Rebecca Ferguson sings Billie Holiday

One hundred years ago American jazz singer and songwriter Billie Holiday was born. Rebecca Ferguson has reinterpreted Billie Holiday’s  Seminal Album “Lady Sings The Blues” and Julia Blackburn wrote the book With Billie. They join Emma Barnett to talk about Holiday’s legacy and Rebecca Ferguson performs Don’t Explain.

Rebecca Ferguson’s 'Lady Sings the Blues' is out now and she will be touring in 2016.

Julia Blackburn’s Threads: The Delicate Life of John Craske is out now.

In the run up to the general election we have been focusing on what the main parties are doing to get more women involved in politics. Just over a fifth of MP’s are women and in mid-March the Labour party released a statement suggesting gender equality on the House of Commons benches could take 150 years. For some people, it seems that sexism in politics can be felt much earlier than before reaching parliament. Sarah Gillborn is a third year psychology undergraduate at Leeds Beckett University. She joins Emma to speak about the criticism she faced as a woman running in her university student union elections.

How long is it acceptable to mourn the breakdown of a relationship? When do you have to stop talking about it? When is it ‘okay’ to start dating? What if you never want to date again? What if you’re still sad after two years – how bored are your friends? Woman’s Hour unpicks the answers. Rosamund Urwin, Susie Boniface AKA Fleet Street Fox and comedian Samantha Baines join Emma.

How would you feel if you curled up to read a new novel, and found that it was all about you, and describes something terrible that happened twenty years ago which you’ve told no-one about? That’s the starting point of Disclaimer, a new book by Renee Knight, that has been sold in 25 countries, and will be turned into a Hollywood film.  Renee joins Emma to talk about intrigue, unreliable narrators, and the pressure of having her book hailed as the new Gone Girl.