This Much Is True

As the benignly bossy Mother Mildred, I did shake things up a tad at Nonnatus House. For a start, I asked Ann to provide a loo on wheels, close to set, to placate my frequent micturition. I also commandeered handyman Fred Buckle’s van — Ann immediately understood I was unlikely to ‘do’ bikes like the young nuns and midwives. Anyway, I think a Mother Superior would travel around the Poplar cobbles more decorously than that — and I couldn’t ride a bike in a nun’s habit without breaking my neck; it’s a long time since Cambridge when I cycled everywhere.

A particularly memorable episode was the Christmas one in 2019. Usually, we shoot at Longcross Studios, an old speedway test track in Surrey, where Nonnatus House has been cleverly adapted from a lovely Edwardian manor house. Heidi had thought of Malaysia as the location for this Christmas special. But probably for logistical reasons, it was moved to the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides. She is nothing if not flexible! That was fine, I love Scotland and we were going in March, far from the months of the midges.

What no one had reckoned on were the freak storms and cloudbursts which descended. The wind really whipped across the island, and the frigid temperature made it feel like December. Acting is hard at the best of times, but dripping wimples proved a definite health hazard. A sodden habit is a particularly dreary garment to spend the day in. One of the many places we shot in was a church at the top of a steep hill, looking out to sea. The tempest roared, the rain poured, as I struggled up the path fully costumed, only to arrive in the sublimely beautiful but freezing church. I’ve only been colder when I walked along the Great Wall of China one December.

In another scene, the midwives visit the late-Neolithic Callanish Stones but we could hardly see in front of our own faces for the howling storm. None of us could hear the other speaking, so Jenny Agutter and I had to look carefully to see if the other’s mouth was still moving before we spoke the next line through chattering teeth. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed as much at being so uncomfortable for such a long time — not a loo in sight. However, after work we stayed in unusual luxury at Amhuinnsuidhe Castle. This amazing place was built in 1865, but the dining hall fulfilled every fantasy of gracious living and for a week we midwives, erstwhile of Poplar, thoroughly relished the delicious food and frequent drams served to us after work. One teatime, I asked for an onion with my Welsh rarebit and they just sprinkled bits on top. I had to explain I wanted a whole one, raw, on the side. Happily, such was the level of service at this extraordinary retreat that the chef complied with alacrity and good grace. (I discovered that a previous chef working there had been my darling Rosemary Shrager from The Real Marigold Hotel.)

It was a glorious, if rain-soaked, week and Harris is the most beautiful place I’ve ever been to. Despite the appalling weather, when you’re with good people the sun always shines and every one of my dear midwives warms my atheist soul.

Being Jewish

What is an English Jew? And does it matter? It’s no exaggeration to say that every day of my adult life I’ve thought about the Holocaust. When I was seven years old, my father’s refugee patients would show me the numbers on their arms. ‘What is that?’ I asked them. I don’t remember their answers; they said nothing that stays in my mind or hinted at horror. But, of course, inevitably, I learnt as I grew up about the camps, the Nazi infamy, the lines at Auschwitz where Mengele made his selections of left and right. It’s part of my life. It fuelled my genealogical hobby, now an obsession. It has also coloured my feelings about the world that let it happen, and makes me sharp at spotting antisemitism, even in a mild form. (Thought: is there a ‘mild’ form?)

I feel intensely Jewish. It’s the first adjective I apply to myself, it’s how I introduce myself to new people. I watch the reaction, always primed to notice a flinching, an embarrassed smile, or a little laugh, unusually high-pitched. It is my belief that the English don’t like Jews and never have. After the Second World War, it wasn’t possible to express antisemitism, but some eighty years on, once again, antisemitism has become quite common. Most English Jews (and we number less than 0.57 per cent of the population) are law-abiding, middle-class and fit seamlessly into the suburban world. Yet, because of Israel, because of Netanyahu and the way he’s behaved, the band-aid over antisemitism has been ripped off. Watching events in Israel, people feel that it’s all right now to voice antisemitism. Violence against Jewish graves and shops and synagogues is on the rise, and so I have become more strident in talking about being Jewish, forcing people to absorb it, challenging them to deny their prejudice.