Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Kirsty Young
A journalist and author whose first-hand accounts of turmoil in the Middle East have established her as a first-class war reporter.
Eight records
I Made a Vow (from Der Rosenkavalier)
Agnes Baltsa, Anna Tomowa-Sintow, Janet Perry, Vienna Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan
Takes me back to a time when I spent a year at Harvard. I was on a fellowship where you could take any course that you like. I found a course called Introduction to Opera. One of the operas that we studied was De Rosencavalier. Also in that hall was one of the other fellows who was Portuguese and we ended up getting married. So it's a special piece to me.
It brings back a particular occasion which was when I was in Afghanistan in 1988. I'd gone there with a group of fighters and with Ahmed Karzai, who later became very well known. We went on an attack on Kandahar Airport, which was a very bad idea because Kandahar Airport was controlled by the Russians. And the fighters launched this attack immediately. Tanks came down the hill and started firing, killed some of the fighters that I was with. The rest of us were in this trench... and we were stuck there overnight and we had nothing to eat. There were just muddy puddles with crabs in, which the Mujahideen ate. I did not. Eventually the next afternoon the tanks went and we could leave. And there was a little boy eating a watermelon, and I have never wanted anything more in my life than that watermelon... I used to carry a short wave radio and I put it on and this music was playing.
One of the places that I've gone to a lot is Zimbabwe. I've reported endlessly on all the terrible things that Mugabe has done to his people. And going there was quite difficult because British journalists were banned. So we would have to go there undercover. We went in all sorts of guises and when we were trying to expose the rape camps, we had to go through a lot of checkpoints. And you fear that you're going to get caught at each one. We only had one tape with us and it was the Corrs Talk on Corners. So the first time we came to Checkpoint and there were all these thugs there stopping us, we had this music playing. So then they kind of started chatting to us and asking about the music. So every time we came to a checkpoint, we would put only when I sleep on, and it worked. We never got stopped. We got through all the checkpoints.
I love this song. And this just so takes me back to the eighties. Music was kind of my life really when I was a teenager. I used to go to concerts all the time, punk. Mods, new romantics. I used to wear the sort of frilly, long sleeved shirts and lacy collars, and I had that big hair. I remember playing it at my eighteenth birthday party, and I had my place at Oxford then, and I just it takes me back to a time where I sort of felt life was about to change.
I just thought this is the most beautiful place I have ever seen in my life. And one of the first nights there, I went to a famous bar called Garota de Ipanema, a girl from Ipanema, where this song was written. And I was lucky enough to go and see Tom Jobim live. And he used to play with a glass of whiskey and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and this wonderful voice. So it takes me back to that time being kind of twenty-five in Brazil. I had a great apartment overlooking the sea. I danced in carnival and I just loved everything about it.
I am also a mum, and this music reminds me of when I was giving birth. I actually have a son, so it seems odd having a song called She, and he'll be cross listening to this, but my son was actually born very early. He was born at 28 and a half weeks, so it was very frightening. And I was having a cesarean. There were two doctors, and they were playing Magic FM... talking about their commute into work and it seemed so incongruous to me because this was my child being born. Then as my son was delivered, this is the song that was being played and it was a great relief because they'd warned me all sorts of things. They said it would be a very good sign if he cried and there was a little cry as he was born.
Jack Brymer, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Marriner
This was the soundtrack of Out of Africa. And I chose this because I was working on a book called The Africa House. It was about an Englishman called Sir Stuart Gore Brown who'd built this English country mansion by a lake of crocodiles in a remote part of what was then northern Rhodesia, but now Zambia. And he had a gramophone there and had this piece of music. The house had been abandoned quite some time before, so every time I opened up one of the trunks of papers these huge spiders would come out, and this is one of my secrets as a war correspondent. I'm supposed to be brave and fearless, but I'm scared of spiders.
Always Look on the Bright Side of LifeFavourite
Monty Python was sort of what kept me going as a teenager. I just loved Monty Python sketches. In fact, even when I got to Oxford, although I was excited to be there, I felt very insecure. No one in my family had been to university. Everybody there seemed to know everything about what to do. I didn't know, you know, what plate you were supposed to put your bread on, what knives and forks to use at the dinner. It was intimidating. My mum had bought me one of the Monty Python collections of scripts when she left me at Oxford, so I remember reading the sketches to myself.
