How to have Extraordinary Relationships How to grieve; death, the dead and one woman’s relationship with learning how to live . Halloween special with writer Hannah Betts (S4 E2)
Oct 29, 2025
59:46
Hannah Betts is an award-winning feature writer, interviewer and columnist across a range of subjects for an array of British newspapers and magazines, principally The Times and The Telegraph. She has been a journalist for almost three decades.
After a career as a junior Oxford academic, Betts spent nine years at The Times, writing and editing in a number of guises, including op-ed columnist and Deputy Chief Leader Writer. She went freelance in 2007. Betts’s interests cover all aspects of the zeitgeist: not least, feminism, social and sexual mores, mental health, fashion, royalty, the arts, literature and history.
Since July 2021, she has written a popular weekly column for The Daily Mail entitled: “Better…Not Younger”. She is also Senior Contributing Beauty Editor for UK Harper's Bazaar, and has consulted widely in this field. Perfume is her particular passion and expertise.
She pens a monthly style column for The Critic, writes internationally for Air Mail, and is a frequent radio and documentary guest.
Her interview subjects include Margaret Atwood, Taylor Swift, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Jean-Paul Guerlain and Mona Hatoum. For journalistic purposes, she has played the part of Scarlett O’Hara, Marie Antoinette, a Victorian servant, lighthouse-keeper, dairy farmer, Arctic explorer, red-carpet celebrity, naked diner and ferret handler.
In 2019, Hannah Betts was awarded a President’s Medal by the Royal College of Psychiatrists for improving the lives of people with mental illness through her journalism. She is a respected voice on the subjects of depression, sobriety and relationships.
Betts is a Londoner with a penchant for blue whippets. Her favourite periods are the 1590s and the 1180s BC.
Key Points of the Episode:
- Her mental health medal and her writings on mental health
- Her atheism and her thoughts on it.
- Why people judged her on writing about depression and the magic of "Dr. Journalism"
- Why she is a "Born Again Snowflake"!
- Her famous dog "Pimlico"
- Why nice woman and gay men are her people!
- Why her mother stopped talking to her and why.
- Her thoughts on self love and her therapy.
- How her and all her four siblings had radically different childhoods.
- Why there is no "wrong way" to grieve.
- Her ghost podcast "Uncanny" and her story.
- The horiffic death of her father.
- Why she laughed when a Dr. gave her bad news.
- What she does believe in even though she does not believe in God.
- Where to find this fascinating lady online.
Her podcast links:
Ghosts
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0012pcb
Drink
https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1501716010?i=1000672152841
Troy
https://www.theoldie.co.uk/podcasts/troy-the-cradle-of-a-thousand-heroes-and-heroines
Subscribe on hannahbetts.substack.com
Follow Hannah
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On:http://www.lucycavendishlovecoach.com/