Baby Does A Runner: The debut novel from Anita Rani

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Anita Rani is one of our best loved broadcasters and familiar to millions of TV viewers and radio listeners alike. The former Bradford Girls’ Grammar School pupil is best known for hosting BBC’s Woman’s Hour and as a presenter on popular television shows like Countryfile and The One Show. Baby, who prefers to call herself by her chosen name of Simran, has passed another birthday as a single, career woman, living in Manchester and doing a job she is over-qualified for and should have been promoted in a long time ago. She's having an unsatisfactory relationship with a colleague and seems to spend a lot of time feeling unfulfilled but without understanding why.

The novel also partly came out of both her memoir, ‘ The Right Sort of Girl’, published in 2021 and the popular BBC TV programme, ‘ Who Do You Think You Are?’. She was unable to travel to her grandfather’s home in Pakistan for the programme. She did, however, complete the journey in 2017 and travelled to Sahiwal in Pakistan and found out about what happened to the rest of her grandfather’s family during the carnage of Partition. How much of all this has been filtered into the fictional, ‘ Baby Does a Runner?’ It’s an intriguing question…The book was officially released last Friday (Juy 21).What happens next is a drive across India with rich descriptions of the country, its architecture, the people, the juxtaposition of wealth and poverty and the customs and ways that were so new to Baby, yet touched something deep in her soul. One of the main themes of the book is that the current state of gender relations has been determined by men for their own benefit and that science – in which Saini specialised later in her career after graduating with an engineering degree from Oxford University – has been far from neutral. In looking for her family's secrets, she learns about Partition, the atrocities that took place and how families including her own, were torn apart. A difficult subject to take on, but Anita handles it with great sensitivity. Hens lay consistently for about four to five years before the quantity but not necessarily the quality of the eggs diminish.

Childbirth compounds these problems and can do some real damage to the pelvic floor. Nearly a third of women develop some level of stress incontinence after giving birth. By week six you could up the pace of your walking and see how it feels. You could also try cycling – if you’re not sore, some gentle strength training, swimming or spinning. Saini described how she went to a region of Turkey and Syria where the earliest human settlements have been excavated and there was evidence to suggest that there was little difference in gender roles. “There were women warriors and leaders.”I started running with a proper running buggy when my son was about six months old. I had been running by myself maybe two or three times a week for two months, by then. It's a different running style, but you do get used to it.” Rani swears by plain hot water first thing. “Every day – it’s become a ritual. Just a hot water, then a cup of tea, Yorkshire Tea, but because I’ve moved to London and I’m a bit fancy now, sometimes Fortnum & Mason’s loose leaf tea,” she says, with a warm laugh. “Yeah, Bradford? What Bradford?” Once Baby decides to go to India it continues to explain what she sees, tastes and experiences. How she finds Sid attractive (don't we all!) Whilst on her quest to unearth history.