The keepsakes
The luxury
In conversation
Presenter asks
What do you make of the idea that your life has been charmed? Explain it to me.
I suppose I mean, listening to that, it does sound like a dangerous thing to say. I guess doing this kind of job you have lots of narrow escapes and the... You feel that luck plays a part of your survival, and I've had far more than my nine lives by now.
Presenter asks
What do you do to protect your own safety when you're in dangerous situations, like going to see Taliban warlords?
Well, I mean, first of all, the job has changed enormously. When I started out, if anything happened to you, it was more bad luck, or you'd done something silly, or car crashes. Now it's totally different. We are targets, and that makes it much harder. I'm a great believer in, you know, having personal contacts. I've gone back to the same places again and again, Afghanistan in particular. So there are people that I trust there. But even that has become difficult. I've had colleagues whose longtime trusted contacts and fixes have betrayed them.
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Christina Lamb
This is the BBC.
Presenter
Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Welcome to Desert Island Discs, where every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, the book and the luxury item that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away on a desert island.
Presenter
For rights' reasons, the music on these podcast versions is shorter than in the original broadcast. You can find over two thousand more editions to listen to and download on the Desert Island Disc's website.
Presenter
My castaway this week is the journalist and author Christina Lam. Over the past three decades she has travelled the world reporting from the Amazon to Zimbabwe. But it's her first hand accounts of the turmoil in the Middle East that have secured her reputation as a first class war reporter. Whether dodging bullets in Hellmand or having clandestine meetings with Taliban chiefs in the back streets of Quetta, her nose for a story has repeatedly led her into perilous territory. She seems to like it. The cobalt blue mosques and sweet grapes of Kandahar are something of a contrast to the suburban England of her comfortable nineteen seventies childhood, where she rebelled against the starchy uniformity of her grammar school and dreamt of a life of adventure beyond Croydon. She has, she says, navigated through roadblocks manned by red eyed and drug crazed boys with Kalashnikovs in West Africa, been abducted in the middle of the night by Pakistani intelligence, and come under sniper fire in Iraq. All around me, she says, people have died. My life, I believe, is charmed.
Presenter
And that strikes me, Christina Lamb, as quite a dangerous thing to think, that your life has been charmed. Well, explain it to me.
Christina Lamb
I suppose I mean, listening to that, it does sound like a dangerous thing to say. I guess doing this kind of job you have lots of narrow escapes and the
Christina Lamb
You feel that luck plays a part of your survival, and I've had far more than my nine lives by now.
Presenter
You've been a foreign correspondent for nearly, what, thirty years now? Yes. And it's clear you've been in some of the world's most dangerous places. I mean, I mentioned about going to see Taliban warlords, essentially. What do you do to protect your own safety when you're in a set of circumstances like that?
Christina Lamb
Yeah.
Christina Lamb
Well, I mean, first of all, the job has changed enormously. When I started out, if anything happened to you, it was more bad luck, or you'd done something silly, or car crashes. Now it's totally different. We are targets, and that makes it much harder. I'm a great believer in, you know, having personal contacts. I've gone back to the same places again and again, Afghanistan in particular. So there are people that I trust there. But even that has become difficult. I've had colleagues whose longtime trusted contacts and fixes have betrayed them.
Presenter
steeped not just in the culture, but in the history of the places that you cover, how do you make these complex stories approachable for us? How do you get your readers engaged in what is often a very difficult thing to understand?
Presenter
Yeah.
Christina Lamb
I've always wanted to be a storyteller. I wanted to write novels. I ended up working as a journalist and telling other people's stories. And if you can tell one person's story powerfully, it seems to me that that is the best way to engage people. Tell me then, Christina Lamb, what we're going to hear first today. So the first piece of music from The Rosen Cavalier.
Christina Lamb
Takes me back to a time when I spent a year at Harvard. I was on a fellowship where you could take any course that you like. I found a course called Introduction to Opera. One of the operas that we studied was De Rosencavalier. Also in that hall was one of the other fellows who was Portuguese and we ended up getting married. So it's a special piece to me.
