
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


Kirsty Young's castaway this week is Baroness Haleh Afshar. An expert in Middle Eastern Affairs, she's a professor of politics and women's studies and Islamic law as well as being a cross-bench peer. She grew up in Iran and France living a life of huge privilege but, inspired by reading Jane Eyre, she decided she needed to learn to stand on her own two feet. She came to Britain as a boarding school pupil when she was 14 and has made her home here.
She has been an outspoken critic of the Iranian regime and, coming from a long line of independent-minded women, that's little surprise. Her mother campaigned for women to have the vote while her grandmother refused to wear the veil. Though in her grandmother's case, that was because she thought she was too pretty to be covered up.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
Record: Prelude to Bach's Cello Suite No.1
By BBC Radio 44.6
128128 ratings
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is Baroness Haleh Afshar. An expert in Middle Eastern Affairs, she's a professor of politics and women's studies and Islamic law as well as being a cross-bench peer. She grew up in Iran and France living a life of huge privilege but, inspired by reading Jane Eyre, she decided she needed to learn to stand on her own two feet. She came to Britain as a boarding school pupil when she was 14 and has made her home here.
She has been an outspoken critic of the Iranian regime and, coming from a long line of independent-minded women, that's little surprise. Her mother campaigned for women to have the vote while her grandmother refused to wear the veil. Though in her grandmother's case, that was because she thought she was too pretty to be covered up.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
Record: Prelude to Bach's Cello Suite No.1

7,613 Listeners

1,049 Listeners

396 Listeners

5,478 Listeners

1,798 Listeners

1,881 Listeners

1,754 Listeners

1,038 Listeners

2,095 Listeners

1,990 Listeners

79 Listeners

71 Listeners

52 Listeners

37 Listeners

46 Listeners

56 Listeners

3,151 Listeners

103 Listeners

1,640 Listeners

82 Listeners

49 Listeners

159 Listeners

504 Listeners

27 Listeners

716 Listeners