How I ended up marrying 'my mother'

After lesbian couple Lillian Faderman and Phyllis Irwin had a son in 1970s California, they realised their young family had nothing legally binding them together. Because they couldn’t marry at the time, they came up with a legal workaround – Phyllis would adopt Lillian, technically making them mother and daughter, though they never thought of themselves that way. When marriage laws changed in the early 90s, they tied the knot, meaning that for a period Lillian was technically married to her mother. They spoke to Jo Fidgen about navigating law and love during their nearly 50 years together.

Exploring an abandoned village in the Moldovan countryside in 2015, Victor Galsuca came upon a cache of photographs. He realised that they were the work of a remarkable but forgotten amateur photographer, Zaharia Cusnir, who spent years capturing rarely-seen glimpses of village life in Moldova in the Soviet era.

Professor Sue Black is one of Britain's leading forensic anthropologists. She's often called to crime scenes - not to find out how the victim died, but how they lived, and who they were.

Photo: Lillian Faderman and Phyllis Irwin
Credit: Lillian Faderman