Speaker 4
Uh
Speaker 4
Oh, see she's on the side.
Presenter
I made a vow from Rosen Cavalier, composed by Richard Strauss, sung there by Agnes Baltzer, Anna Tomova Sietnov and Janet Perry with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karian. Christina Lam, wars and conflict zones then have been the main focus of your work throughout the decades and you have talked about and written about the idea that women are the real heroes of war. What have you seen on the ground that has led you to that conclusion?
Christina Lamb
I actually get hope and inspiration from what I see women doing in these difficult situations. For example, in Aleppo, I was there when Aleppo was under siege, and women were doing remarkable things to try and feed and protect their children. All they had was flour, and they were growing little herbs in what areas they could find to do that. And so they were frying these flour sandwiches and ripping down window frames and doors to be able to have firewood to keep their children warm.
Christina Lamb
Of course there are places I go to that are very misogynistic and can't believe that you're really a journalist for a serious newspaper. But I think as a woman I'm able to talk to anybody, whereas my male colleagues can't go and speak to the women behind the purdah curtains. And so that's a very important part of the story that they're not getting.
Presenter
You're Chief Foreign Correspondent for the Sunday Times now. In in your many decades doing the jobs in different roles, have you worked under any female foreign editors?
Christina Lamb
Shockingly, I mean, I would never have imagined I'd be saying this when I started out at twenty-one.
Christina Lamb
that in thirty years I have never had a female foreign editor. At the Sunday Times the magazine is edited by a woman, and that's great, and she's a passionate supporter of women.
Presenter
Let's have some more music, Christina Lamb. Tell me what this is and tell me why you've chosen it today.
Christina Lamb
So this is What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong. It brings back a particular occasion which was when I was in Afghanistan in 1988. I'd gone there with a group of fighters and with Ahmed Karzai, who later became very well known. We went on an attack on Kandahar Airport, which was a very bad idea because Kandahar Airport was controlled by the Russians. And the fighters launched this attack immediately. Tanks came down the hill and started firing, killed some of the fighters that I was with. The rest of us were in this trench.
Christina Lamb
and we were stuck there overnight and we had nothing to eat. There were just um muddy puddles with crabs in, which the Mujahideen ate. I did not. Eventually the next afternoon the tanks went and we could leave.
Christina Lamb
And there was a little boy eating a watermelon, and I have never wanted anything more in my life than that watermelon.
Christina Lamb
I was so hungry and thirsty, so to my shame I said to the leader of our group, I really want that watermelon, and he took it from the boy.
Speaker 2
What
Speaker 4
Yeah.
Speaker 2
But that
Christina Lamb
Now everyone's going to hate me. And then we went to the house we were staying and I carried very few things in those days, but I used to carry a short wave radio and I put it on and this music was playing.
Speaker 4
I see skies of blue.
Speaker 4
And dry some white
Speaker 4
The bright blessed day.
Speaker 4
The dogs say goodnight.
Speaker 4
And I think to myself
Speaker 4
What a wonderful world.
Speaker 4
The Colors of the Rainbow
Speaker 4
So pretty in the sky are also on the face of
Presenter
Louis Armstrong with Wonderful World, Christina Lam You are the only daughter of Anne and Ken.
Presenter
Tell me about your childhood.
Christina Lamb
I grew up in Morden, the southernmost stop of the Northern Line, and then we moved when I was, I guess, nine or ten, to a place called Cushalton Beaches. And I always wanted to be somewhere else, really. Where I'd grown up when I was little was an area where people were always in and out of each other's houses, so I didn't really feel like an only child. And then when we moved to Cushion Beaches, it was a place where people sort of made appointments to have tea with each other. And I found that very odd. It's commuter land. Everybody goes off every morning to work in the city. And why had you moved there? I think for schooling, because it was one of the few places that still had state grammar schools.
Presenter
Right. You've written a lot of books, of course, and you write beautifully. When were books when did they begin to be important to you?
Christina Lamb
Oh God, all my life. We always used to go to the library on Saturdays and then when we lived in Cushworn Beaches, a mobile library used to come, I think, twice a week. So I read voraciously. My mum used to get cross'cause I'd be reading at night, you know, with with a torch. I read everything. I mean, my dad used to read Dennis Wheatley books and so I read those. I read historical fiction.
