Off Air... with Jane and Fi - I feel the same about marriage as I do black pudding... (with Prof. Alice Roberts)

Episode Date: April 2, 2025

We're building a wall... of postcards! Keep em coming. Jane and Fi also chat MAFs, fruity ITV, black pudding and derelict buildings. Plus, Professor Alice Roberts, anatomist and biological anthropologist, discusses delivering the Octavia Hill Lecture in partnership with the National Trust and Times Radio. If you fancy sending us a postcard, the address is:Jane and FiTimes Radio, News UK1 London Bridge StreetLondonSE1 9GFPlease send your suggestions for the next book club pick!If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] us on Instagram! @janeandfiPodcast Producer: Eve SalusburyExecutive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-dun-kuh-d Eve is very much in control today. We've been given our orders, we've got to stop at 12.15 on the very button and there's going to be a two minute warning. Do you want to do that as a little klaxon? What will we hear? OK, wow! Right, so you can tell it's Wednesday. Thank you for your postcards. Aren't they lovely, Jane? They're an absolute burst of colour and joy. They really are. Thank you very much. The address? Fian Jane. Off air. Times Radio. 1 London Bridge Street. London. SE19GF. That's right. Isn't it funny how postcodes quite often have letters in them that do allude to the people that you're writing to?

So my friend, Suze's has got SU in her postcode. I mean what are the chances? And we've got GF. What do you mean by that? GF? Well, Garvey and Fee. I'm stretching here. Glover Fee? Yes. Yeah, that. No, go ahead and put Garvey in there. Thank you to Mel who has sent us, I just, I'm not even going to try and pronounce it, the very big festival in Wales. It's Hlan Gothlin. Thank you. And it's the international musical. Yes, it did. Thank you. And that looks like a joyful thing. We've got a very,

very beautiful, mystical Bambra Castle in Northumberland. I love that part of the coast. Have you been there? Well, I've been when my daughter was at Newcastle Uni, up and down I was. You've watched it. Up and down I was from the comfort of the train. LNER. They're nice trains, LNER. I have no complaints about them.

And then we get to the one sent to us by Diana. Now, Diana, I love love you but you're very cheeky. So you have had courtesy of something called lookalike.com you've had a photograph mocked up of Jane and I on mobility scooters and I love the detail because the baskets in front of the mobility scooters are absolutely packed with booze. You've got us kind of imagined a little bit further down the line in my case not much. So we'll pop those up on the Insta. The headline is growing old disgracefully together. My advice to our future selves is try and stay walking as long as possible because we've piled on the power of searching.

Well I think, yes, I'm not sure I want that on the wall or do I? Oh we do. Yeah we do really. And actually Melanie has done, I didn't know these things existed but we've had a few of these touch note cards. They're very clever aren't they because you can take an image of wherever you are in the world and turn it into a card. Is that how they work? Yep, and it does your postage for you.

Amazing. What a great initiative. Why do people have these incredible ideas? And why are these people never me? Anyway, Melanie finds herself in Armenia. What an absolutely beautiful image that is. Yeah, that is remote, isn't it? Snow capped mountains in the background, blossom on the trees in the foreground. Absolutely gorgeous thank you very much Melanie. Perhaps you

could just tell us what you were doing there, listening to you often when traveling in funny time zones. What are you up to? Are you on something secretive Melanie? Well if you are you probably can't tell us. Well I suppose also she's broken cover by sending us a postcard. Not as secret as it once was is it Melanie what you're up to. Looking forward to other ones in her collection the MI5 building on the River Thames. So we're building a wall let's reclaim that phrase as our own of postcards and they all will be available on the Insta when young Evelyn has finished clapping us. Enjoy says Gail up north who has recommended The Change, a comedy drama on channel four, two seasons to watch. Honestly, think Deadlock Vibes, it's made

me laugh out loud. Gail thank you for that. I started watching it the night before last. I did two episodes, it's written and created and stars Bridget Christie. I've left out some prepositions, so I apologise. And it is very funny. I'm really, really enjoying it. There's something so luscious about joining something that's got two seasons. Because you know that you'll just, if you like it, you're sorted. I still haven't finished the split. Have you not? I keep it as my emergency watch on the iPlayer when I'm, you know, I just didn't need

a little bit of a comfort watch because they still haven't actually split up yet. Nicola Walker and Stephen Mangan, they're permanently on the cusp of it. Then they have another party. Then they think better of it and then something else happens. Anyway, that's the one I'm still working my way through but I was delighted to discover there were three seasons of that. And you've got a Barcelona special. Was it Barcelona or Mallorca? Barcelona and also I've got to take back everything rude I said about this city is ours the crime drug cartel family

