History Through Her Stories

Barnsley-born broadcaster Jenni Murray will be among the stars at this year’s Harrogate Literature Festival, writes Ann Chadwick

- Ann Chadwick

AS a young girl growing up in a working class Barnsley family, Dame Jenni Murray’s life was destined to be far removed from the pit her grandfather worked in. She puts that down to the strong women in her life, who flung her into education and indulged her in theatre and music.

Dame Jenni had strong female influences in her life, from the teachers at Barnsley Girls High School – ‘set up by a group of really tough powerful Yorkshire women who had said we need to educate our girls just as we’re educating our boys,’ to her grandmother and mum.

‘I think Yorkshire women are brought up tough,’ Dame Jenni said reflecting on a time she worked in a fish factory during her university days in Hull. ‘Those women I knew working in the fish factories, their husbands were trawler men and the women ran their jobs, their families and their homes completely on their own as they were away for long periods.

‘And Barnsley women had to put up with the fact that their husbands went down the mines which was terribly dangerous, dirty work. So the women controlled the household. My granny was absolutely extraordinary, she controlled everything.

‘My granddad came home with his pay packet and he gave it to her – he didn’t even open it. She would give him enough money to buy a pint occasionally, and buy his fags, and that was all the money he had. She looked after everything. I think my mother was the same.’

She puts her mother’s pushiness for her daughter to be a high achiever down to the fact she made no qualms she wanted a son. ‘I suppose I got all the pushiness that a boy would have got; and they wanted their kids to do better than they had.’