Presenter
Yeah.
Christina Lamb
I was fascinated by stories about explorers.
Presenter
Yeah.
Christina Lamb
Black.
Presenter
The
Christina Lamb
And we
Presenter
We
Christina Lamb
Yeah. Did you go on?
Presenter
Holiday
Christina Lamb
Yeah.
Presenter
Uh
Christina Lamb
When I was a teenager we went on package holidays to Italy and Spain. My dad always used to write off to the local tourist office, this was the days before internet, so these big brown envelopes would arrive with all these leaflets and all these places with palm trees and sunshine and I loved it, I loved Italy. Everything was different to my life in South London.
Presenter
Let's have some more music, Christina Lamb. We're going to listen now to your third choice. Tell me a bit about this.
Christina Lamb
Okay, so this is a song I don't particularly like called Only When I Sleep from the Cause. No offence to the Cause. One of the places that I've gone to a lot is Zimbabwe. I've reported endlessly on all the terrible things that Mugabe has done to his people. And going there was quite difficult because British journalists were banned. So we would have to go there undercover. We went in all sorts of guises and when we were trying to expose the rape camps, we had to go through a lot of checkpoints.
Christina Lamb
And you fear that you're going to get caught at each one. We only had one tape with us and it was the Corps Talk on Corners. So the first time we came to Checkpoint and there were all these thugs there stopping us, we had this music playing. So then they kind of started chatting to us and asking about the music. So every time we came to a checkpoint, we would put only when I sleep on, and it worked. We never got stopped. We got through all the checkpoints.
Speaker 4
You're only just a dream pole
Speaker 4
Sailing in my head
Speaker 4
You swim my secret ocean
Speaker 4
Of coral blue and red
Speaker 4
Your smell is incense burning
Speaker 4
Your touch is silken yeah
Speaker 4
It reaches through my skin.
Speaker 4
Moving from within
Speaker 4
Clutches at my breath But it's only when I sleep
Presenter
That was the chorus and Only When I Sleep. Christina Lamb, everything I read leads me to believe you were quite a naughty schoolgirl.
Christina Lamb
I think all journalists perhaps are naturally rebellious. Yeah, I was always in trouble at high school. I did silly things really. I did things like putting plastic ducks on the school ponds. My close friend Julie pretended to be my German exchange student and kind of created havoc in my classes. I set up a school drama group.
Christina Lamb
And we used to produce these Monty Python plays every morning for school assembly, which were very irreverent, so my group was banned.
Presenter
And you got into Oxford, you must have had very good results.
Christina Lamb
I got into Oxford, which was lucky because actually I had been suspended from school by that time and I didn't want to go back. My mother
Christina Lamb
Couldn't really understand what had happened because when I told her what had happened.
Christina Lamb
She couldn't believe that these small things would lead to such punishments, so she insisted on seeing the head mistress. But by that time I then had this offer for Oxford, for an unconditional offer. I just had to get two E's.
Christina Lamb
The school very rarely got people into Oxbridge, so they at that point really wanted to keep me. So they then wanted me to come back, and I ended up going back, but I was very unhappy about it.
Presenter
Let's have some more music, Christia Lam. Um we're going to hear your fourth.
Christina Lamb
So my fourth song is Gold from Spandau Ballet. I love this song. And this just so takes me back to the eighties. Music was kind of my life really when I was a teenager. I used to go to concerts all the time, punk.
Presenter
My favourite.
Christina Lamb
Mods, new romantics. I used to wear the sort of frilly, long sleeved shirts and lacy collars, and I had that big hair. I remember playing it at my eighteenth birthday party, and I had my place at Oxford then, and I just it takes me back to a time where I sort of felt life was about to change.
Speaker 4
Gold.
Speaker 4
Always believe in your soul
Speaker 4
You've got the power to know you're indeceptible. Always believe it.
Speaker 4
What's going on?
Speaker 4
As you're bound to return There's something I could have learned You're in the struggle Always believe in
Presenter
That was Fando Ballet and Gould, you and me loving every bit of that, Christina Lamb. While you were at Oxford, you edited the university newspaper, and once you left, you worked as an intern at the Financial Times. Is that right?