Scouse drama also occasionally set in Spain I'm absolutely loving it. Okay. Yeah. Good to know. Just admit, there's some great actresses in it. And I complained at the beginning that all the females in the cast were just wandering around in tracksuits going, better not ask what they're up to. But now they're kind of driving the action a bit more.

Well, that's very good to know. Yeah, it is good to know. And yes, so if you've given up or didn't like the tone of the first couple of episodes, stick with it. It delivers. Can I just put out a plea if anybody is watching Maths Australia, Married at First Sight Australia, do you also think that this season has tipped a bit, a little bit too much into

that slightly constructed reality TV stuff, where you know that the producers have kind of slightly shoehorned a plot line into what they hope is still real relationships. There's something a bit funny going on. I don't really understand. So the concept is that you only hear somebody and you pick them based on... No, I think that's love is blind. Oh, well what's this then? Married at first sight is literally that you've got some dating experts who match couples and they get married and that's the first time that they've seen their partner.

At the ceremony? Yes. It's not real though, is it? So it's not a legally binding marriage but for the purposes of TV and I presume they've signed quite a contract actually because they're meant to stay in the experiment and do all of the things that are asked of them which includes Confessions Week and Intimacy Week and Meet the Family and Friends Week and all kinds of things. That would finish me off. But it's strangely compelling for you, it's a massive massive international hit. You can watch a UK version, there's probably one in Armenia, there's definitely one in New Zealand.

But it just seems to have gone a little bit too pulling us all in and I'm not sure you're really watching the natural progression of a relationship. But quite a few of these have ended in real marriages, they have the option at the end to really marry each other and they've gone on to be very happy. And I think it's a bit like dating apps, sometimes a bit of help to match you is a good thing. Yeah, well, maybe I should investigate. What channel do we find that on? We find that on the channel four, the fourth channel. Channel four, so not the other side, but the other side of the other side. Yep. Before you get to the newly renamed five.

Just five. Just Five. It's just Five. I never understand these corporate name changes. I never understood ITVX, because I thought, well, what is it, X-rated ITV? I thought it was initially. I thought it was like fruity ITV. Yeah, is it like naked this morning?

Actually, they had enough trouble, I didn't even need to bother. But I don't really know what it'd be. No, I was absolutely baffled by that. I mean, I went through an underground tunnel, kind of one of those connecting tunnels, somewhere on the London Underground Network this week, that was just plastered with this new Five branding.

It doesn't make any sense. I mean, it's been Channel Five, then on your laptop or whatever it's My 5. Now it's welcome everybody to 5. How much does this cost them? What's the point? Well, so it's very unimaginative. They could at least have rebranded as 6. Yeah, 6 or done it in Roman numerals V. Just showing off a little bit there with my knowledge of classical civilizations.

Just incredibly, incredibly impressed. Thank you. Now I was marvelling the other day at the ruin that I can occasionally see, though not on every trip, don't get me started, from the Avanti West train at Birkensted. It's a ruin and Helen, very grateful to you Helen, thank you very much, has sent me the information that it is in fact the ruins of Birkensted Castle. She says, I grew up in Birkensted or Birko as we refer to it and the ruins that Jane sees from the train are Birkensted Castle. I recently took my children as one had a school project on the Normans.

It might answer some of Jane's questions if you read the attached. Helen, thank you so much. It's just a ruin now. There's barely anything to see, just a few remnants of walls. But just a quick glance at the information online about this place. Honestly, it does. It just makes you feel so ludicrous and insignificant. It's a Norman or it was a Norman Mott and Bailey Castle. And it was built to obtain control of a key route between London and the Midlands. All sorts of people from history lived there. People from history. You know what I mean. I'm sounding like Donald Trump who the other day couldn't find the word for criminal, so I called them people of crime.

