Actress Joanna Lumley will be discussing the question Why Become a Nun? at the Carmelite Priory in London tonight.

The discussion is pegged to a production by Grange Park Opera at its festival next year of Poulenc's Dialogue of the Carmelites, an opera based around the lives of nuns.

Explaining why people look up to nuns, Joanna Lumley told Today presenter James Naughtie that religious women "give up everything that today we praise", and that is why "a lot of us are intrigued by nuns", she added.

And Dr Lavinia Byrne reflected on her time as a Roman Catholic nun: "I walked on the wild side in my own funny little way."

"The church does not know what to do with intelligent women so when I started advocating the ordination of women, I was really heading for the chop."

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