Christina Lamb
Yeah, right.
Presenter
While you were at the the FT, you attended this lunch instead of somebody else from the paper. You were sort of put in as a placeman, and you sat next to the Secretary General of the Pakistan People's Party, as it happened. And that was how you came to be given the opportunity to interview Benazir
Presenter
What were your first impressions of her, the first time that you met her? Because this was a relationship that would last for many years.
Christina Lamb
Well, the first time I met her was the day that she announced her engagement to Azif Ali Zadari. So her flat in London was absolutely full of bouquets of flowers. I'd never seen so many flowers or such beautiful bouquets. She was very eloquent and very charming. She was the bravest person I had ever met, and she was doing amazing things on one hand. But, you know, when she became Prime Minister, actually, she didn't do a lot of the things that she had promised.
Presenter
You must have impressed Benazir Bhutto, because she invited you to her wedding in Karachi. It lasted a week to ten days. It was a very opulent event, and at the end of the day people would be discussing how politics should be part of the common man's experience and so on. And for you it was a pivotal moment. You decided that you wanted to stay there.
Presenter
You struck a deal with the FT. The deal was that they'd rent you a word processor and they'd pay you for anything that they'd published. You were I mean, what, you were only twenty one. This is a bit of a rude question, but how on earth did you persuade them that you had the knowledge to be a foreign correspondent and you were able to to write with any authority?
Christina Lamb
I'm not sure really. I mean, looking back, you know, the foreign editor Yurik Martin trusted me and I was going in and out of Afghanistan and at that time really writing quite different things to what was the sort of accepted wisdom. I think, you know, I was very naive. I'd never been a correspondent. I didn't know what correspondents did. And so I just wrote what I saw. And so I was kind of shocked really by that. And I've tried never to lose that. I don't think you should ever go into a place and think this is what the story is before, that you should always, you know, go there and see what's actually happening on the ground.
Presenter
Let's have some more music, Christina Lamb. We're going to go to your fifth. Why have you chosen this?
Christina Lamb
This reminds me of a very happy time in my life, so this is Tom Jo being
Christina Lamb
Singing El Seika Vojama'a, I know that I will love you. After I came back from Pakistan and Afghanistan,
Christina Lamb
The foreign editor, the FT, called me in and said, How about going to South America? So I'd never been to South America in my life.
Christina Lamb
I ended up going to Brazil and our office was in Rio.
Christina Lamb
I just thought this is the most beautiful place I have ever seen in my life.
Christina Lamb
And one of the first nights there, I went to a famous bar called Garota de Epanima, a girl from Epanema, where this song was written. And I was lucky enough to go and see Tom Jobe live. And he used to play with a glass of whiskey and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and this wonderful voice. So it takes me back to that time being kind of twenty-five in Brazil. I had a great apartment overlooking the sea. I danced in carnival and I just loved everything about it.
Speaker 4
Jose que voice ama.
Speaker 4
Jesus better than me.
Speaker 4
Ika d'Ave su mer se ra.
Presenter
That was Tom Jobin singing I Know roughly translated, it means I know that I will love you, is that right?
Christina Lamb
Is that right, Christine laughed?
Presenter
You were talking before that last piece of music about being in Afghanistan. By 1989, everybody was leaving. The Americans were leaving, all the journalists were leaving, you were not. Shortly after everybody had left, there was the Battle of Jalalabad, which you have written about extremely powerfully, and it was a fierce and appalling fight. Just briefly, how many people died during that fight?
Christina Lamb
But ten thousand people in one week it was a massive number.
Presenter
You were right in the middle of the horror.
Presenter
And there's a moment that you have written about where you were mistaken for a medic by a woman. Can you describe that moment to me?
Christina Lamb
Biotechn
Christina Lamb
Why so many people were killed was because the Midjuddin were firing rockets into the city and people were fleeing the city, but the Afghan Air Force, which may still have been Soviet backed, were bombing the people as they fled. It was just like a massacre. I'd never seen so much killing.