But don't worry, nothing wrong with Donald. He's a very sprightly 110. And it was also back in 1216, which is just before lunch isn't it? It was the site of the siege of Birkensted. It never gets old does it? Or does it? I don't think it does. The siege of Birkensted, I mean who could imagine such a thing? And the fact that they had to build this to make sure they could control that route between London and the Midlands, I mean it is incredible isn't it? And now of course we have the truly remarkable M40, making sure that no one can fully gain control of that key route. But back in the day you just had to build a castle, there was no other way around it, to make sure that vagabonds couldn't destroy presumably your trading routes and other things you were concerned about.

Do you know who would be very interesting on that Jane? Somebody other than me. Our guest today, Professor Alice Roberts. Because she's talking about that kind of long view of history, the place that it should have in all of our lives and helping us to understand where we are on the continuum. So she's done a lecture for the National Trust which I think is going out on this radio station, Times Radio, freely available on the app, on Saturday but she's a guest in probably, what would it be? Well be careful now because we're under very strict time pressure. 17 minutes before the clap. So just tell me more about the lecture so I can prepare myself for it.

So it's about connecting history to our minds. So I think the main point is just the more we embrace technology, actually the more we can learn from history. So this idea that we're being completely taken over by AI, that all our lives are digital, that you know somehow that's kind of bad for the human race, I think what historians and archaeologists and studyers of this thing, that's what Donald Trump would say, exactly want to point out is that actually they're incredible, they can be incredibly useful tools for just aiding our ability to put history back into the present. So one of the, and I have obviously done this interview already with Alice, so one of the examples that she

uses and I won't give it away, is just about how digital technology has enabled people to better understand migration. There was so much more of it going on than perhaps we can imagine. I think we assume that migration is a problem of modern times, maybe because we simply think that in ancient times people wouldn't have been able to travel as much as they can now, but that's not true. So interesting facts about that and also about how the patriarchy simply wasn't, she's perked up everybody, it wasn't as overarching as maybe history has taught us and we're finding out more about the matrilineal aspects of society through our ability to examine graves and what's found in graves and DNA testing

and who belonged to what family and who was in charge and all of that. So it's fascinating. It's interesting. Yeah. Well, I shall say you're right. As soon as I hear patriarchy a little, you did, you sat up a little bit. Inner klaxon just goes off. Yeah. Can I also say a huge thank you to Krista who sent through details of the house that both Jane and I had seen on the way out of London on the left hand side if you're travelling down to Reading and Swindon. It is the Grotto House of Lower Basildon and you can find out

more about it by going to derelictplaces.co.uk which is a fantastic website. I'd never come across it before, Christa. So thank you for that. Many hours will now be spent. There's something fascinating about derelict and abandoned. Oh, I was saying that to Eve earlier. There used to be a really good Twitter account I follow called Abandoned Places. Yeah, and there's also a magnificent kind of coffee table book of some of those places because they are just wondrous aren't they? You know palaces that have been overgrown by ivy and cinemas and theatres and shopping malls as well. Institutions. Yeah. It's sometimes really eerie and frankly terrifying but also there is kind of haunted beauty

about these places isn't there? Definitely. There is and there's a little bit in each of us that looks at it and goes oh yeah well I could turn that into a nice en suite I wonder if I could pick that up for a song and spend the rest of my life dedicated to restoring that and maybe five would be interesting. That's the channel you want. It is. Get yourself on five. But the the Grotto house has got a fascinating history and it was built and it got its name from the fact that the original much smaller house, and I'm reading now, was attached to a grotto elaborately decorated with shells and an adjoining rock room for Lady Fane's retirement and pleasure, built in 1720 by Viscount Fane of Basildon Park for his wife, Lady Mary Fane, who was a maid of honour for Queen Anne. So he obviously loved her so much, he built a great big room and put shells in it for her.

