Emma Barnett, 38, the main host of BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour since 2020, has recently returned from her second maternity leave. She was born in Manchester and her journalism career began at Media Week in 2007; since then, she has written for the Daily Telegraph, the Sunday Times and the Independent, and presented shows for LBC, BBC Radio 5 Live, BBC Newsnight and Bloomberg. Her book, Period: It’s About Bloody Time, came out in 2019. Married with a five-year-old son and a daughter aged nine months, she lives in Brixton, south London.
In a column before your maternity leave, you mentioned writing a letter to yourself for when you returned to work. Did you read it?
I nearly forgot. Two days before my first show back, the Russell Brand story broke. The day before, I was in contact with one of his anonymous accusers, setting up the logistics of speaking to her on Monday, so only when I was going to bed, quite pumped for the morning but also nervous, did I remember.