Christina Lamb
So I was then in the midst of all this and, you know, shocked and trying to take it all in and
Christina Lamb
Then people saw me and were rushing to me asking for help and wanting thinking that I was a nurse that had come to help them. And I felt
Christina Lamb
Very inadequate because I couldn't really do anything. I didn't know any first aid. Actually, I at one point ended up stitching somebody despite not having a clue how to do it. And I didn't it's not like now where we travel with medical kits and things. I mean,
Christina Lamb
I didn't carry anything with me, I didn't even have a plaster.
Presenter
The idea that journalists and photographers and camera people are there simply to tell the story and not get involved must be almost impossible when you are actually there seeing it and people are asking you for help. What did you make of your own response at the time to take your notebook and your pen and get on the truck and leave?
Christina Lamb
Yeah, I felt wrong and inadequate. I wanted to help. Um I also think if you're in a position to save someone's life, you should do it, you know, whether whatever you think you're there, your job is for. Unfortunately, I didn't know how to do it.
Presenter
We're going to hear your sixth piece of music now, Christina. What have you chosen?
Christina Lamb
So I've chosen Elvis Costello's she. I am also a mum, and this music reminds me of when I was giving birth. I actually have a son, so it seems odd having a song called She, and he'll be cross listening to this, but my son was actually born very early. He was born at 28 and a half weeks, so it was very frightening. And I was having a cesarean. There were two doctors, and they were playing Magic FM.
Christina Lamb
talking about their commute into work and it seemed so incongruous to me because this was my child being born. Then as my son was delivered, this is the song that was being played and it was a great relief because they'd warned me all sorts of things. They said it would be a very good sign if he cried and there was a little cry as he was born.
Speaker 4
She, who always seems so happy in a crowd, Whose eyes can be so bright and so bright, no one's allowed to see them when they cry. She may be the love that cannot hope to last. May come to me from shadows of the past. That I remember till the day I die. She may be the reason I survive.
Presenter
Elvis Costello with she, and that was being played as your son Lorenzo was born. That was in 1999. I think you would have been about seven or eight years old by the time that you were back in Pakistan in 2007. You'd been traveling.
Speaker 4
Yeah.
Presenter
On the actual bus that Benazir Butto was travelling on as she was campaigning,
Presenter
The bus was blown up. A hundred and forty supporters outside the bus were killed. Three people inside the bus were killed. You survived, as did Benazir Bhutto. You had called your son and your husband before to say they're covering this on T V. You should watch.
Christina Lamb
Yeah, hey, mummy's on the bus. Have a look. Um
Christina Lamb
Yeah, all of a sudden there was this boom.
Christina Lamb
And we were all thrown to the ground, and then there was a much bigger blast. Everything seemed to be on fire all around us, and music stopped, and you could hear screams, and then sirens. And I mean, I realized quickly that I was fine, but there were three people who were clearly dead on the top of the bus. And then I was really worried that the bus would catch fire. The petrol tank, so I was screaming to people, get off the bus. I mean, so we got off and then ran. And you could just see everywhere there were people, limbs blown off, and shoes.
Christina Lamb
I ran down a side street and a w a woman stopped me and said, Are you all right? and I said, Yeah, I'm fine and then I realized it was covered in blood and it was other people's blood from people who'd been killed. How how long was it before you were able to call home?
Presenter
So they should be able to do it.
Christina Lamb
So then the first thing I wanted to do was cool because I was really worried that.
Christina Lamb
that my family would be watching because it was about seven o'clock in the UK, so I kn I know that they watch the Channel for News, so I was desperate to call, but the phone had died hours before.
Christina Lamb
But fortunately a man then
Christina Lamb
came out of his house and took me in and then I was able to call and tell them that I was okay.
Presenter
What do you think the lasting effect upon you is of being not just in that extraordinary and appalling set of circumstances, but the other situations that we've briefly touched on today?
Christina Lamb
The hardest thing often is coming back.
Christina Lamb
It can be quite hard to deal with normal life.
Christina Lamb
And I mean in some ways
Christina Lamb
Being a mum was actually very grounding because, you know, some correspondents come back and hang out in bars telling war stories. Did they do?
Presenter
Indeed they do.
Christina Lamb
Um I'm wondering that you might make
Presenter
Like a terrible friend.