Well actually that's lovely because maybe Alice's point about the patriarchy comes into play here. Here was a man who understood his wife's need for a place of retreat. Yep, and safety. And safety, so he provided one for her. Yeah, a man who understood his wife's need for a place of retreat. Yep, and safety. And safety. So he provided one for her. Yeah, a grotto. He didn't lock her in it, did he? No, I don't believe that to be the case at all. I think it was genuinely a kind of, you know, a building of love for her. But all of that was taken away and it ended up being

a kind of conference centre in the 1980s. That's the last time that it was used and it is now derelict, it's been empty for 30 years and Christa says our youngest used to go with his chums in the summer via boat but I think fences have been put up now and it is one of the great great pastimes of youth isn't it, to find abandoned buildings and roam them. Yeah or the thing I used to do, wasn was only thinking about this the other day, building a den. Do people still do that?

Well, I think if you're out in the countryside you probably do. I know that there's definitely, definitely a thing amongst the city teenagers to find rooftops. It's not quite the same thing. Oh, but I think... Yeah. I think fun can be had. Health and safety. Yes, no, very much health and safety. Very much, Jane. Well done, you.

I do hope they don't vape up there. Georgina says, I didn't join the police until 1987. I think I met all the 1930s met police requirements, though, the ones you mentioned the other day, no longer in the police, but I like to think I still do have all the 1930s met police requirements though, the ones you mentioned the other day, no longer in the police but I like to think I still do have all the requirements though that's probably for others to judge. I'm definitely still slightly hefty, they're rather less inclined to rough and tumble these days. Georgina, thank you and thank you for your service in the police force which I imagine was at times rather testing. But we need people like you.

And a word to Louise who says, stepmothers often get a bad press, but I was really touched to get flowers from both of my grownup stepchildren this year. We have a really close bond, but it's lovely to be thought of in this way. And my stepson's card made me smile. The card says, most stepmoms are pretty shit,

but not you. You're an absolute legend. Well that's busting the myth. Absolutely, but reminding us of the old cliche about stepmothers at the same time. Which has just got to go. Louise, I'm glad you got your flowers and had a lovely time. Thank you. Now this is going to remain anonymous and we're going to chuck it out to the hive. I'd love your take on my family situation.

I call myself Grandma Number Two. I've got a gorgeous pair of twins. I live an hour or so away and I'm a healthy over 70 year old. I visit weekly to help pick up from school or to take to a class or babysit anything really that I'm asked I'm happy to do. I have lots of fun with my twins, a boy and a girl, lots of laughter and silliness. Grandma number one lives nearby, not necessarily in the best of health maybe, doesn't help in any way to my knowledge, but gets visited often by her three daughters and the grandchildren of which there are four now, but she gets all the celebration type holidays, birthdays, Christmas, Easter and of course Mother's Day.

I do get to celebrate but never on the day. I've come to accept this but this Mother's Day I felt a little different after chatting to my grandson and finding out that they all went out, Grandma number one and her three daughters and all the children, to a garden with flowers somewhere and had a meal. Not a pub, my grandson emphasised when I asked. Although I did have a beautiful bouquet sent to me during the week, so I'm not forgotten. I felt a little bit miffed when I realised I'd gone to a National Trust place myself for a walk and a coffee all alone. I do this quite often and like my own company, so I don't consider myself needy in any way.

How does this dynamic evolve? I think it's probably the wives who determine the day's events and their families seem to do lots of things all together, but I often feel like the nanny who's expected to do her job. I don't always feel like this, but this Mother's Day brought it home to me, how often this kind of thing has happened over the years. Can you think of any way I can address this without sounding like a moaning Minnie? Well, let's chuck it out to our eloquent, thoughtful, and wise community. I'm sure they've got some experience of that. I think it's just quite a harsh fact and often said

that you lose a son when they get married, you gain a daughter when your son gets married. And I know that's not true in every case at all, but I really feel for you because you're obviously putting in the graft and being a lovely, lovely available grandparent and really helping out. So I don't think you're being a moaning mini at all. I think that's probably so difficult to raise as a topic. Yes, and for anyone who thinks that's petty, well, it's not petty.

I bet it really rankles and I absolutely get it. I think it's a really, I think you're right. I think it's a very delicate area and I'm not sure how you go about raising it. Let's, as you say, put it out there and see what other people think. I wonder whether it is just, well, lots of cliches are true and true because they're cliches or whatever the expression is. Usually, and look, there are always exceptions, a woman

who's got small children or just had a new baby, perhaps their first baby, if she gets on with her own mum, will find it easier to be around her own mum than anybody else's mum in the immediate aftermath. And at that point, a kind of pattern is set. But it's not always true, because sometimes mothers-in-law or whoever it might be, brilliant. In some cases, they might know more about child raising than your own mum does, they might be better at it, who knows? There's all sorts of complications here, aren't there? But I don't know, do you think, and I think possibly it is true still, that the female in a heterosexual relationship does keep, maintain control of the domestic timetable? It's just one of those things. You know, it's Mothering Sunday this Sunday, so we're taking my mum out for lunch.

