theatre review website. Purves is in favour of equal rights for gay people, and has written articles supporting this position. However, she has spoken out against the "coercive liberalism, one-note righteousness" of the National Trust following its "outing" of Robert Wyndham Ketton-Cremer, saying that "Crassly reducing any human being to a sexuality, posthumously enlisting him or her in a phantom regiment under your orders, is almost as belittling as persecution itself." In 2009, Purves debated at the Cambridge Union against Glenn Wilson and Rupert Myers on the motion This House Would Rather Be Gay. Following a column on the anti-gay policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Greek businessman Demetri Marchessini took out a quarter-page advertisement in The Daily Telegraph on 28 January 2014 to criticise her views on homosexuality and religion. According to Purves, while Marchessini is "free to approve of the beatings and hangings of young men across the world in the name of what he considers religion" she is also "free to say he is a loony." On BBC Radio 4 Purves also presented Midweek for 33 years (1984–2017) and the educational programme The Learning Curve for 10 years (1998–2008). Since leaving the BBC, she has been critical of several aspects of the corporation: equal pay for newsreaders, sexism and agism, and "woke" comedy shows. Personal life Purves is married to broadcaster Paul Heiney. The couple has one surviving child. Their first child, Nicholas, died on 26 June 2006, at age 23. A collection of his poems and sea-logs of a Pacific journey under square rig, The Silence at the Song's End, has been published, inspired a song cycle by Joseph Phibbs (2008), and was broadcast on Radio 4. Bibliography Britain at Play (1982) Adventures Under Sail (1982) Sailing Weekend Book (with Paul Heiney, 1985) How Not to Be a Perfect Mother (1986) One Summer's Grace (1989) How Not to Raise a Perfect Child (1991) How Not to Be a Perfect Family (1994) Casting Off (1995) A Long Walk in Wintertime (1996) Home Leave (1997) More Lives Than One (1998) Holy Smoke (1998) Regatta (1999) Passing Go (2000) A Free Woman (2001) Mother Country (2002) Continental Drift (2003) Acting Up (2004) Love Songs and Lies (2005) Shadow Child (2007) That Was Midweek That Was: The Story of a Radio Programme 1979-2017 (2017) References External links Libby Purves's blog The Silence at the Song's End by Nicholas Heiney, Libby