Woman's Hour

The former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has added his voice to calls for an apology for what he has called the state's role in the "terrible tragedy" of historic forced adoptions. Between 1949 and 1976, thousands of pregnant women and girls in the UK were sent away to "prison-like" homes run by the church and state and had their babies put up for adoption. In 2021, an inquiry concluded that the State bore ultimate responsibility for the suffering inflicted on vulnerable women and their children, calling on the government to issue an official apology. Anna Foster was joined by Diana Defries, chair of the Movement for Adoption Apology and Karen Constantine, author of Taken, experiences of forced adoption, to give their reaction to the intervention by the former PM and whether they will be granted an apology.Paula Byrne, Jane Austen’s biographer and also a novelist, has spent 25 years researching and writing about the iconic author. In this 250th anniversary year of Austen's birth, she joined Kylie Pentelow to ta