And that's just said, and hubby, or whoever it is, goes along with it. What do you think? Well, I'm sure that is the case. And sometimes I'm sure it's not a slight at all. It's just easier, it's a shorthand, it's what you've got used to doing. And I suppose the the best way in for our anonymous correspondent surely has to be through your son, you know, to just maybe mention that just sometimes you would love to be there on the day. Well why couldn't she have gone to that lunch? Yeah, I don't know. No, I mean we don't mean we're obviously not in possession of all the facts, but hey that's never stopped us before. Not ever. So it does seem a shame that they weren't able to

offer you the chance to go to that lovely lunch, not in a pub. Yeah, and I think especially if you're missing out on Christmases and Easter's, that's just not fair. You know, that can't be a particularly nice feeling. And honestly, I don't think you're moaning at all and I think in being able to tell us that you went you know around a national trust property by yourself which you often do and you're totally fine and at ease with that shows that you're not a moany type of person. No but you are entitled to be aggrieved I would say because it does sound as we already mentioned that you are you're doing your bit more than doing your bit. We also don't know quite how frail the other granny is doing. There was a hint that perhaps she wasn't

in the best of health. So yes we're with you. We understand why you are a little bit brassed off and I think that's absolutely fine. Oh I should have done this ages ago but I just wanted to briefly go back to postcards because Anne is in Cumbria, sunny she says, it's been sunny in England all week. Hasn't it been joyful Jane? It has. Really joyful. I happen to go past a couple of, I'm going to say foreign tourists on London Bridge today, I think they may have been from North America. They were taking photographs, you know I've tried before to get a really good shot on London Bridge of Tower Bridge in the background and it can be magnificent if you can take photographs.

If like me you can't, nothing ever comes out right. Anyway, these two were trying to take it and they were both saying, I can't believe this is my American accent coming up, brace yourselves. I can't believe it's sunny in England. Really, I felt like tapping them saying, do you know we've had the sunniest march in living memory and look it's still sunny today. Don't put a tariff on it mate. Exactly. Anyway we shouldn't go on about it. I'm almost over it now. Anne says, sorry continue.

Yes, in fairness she does say I've got no postcard to send in. Well come on Anne, you're in Cumbria there were some beautiful beautiful areas there that you could you could root out a beautiful vision of local rural life couldn't she or even a postcard depicting the local council at work which we did have from Alborough earlier in the week. I have no postcard to send in but the postcard wall has made me remember Vision On with Tony Hart and the pictures that all the viewers used to send in. Does it remind you of that? Tink-a-tink-a-tink-a-tink. Do-do-do.

Do-do-do. Do-do-do. Do-do-do. Yeah, there we are. I was a really horrible little girl and I used to think that I was just very angry that other children were so talented. This is the theme. I haven't changed. That other people were able to do these amazing pictures which Tony

Hart would then choose and put on his wall. I always used to think, what a fantastic job. Tony? Yes. No, he was a very, yeah, he a fantastic job. Tony? Yes. No, he was a very, yeah, he was a strange chap in some ways. I'm not sure he gets on telly now. And I don't mean that in any way nastily.

But he was incredibly, he was good with his hands, wasn't he? For our younger listeners, Fiona, do you want to just tell them who Tony Hart was? Because he died 2009 2009 I'm told. So he was a man who was very good at art who hosted a TV show where he showed you how to draw or paint something and the but that wasn't the reason why you were watching you were watching because he had Tony Hart's gallery and you could send in a picture and the lucky few would be their pictures would be selected and you went up in the Tony Hart gallery. It's a bit like our postcards, it's like our postcard wall. It is, which is exactly what Anne picked up on.

