ‘Your jokes are the worst in the world- ever‘ thrown at my son, ribald comments about another’s biceps, scape-goating another for being a lamb with his partner and so it goes on.

It is all done with good humour and it makes me laugh. I’ve seen it at work too. Two male colleagues greet each other with:

“Hello Bern, blimey is that a penalty spot I see?” Or ” I hear you lost dramatically at golf the other day, and to Sanjiv of all people. He’s a beginner. You must really be bad”

And don’t get me started on the banter that goes on in the fire service (husband is a fire-fighter, I’ve heard it all)

It doesn’t mean they don’t care about each other or respect each other. It is a form of one one-upmanship though, as they compete to gain status. They’ve been doing it most of their lives, just watch the playground games.

Women’s Talk

Of course it happens, but it’s pretty rare for two women to greet each other with an insult:

“Hello Jane, good grief, you’ve aged and have you put on weight?” (Yes is the honest answer but we’ll gloss over that!)

We’re much more likely to try to find a common point of interest “Nice bag, where did you get it?” If we women start bandying insults about it tends to mean we’re having a fight! Not bonding.

Which might well be a problem for us if our workplace has a very male culture, and a male hierarchy. We might not talk their language. Or we might try to and get it wrong, or feel uncomfortable. We might get accused of being humourless, or touchy. Or we might just absent ourselves from places where those sorts of conversations happen and that might be bad for our careers.

If you’ve been brought up around boys (like me, two brothers, no sister) or have spent a lot of time in male company this probably doesn’t faze you at all. But if you haven’t it can make you feel at a distinct disadvantage. It’s one of the reasons why, if we’re to have to have gender equality in the workplace, organisations need to understand the subtle barriers to women’s advancement as well as the very obvious ones which are placed in women’s way.

What do you think?

Take a look at Why Can’ Women Speak their Minds in the Boardroom? for some interesting research from Dr Judith Baxter

Lynn Shepherd

Jane: Lynn, many thanks for sharing your thoughts with changing people readers. I do want to ask you about your books but can we begin chronologically? I’m interested to know what the young Lynn was like. Were you a dreamer? What were your thoughts about being ‘grown up’ and your ideal job then? Did you have early aspirations to write?
Lynn: I loved reading from a very early age – and I mean very early, I think it was about three! I don’t think I would call myself a dreamer though, I’ve always been a hard worker – every driven, very ambitious. I’ve always set myself goals and been prepared to put the effort in to achieve them. I don’t know who it was who said you make your own luck, but they’re right. You do need luck to succeed, but you increase your chances immensely by making sure you get yourself in the right place when that stroke of luck comes along.

What was the first paid job you ever had? Did it teach you anything that’s still of use to you today?
It was a Saturday job in a department store in the London suburb where I was brought up. I think it taught me my first lessons in dealing with people, both the customers and my colleagues. It was the first time I had to work with people as part of a team. I hadn’t really had to do that before at school – partly because I was useless at sport

You had a career in the City before becoming a novelist. What was your role there, and how did you get into it? How was it working in a testosterone fuelled environment? (I’m guessing here!)
Oh yes, testosterone-fuelled all right! And much worse then than it is now. It was a tough initiation, that’s for sure, and I had to grow a thick skin, and develop the ability to separate my private self from the role I chose to play at work. It gave me some practical skills that I hadn’t developed (I got much better at numbers, for example, having given up maths at 16), and it convinced me that you really can do anything you want to, if you put your mind to it. Though after three or four years I’d had enough and moved to work in the finance department at Guinness. It was after that that I got the chance to move into PR.

I think my favourite job was running the Guinness sponsorship programmes. I developed a humanitarian and environmental initiative called the ‘Water of Life’ that’s still running 15 years later – over 2 million people in Africa have gained access to clean water in the last two years alone. I’m both humbled by that, and very proud.

