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Today Programme Report - Text Only Version 成人论坛 Radio 4 |
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May 2007 50th Birthday - Marian Bell  I was born at noon on 28 October 1957 in the Middlesex hospital in Central London. My parents were living in Maida Vale at the time, in a mansion flat since demolished, opposite Paddington Rec. We moved around when I was young because of my father’s job, and I spent 4 of my primary school years in County Durham, which is where my father’s family are from. Click to see extracts from Marian's childhood diaries. My parents were both professionals but didn't buy their own house until returning south in 1966. To choose to rent rather than buy wasn't so unusual back then. They came from working class backgrounds with no history of home ownership and, before the periods of rapid price increases, housing wasn’t seen as the important investment it has since become. Listen here. My family was quite political. We avoided South African produce, didn’t holiday in Franco’s Spain and stuffed envelopes at election time. I canvassed with my mother and helped at a count before I could vote. Listen here It was while I was at grammar school in Harrow that I became keen on contemporary dance when Sadler’s Wells offered cheap tickets to local schools. The first performance I saw was Ballet Rambert in 1973, closely followed by London Contemporary Dance Theatre in its first ever season at Sadler’s Wells. Now I'm on the board of The Place - the home of the Contemporary Dance Trust which had been pivotal in bringing contemporary dance to Britain after its founder, Robin Howard, was inspired by seeing Martha Graham in the 1950s. Listen here or . I met my husband while I was still at school, but we lived together for over a decade before we got married. Listen here. We eventually married after our first child died at birth. She would have been twenty this year. I had been brought up in an agnostic home, but came to faith when we lost Amelia. I was baptised in St Alban’s Abbey in 1994. Listen here We are fortunate to now have two more wonderful daughters. Juggling the demands of working in the City with a family has only been possible because my husband is very supportive. Balancing family demands and work demands for our generation is quite different from that of our parents. More recently in my working life, flexible work patterns and internet technology have been a boon. Listen here. My husband works in health and social care which is a refreshingly different job to mine. It's been a wonderful antidote, especially when I was working on a trading floor. Listen here. I've become used to being in a minority as a woman in my professional life. I was at Hertford College at Oxford which was pioneering at getting people in from state schools and being one of the first men’s colleges to admit women. Then in the City, I was one of the first ten woman managers at The Royal Bank of Scotland. Thankfully, things have progressed since then. Listen here. I’ve witnessed considerable change in the British economy. Through my Dad's job in industrial relations in nationalised industries, I got a close up view of some of the economic crises of the seventies, incomes policies and the three day week. Listen here. And during my time on the Monetary Policy Committee I experienced at first hand some of the more stability oriented macro-economic policies of the last two decades, the benefits of which were not always fully recognised at the time. The day Gordon Brown announced the independence of the Bank of England to set interest rates I was interviewed on TV. It was hard work to persuade the journalists quite how important this decision was. They were initially more concerned with the interest rate rise. Listen here . I've seen the industrial landscape of Britain change significantly over my lifetime - especially in the North East - from slag heaps and shipbuilding to services and niche hi-tech manufacturing. Listen here. Coming from a mining background and regularly attending the Durham Miners’ Gala, I felt ambivalent about the miners’ strike in 1984. I was saddened by the effect on mining communities but influenced by my father who was very much opposed, because of Scargill’s failure to hold a ballot, rather as my grandfather, a Chopwell miner, had spoken out in favour of following agreed procedures before the 1925 lockout. Listen here. Recently I've helped set up the Forum for Global Health Protection, to help combat new and emerging global health threats. Looking back, I’m struck by how much public health priorities have changed. In my childhood TB and measles and polio were still considered, or had very recently been, serious risks - now children carry epi-pens to school to counter allergies. I don't remember anything like that when I was a child. Listen here. Until I was contacted by the 成人论坛 to take part in the programme I had no idea that I shared a birth day with Today. And although it seems to have been around all my life – Jack de Manio was a local celebrity in Hatch End - I hadn’t really considered it, or me, to be so old. Strange as it seems to be sharing my memories with strangers, I am fascinated by the idea of establishing an archive of how Britain has changed over the last 50 years. Happy Birthday Today Generation! Back to Today Generation Homepage The 成人论坛 is not responsible for external websites |
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