The South Bank Show. Claire Tomalin speaking to Melvin Bragg about her biography of Thomas Hardy.

I watched the South Bank Show that ended some minutes after midnight - Claire Tomalin spoke to Melvyn Bragg about her new biography of Thomas Hardy, A Time-Torn Man. She had also been filmed visiting key locations and landscapes in Dorset, Cornwall and London. It was an excellent programme. Tomalin has a rich, expressive voice and obviously such a deep love of Hardy's poems and novels, and encyclopaedic knowledge of his writing and his life, and she chose to read and to offer insights into illustrative passages from Hardy's work, and I was moved again to feel as I feel when I read Hardy, as his words and insights again worked their magic.

About thirty years or so ago, I remember watching Melvyn Bragg on TV, speaking about Thomas Hardy, and in particular about Jude the Obscure, and Bragg is clearly also an expert and a lover of Hardy's work. I enjoyed hearing these two knowledgeable people putting flesh onto the bones of what most of us know of Hardy, with telling anecdotes and explanations about his life, his marriage and his writing. I can never these days bear to read again the story of Tess, because its terrible sadness and and inexorable tragedy move me to so many tears, and I shed tears for poor Tess of the D'Urbervilles again tonight.

Bragg commented on the sexual double standards to which Hardy was drawing attention in this novel and he and Tomalin spoke of Hardy's compassion and love for the fictional Tess and the complexity of Hardy's characters. Sexual double standards were, of course, the underlying reason for Tess's unjust and horrifying fate.

But we still have double standards in Britain today, though much less so in the field of sexual morals, of course. I am thinking of the sexism so often seen in the medical profession. Sheena McDonald did some TV work on this in the 90s. - The sort-of standard 'joke' to which I seem to recall her drawing attention, was that when a male patient goes to the doctor he is asked, "And what is the matter with you?" - Whereas a woman patient will be asked, "And what seems to be the matter with you?" And I remember Jean Robinson, former Chair of the Patients Association and former lay member of the GMC (General Medical Council) saying to me in the 80s, when we both were vice-presidents of the College of Health (I was limited to a year as an elected VP, Jean was a long-serving appointed VP), that when men go to the doctor in pain, the doctor tends to prescribe pain-killers, but when women go to the doctor in pain, there is a tendency for the doctor to prescribe anti-depressants...)o: - I shall no doubt return to this topic in this blog in future posts. Medical sexism has equally dire consequences of terrible harm to women as had the cruel double standards of sexual morality did in the past.

I visited the Equal Opportunities Commission in Manchester for an afternoon in the 80s, to bring to their notice the inequality of health care provision with regard to the sex/gender of the patient - health care provision for which both sexes pay by way of taxes, but health care provision that favours men patients over women patients. - They were sympathetic to my mission and said they had heard from a number of women who knew themselves to have experienced medical treatment inferior to that of men, but that the EOC was unable to take up medical sexism as an issue because it was outside the EOC's remit, the conventional wisdom being that doctors are not prejudiced and that men and women are treated equally and that there is no stereotypical thinking among healthcare professionals! - Well, as I say, I shall no doubt return to this topic in a future blog entry...