Presumably giving that up to write was something of a life changing decision. Who or what was your biggest source of support? Who really inspired you to go for it?
I don’t think there was one particular person who inspired me. It was more about opportunity. I was running a big PR department before 2000, but then I went freelance and I suddenly had more control of my time. No more business trips and late nights. That’s what freed me to start writing – the desire had always been there.

Most people try to write ‘that first novel’ in their spare time. How did you make time in your life to write? Are you a disciplined ‘1000 words a day’ writer or do you wait for the muse to strike?
One thing I’ve learned about myself is that I’m a ‘morning writer’ not an evening one, so I was never going to get a novel done working full-time – I was just too tired in the evenings to sit down at another desk when I got home. But yes, I am very disciplined, both about the copywriting I now do for my freelance ‘day job’, and when I’m writing my own work. I do a gym session in the morning, and I’m at my PC by 8.30am. And I clock off about 5 – if I work much later than that I only end up having to re-do it all in the morning!

How easy/difficult was to find a publisher?
Very hard! The statistics about the number of people trying to get published are so stacked against a new writer, and an agent once told me he took on one in 300 of the unsolicited manuscripts that poured through his door. And I was unlucky that Murder at Mansfield Park was being pitched to publishers in early 2009, at the very worst point of the recession, when no-one was that willing to take on an untried debut writer like me.

But I have a great agent, and we got there in the end, and having found a UK publisher it was much easier to find on in the US, and then in Australia too.

What has been your biggest challenge in life to date?
Getting to Oxford. No-one in my family had even done A levels before, so when I decided I wanted to try for Oxford it was a huge mountain to climb. It’s still one of the things I’m very proud to have achieved.

If you could edit your past, what one thing would you do differently?
I’d have been more confident. I look at my friends’ children and they’re way more self-assured than I ever was. I wish I’d had the courage to believe in myself more when I was their age.

Following on from that, what advice would the adult you give 16 year old Lynn (and would she have followed it anyway?
I think I’d have told her she was on the right track, but to have more confidence in herself, and perhaps make time to enjoy life a bit more! And yes, I think she might have listened!

What advice would you give to any aspiring writers reading this?
Never give up. I had two and a half unpublished novels in my drawer before I got my break, so don’t get disheartened. And try to share what you write with people whose opinions might be helpful. You’re going to get a lot of feedback, both before publication and then from critics – it’s a good idea to get used to that as early as you can! And anyway, other people’s thoughts can help you improve your work.

Thinking of fellow writers, who of your contemporaries, who do you most admire and why?
I have to confess I read much less than I used to – if I have spare time I’m writing my own work, rather than reading, and I know it sounds weird but reading a good book by someone else can really get in the way of your own thought-processes.

But when I do read – say on holiday – I like to read good intelligent crime, as well as literary fiction. AS Byatt has always been a favourite, especially her earlier novels like Still Life.

And writers from the past? Presumably Dickens and Austen get a look in (Reading Tom-All-Alone’s alone has sent me back to reread Bleak House. Dickens might have been an awful husband but he was such a good writer!)
Absolutely, Dickens and Austen are staples of my bookshelf. I also love Thomas Hardy (another rather indifferent husband), and one of my literary heroes is Samuel Richardson, the ‘father of the English novel’ and a great influence on Jane Austen. Hardly anyone reads him any more but I think Clarissa, in particular, is a masterpiece.

If you could live in any other era which would you choose? Do you think there has been a time when female writers have been encouraged?
I think the 18th century would have been a wonderful century to live in, always providing you had plenty of money. Civilized, literate, and a time of new ideas and great change. Women were writing then – or at least some of them – but I don’t think a career as a writer was a real possibility for a significant number of women until the 20th century.

What’s the best piece of advice you have ever received? Personal or professional or both!
If you really want it – work for it!

Lynn, thank you so much for talking with us today; I’ve really enjoyed it and I hope your story will inspire some of our budding novelists. If you’ve got a story in your head, get it out there, you never know!

If you’d like to know more about Lynn and her work , and buy her book, visit www.Lynn-Shepherd.com