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Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any psychological illness and the number of patients has increased by 15% since 2000. Every year, GPs diagnose about 5,000 young people as having an eating disorder, but following new research, critics say it takes too long for patients to see a specialist. The study involved 445 adults who have suffered or are suffering from eating disorders. Once they’d been referred, 48% had to wait over a month before their treatment started. Jenni Murray speaks to David Robb, who currently plays Dr Clarkson in Downton Abbey and whose wife took her own life last year as a result of anorexia. She is also joined by Jane Smith, the CEO of .

Norway's parliament has voted overwhelmingly to conscript women into its armed forces, becoming the first European and first Nato country to make military service compulsory for both genders in peacetime. Before being written into law, the proposition must be approved in the second reading. They will serve various lengths of time including one 12-month period around the age of 20 and it will apply to women between the ages of 18 and 44. Norway’s army has already introduced unisex dormitories at many of its military barracks.  Jenni speaks to Colonel Ingrid Gjerde, chief of the Norwegian Army Military Academy. 

They are called the ‘Biscuit Girls’, or known locally as the ‘cracker packers’, and they used to work at Carr's Factory in Carlisle. There, they made the world-famous biscuits on an industrial scale. One such worker was Melvyn Bragg’s mother. There is still a wide variety of biscuits available on sale, but many will recognise the water biscuits served with cheese. Now the author has written a book called featuring interviews with many of the women who worked there, going back to the 1940s. The factory offered a place for working class women to meet, earn money and sometimes escape miserable home lives. Jenni Murray speaks to Hunter and to Barbara Waugh, one of the factory workers.

If you've got a toddler in your family, you’ll know that the government policy of providing free part-time nursery places at age three is a big help when it comes to paying for childcare. But a new study says the provision hasn't delivered on its early promise of improving educational standards in the long term, nor has it created a level playing field for children from different backgrounds. The research by the universities of , and the looked at free education entitlement from 2002 to 2007. So was it worth the money or is it just a popular policy that gives a discount to parents who would have paid for it anyway? Dr Jo Blanden is from the and was involved in this study, and Purnima Tanuku is chief executive of the which represents 5,000 private, voluntary and independent day nurseries in the UK. 

is unveiled today in Southport. Not seen for 40 years, it represents the lifetime collection of a Victorian woman called Anne Goodison. Among the star exhibits are a couple of uniquely preserved and intriguingly named ‘Paddle Dolls’. Jenni dons her curator gloves to examine one of the 3,000-year-old figurines and discovers more about the intrepid breed of female Egyptologists who were bringing back treasures from Ancient Egypt long before Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun. Emma Anderson, director of The Atkinson Arts and Cultural Centre, and Jo Backhouse from Liverpool University, currently researching representations of women in Egyptian artefacts, share their knowledge and enthusiasm with Jenni.