Yeah. Battling with the heat wave in Cumbria. So, Anne, thank you very much for that memory. Because there was also, I get him confused with the chap who used to pretend to be an animal at the zoo. Oh, Johnny Morris. Johnny Morris, yes, that's right. In 1963 he designed the original Blue Peter badge. So that's how he got to be on, he designed a badge.

Wow, those were the days weren't they? That is your access all areas TV pass. Well done, Tony Hart, fondly remembered. But also Anne you're right, you can't actually say Vision on without singing the theme tune and I think that the theme tune is due a rerun sampled maybe by Charlie XCX. Exactly. I think she's so, would she not be a little too forceful? No, I think it would be nice in the middle of one of her songs, a bit like the Eurovision song, which is actually a pick and mix of every single available genre known to the musical mankind. You were absolutely right to spot that. We did actually play some Eurovision songs on

the radio program yesterday. Times Radio, get the app, Monday to Thursday, 2 to 4, it's free. That's the app. And it just cheered us up because it's a gloomy old world at the moment. But I'm here to tell you the UK is not going to win Eurovision this year. Sweden is. Yeah I mean they've got a very funny song about the appeal of the sauna. Trust me, put your money on it now. Yeah it is good. Can I just read this one from Nicola and then that will be it from me. Hello lovelies, my ears pricked up when hearing you discuss a sleep divorce. Now we're putting this out there, we're doing our little bit for marry couples, couples, whatever flavour you are. We just like to do a lot for marriage. We do. I just keep trying it.

Stop it. No, listen, no, you're much better than me. I tried it once and it's sort of how I feel about black pudding. Right, carry on. Oh dear. For one, I didn't even know there was a term for this, but we have been doing this successfully for about 10 years. My partner is a snorer. She's tried many things in the past, but nothing seemed to work. In the end she was thinking of surgery and that's when we decided we should just try and use the spare room as a snorey room. And honestly it's the best thing we've ever done. We both get a good night's sleep, wake up refreshed, not wanting to kill each other. Oh that's lovely. It's very exciting.

And so then Nicholas says we've both gone or are going through the menopause so having separate rooms has really helped with the insomnia and hot flushes without disturbing the other. The bizarre thing is that when mentioned to most people they look horrified and we usually get some negative comment about not being in a full relationship. Well that's the whole negative Nelly thing that we were discussing earlier in the week about the person who puts their head to one side and says oh you must be really missing the children when you're having a much needed day away from the children when you happen to have had a relationship breakup. So it's very very similar to that. And we want it to stop. I mean whatever your sleeping arrangements are, if you're waking up in the morning feeling happy and wanting to be with each other, just absolutely go for it. Nicholas says of course if you don't

want to go down that road, the spare room road, then may I suggest some custom-made earplugs? I had some made last year for when we go on holiday and need to share a... Thank you. Oh, two minute warning. They're not too expensive, 75 quid and work a treat. Love to all the pets. Well Nicola, we love you for saying that and I've seen the adverts actually for those custom made earplugs and I've always thought I bet those don't work as I continue just shoving large pieces of silicon which have rolled around on the floor. There's quite a lot of cat hair in my ears.

I might look into it. Nicola, thank you. Fur lined ears. Right, Lucy describes herself as middle aged and deranged. I am reassured, she says, to hear that I'm not alone in being filled with melancholy by that archive footage of long dead Londoners innocently going about their slightly speeded up business. I reached peak bonkers sadness however at the BFI screening of a film called The Great White Silence, restored footage from Scott's doomed Antarctic expedition. What was it? The bravery? The pointless human sacrifice? The families left behind? No, it was the

penguins. Each and every one of which, whom, had been in its, his, her, fishy grave for at least a century by the time I encountered them on that film. Sob, whale, it was just the sheer penguininity of it all. Lucy's in Barnet. Here's the guest. The anthropologist Professor Alice Roberts has made her career looking back at the past to tell us more about the present and this week she's been giving the Octavia Hill lecture in partnership with the National Trust about the profound connections between landscape history and identity looked at through the lens of archaeology and the

discovery of human remains. Professor Roberts believes that although we're hurtling towards a digitally dominated landscape which could make us feel more disconnected from our ancestors, in fact the power of technology enables us to know more than we ever thought possible about who trod this ground before we dug it up for better broadband and fibre optic connections. I started by asking the professor about whether she could always imagine the lives of real people whose remains and houses and cities and temples she came across in her work. I quite often say that I feel as though I walk around in the British landscape and I feel that I'm being followed by ghosts and that I could turn over my shoulder and see a ghost there.

And I don't believe in ghosts at all. So that seems a bit odd perhaps. But I think the physical traces of our ancestors in the landscape, so the monuments they built, the, you know, there's traces that are very much there. You do go to certain places and just feel like you could just turn a corner and bump into somebody from the Neolithic or from the Bronze Age and the landscape does feel alive with all those previous generations. And is that what tonight's lecture is about? It is about that in a way. I mean I was delighted to be asked to do the Octavia Hill lecture for the National Trust. And I started thinking about when I first really kind of got

involved with the National Trust as a member. So I became a member of the National Trust, I think about 25 years ago, and I was on a lovely holiday with my then boyfriend, now husband, and we were walking the Cornish Coast Path. And we had such an amazing time. And it was my favorite sort of walks where you're in nature, but also there's plenty of history,

and plenty of promontory hill forts to look at that kind of thing. And we were just so grateful, having finished that wonderful holiday, that these wonderful people had gone out volunteering at weekends and in their free time, and kept those paths open. And so that's why we joined the National Trust. And I think it goes to the

heart of what the National Trust is about, that it's about preserving places of historic interest and natural beauty as it has been right from the very beginning and making them accessible. And also, you know, it's quite unusual, I think, in Europe to be able to have access to quite so much of the countryside and the National Trust is a really important part of that. Where do you think we are with our relationship with history at the moment? Because I think you could say that we're in a place where if we lose our connection to truth and fact, and that is happening sometimes,

we could lose our ability to assess exactly what history has given us? Yeah, that's a really hard question. I think that, you know, in some ways we're in a brilliant place with history and that there are so many books being written about history. There's a lot of history on our screens. So it is there and it's available. And history gives you what travel gives you, I suppose, in that it allows you to think about other cultures, think about different societies, and you then come back to the present and look at your own society and your own culture and realize that things could be different. So I think it can be really empowering. But I mean the other thing which is I think you're hinting at is that there's this kind of idea that

we shouldn't rewrite history. That's what history is all about. Every generation rewrites history but you shouldn't be rewriting it out of your imagination, you should be rewriting it by going back to the evidence, you know, it's an evidence based subject and as more evidence comes to light and more techniques come along which help us to unlock more evidence as well, of course we should go back and look at it again. And you've got a fantastic example of that which slightly destroys the belief that the patriarchy was always prevalent. Oh my goodness. So this comes out of some research done by Laura Cassidy at Trinity College Dublin and others. It was published just last year and looking at the Iron Age people of

Britain. Now we don't have a lot of Iron Age burials. I don't know what people were doing actually across a lot of the country. They were doing something with the dead which means it's archaeologically invisible. So that might be cremation, it might be scattering remains in some way, but we have got some burials from Yorkshire in particular and in Dorset and Lara and her colleagues looked at these burials from Dorset and decoded the genomes and what that allows us to do is to track families through time. So just as you might get your DNA analysed today and it tells you something about your family history, we can do that with people in the past. So going back 2000 years ago we can do it with people of the

British Iron Age. And so you're able to track family relationships and see where those people were buried obviously. And what it showed was that you tended to have a matri locality. In other words, daughters stayed put in their communities while sons moved away to presumably get married. So we're seeing men moving out of communities whereas women are staying put. When we see that, and certainly when we see patri locality, the opposite of that, where the men stay put, it tends to be associated with the inheritance of status. So perhaps we've got something going on in the Iron Age where actually it's the women who are inheriting the status and perhaps a right to the land as well. There were hints of that already in the archaeology in that there seemed to be, broadly speaking, more high-status

goods buried with females than with males. And I think actually maybe we should have just trusted the Romans when they told us how utterly barbaric the Celts were and the ancient people of Britain. And one of the reasons they were utterly barbaric as far as the Romans were concerned, I mean, they're a very patriarchal society, was that the Celts had female leaders.

I mean, it's atrocious behaviour. That's absolutely awful. Absolutely awful, Alice. What were they thinking? Are there other particular examples that you'd be able to point us to where modern technology and science has really kind of wiped the Etch-a-Sketch on what we have believed to be true. Can you excite us with that combination of science and history? Yeah I think so. I mean this is, I've been writing about this collision between biology and history and specifically genetics and archaeology. Over the last three books I've written this trilogy which also is very alphabetical, ancestors buried in crypt and I've just been so blown away

by the amount of new information that's coming to light because of new techniques being applied to archaeological finds. And sometimes that's dating, the ability to pin an absolute date on something. So we can use radiocarbon dating to, for instance, say, oh, this burial that was discovered on the coast of Wales in the 19th century is not as it was thought to be at the time, 2,000 years old, it's actually 34,000 years old.

You know, we can pin very accurately dates on material, including human bones. We can look at where somebody grew up up and the Amesbury Arch is an amazing example of that where this is a this is a burial from Salisbury Plain where a beautiful richly furnished beaker burial was discovered in I think it was 2002. So these beaker burials very often have lots of objects with them it's usually an individual that's buried They're called beaker burials because they have these beautiful pottery beakers and this individual who turned out to be male had five and in total had about a hundred objects buried with him, all sorts of things including what we think might be gold hair wraps. I mean it's just astonishing. He's very very early in terms of that culture appearing in Britain.

And there was always a kind of a question about him. You know, where does he come from? Has he come into Britain bringing this culture with him? And you can tell by doing chemical analysis of his teeth that he didn't grow up on Salisbury Plain and he most likely grew up about 800 miles away somewhere around the Alps. It's just astonishing. You're basically matching people's tooth chemistry with geology but you're getting bits of biography like that that were never written down. You know,

we're talking about somebody who lived four and a half thousand years ago so there's nothing written about him at all and yet we're able to get at those aspects of biography. Sometimes we talk about osteobiography, the biography that's written in the bones, and then if we look at it from a broad perspective, you can look at individuals like him, or you can do a broad perspective and look at whole populations, and one of the really big revelations has been that in that middle of the third millennium BCE, there's a massive population change in Britain and that we know that because of ancient DNA, big ancient DNA studies and we see that

actually the beginning of metalworking in Britain goes along with a big migration of people into the country. It might be happening over a few centuries, it might not have been particularly dramatic. Are you saying that this country needed construction workers, Alice? Yeah, I think so. People bringing in new technologies. Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, I mean, the revelations are coming thick and fast and we always enjoy unpicking some of that on Digging for Britain each year. So I invited Ponta Skoglund from the Quick Institute to come and talk to us on Digging for Britain and the latest series still on iPlayer about revelations about the plague because we can not just use human DNA but we can we can look at pathogen DNA as well so we can we can do PCR tests basically on

old bones. Right and if you were to be buried with a couple of things that told future generations something about our lives now, what would those things be? No, I'm too naughty for that, Faye. I've been given a beautiful reconstruction of a very authentic-looking Bronze Age pottery beaker by my lovely archaeologist friend Richard Olskitt who gave it to me for my 50th birthday. And I'm going to be buried with that just to confuse archaeologists of the future.

Okay, well that is a bit tricksy isn't it? That is a wee bit tricksy. It's lovely to talk to you. Was there not just a tiny bit of you and I absolutely take on board your beautiful answer to the initial question about why you joined the National Trust. Was it a little bit of the Tea Room's appeal as well? Are we allowed to admit that? Oh, I do like a good scone. I do like a good scone. Absolutely. We were all thinking it and I'm very glad that she admitted to it. That is Professor Alice Roberts. If you want to hear her full lecture then you can find it, I think it goes

out 3.35 this Saturday on Times Radio. You'll be able to find it on the app as well. Thank you for all your postcards. Jemma Fee at timesradio.com. Or use the postal address. It was said earlier in the podcast. We'll have to go back and find it. Goodbye. Congratulations. Congratulations, you've staggered somehow to the end of another Off Air with Jane and Fee. Thank you. If you'd like to hear us do this live, and we do do it live, every day, Monday to Thursday, 2 till 4 on Times Radio. The jeopardy is off the scale, and if

you listen to this you'll understand exactly why that's the case. So you can get the radio online on DAB or on the free Times Radio app. Off Air is produced by Eve Salisbury and the executive producer is Rosie Cutler. Music