Presenter
And if people say we're looking forward to seeing you at dinner on Tuesday night, and you just have to go. Yes.
Christina Lamb
Yeah, I buy theatre tickets and almost never can go. I miss weddings, birthdays, anniversaries. That's awful. It's true.
Presenter
Let's have some more music, Christina Lam. We're going to listen to your seventh.
Christina Lamb
This is Mozart's clarinet concerto in A major, and this was the soundtrack of Out of Africa. And I chose this because I was working on a book called The Africa House. It was about an Englishman called Sir Stuart Gore Brown who'd built this English country mansion by a lake of crocodiles in a remote part of what was then northern Rhodesia, but now Zambia. And he had a grammar phone there and had this piece of music.
Christina Lamb
The house had been abandoned quite some time before, so every time I opened up one of the trunks of papers these huge spiders would come out, and this is one of my secrets as a war correspondent. I'm supposed to be brave and fearless, but I'm scared of spiders.
Presenter
That was part of Mozart's clarinet concerto in A major from the soundtrack to the film Out of Africa. The soloist there was Jack Brimer, and he was accompanied by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, conducted by Neville Mariner. Given the digital technology that we now have, all have access to, Christina Lamb, do you think-I mean, we're all citizen journalists now, aren't we? If we choose to be. Do you think?
Presenter
The days of the flack jacketed foreign correspondent who tells us the truths of foreign lands is pretty much on its way out.
Christina Lamb
No, I don't. I think of course I would say that because I am one, but I think it's great that you can get information from anybody anywhere and there are lots of people telling their own stories. But I do still think it's important to have someone that has been covering this story for a long while and that can put things in context and sort through all this massive information in this time of sort of fake news, you know, facts to facts. You can't have alternative facts. That's why it's important to be there and actually, you know, report on what's happening. The problem is that, of course,
Christina Lamb
newspapers are financial crisis and we've all cut back a lot. And also there's so many wars going on and we don't seem to know how to bring them to an end.
Christina Lamb
And that's also frustrating because you go and report on all these things and we still seem to make the same mistakes. So you do feel a bit like doesn't anybody read any of the things that we write?
Presenter
But it's interesting that I mean, for example, in two thousand six, a a report of yours from Hellmand led to a parliamentary debate, and that increased as a result the amount of helicopters, the resources for troops in Afghanistan. That must surely have felt like a small but pretty important victory.
Christina Lamb
Yeah, I mean there's a whole question about whether we should ever have been in Helmen, but s if we were going to send troops there, we needed them to be properly equipped.
Presenter
Looking back to when you first started, you know, sitting there in Peshawar with your little tandy computer and freelancing, you were a real self starter. Do you think it would be possible for a young man or woman these days to begin it the way you did?
Christina Lamb
Well, in some ways I think it's easier because my biggest problem was getting the stories back. I remember the night General Zia was killed in the air crash and it was those old baker light phones where you were dialing again and again. It probably took me an hour to get through to the operator. So in some ways now people can email I can send the story from anywhere, from the top of the mountain in the Hindu Kush, from the middle of the desert. So that part is a lot easier.
Presenter
There are very few people that are cast away who I think would survive more than a couple of weeks. I'm reckoning you'd be one of the people who would survive. Incredibly resourceful, very resilient, not scared of much. Am I right?
Christina Lamb
In some ways I dream of going somewhere really quiet and just being able to write my novel, but I think I would miss people.
Presenter
Let's hear your final piece of music then, Christina Lamb. What's it going to be?
Christina Lamb
It's just always look on the bright side. Monty Python's Life of Brian. Monty Python was sort of what kept me going as a teenager. I just loved Monty Python sketches. In fact, even when I got to Oxford, although I was excited to be there, I felt very insecure. No one in my family had been to university. Everybody there seemed to know everything about what to do. I didn't know, you know, what plate you were supposed to put your bread on, what knives and forks to use at the dinner. It was intimidating. My mum had bought me one of the Monty Python collections of scripts when she left me at Oxford, so I remember reading the sketches to myself.
Speaker 4
Some things in life are bad, they can really make you mad.
Speaker 4
Other things just make you swear and curse.
Speaker 4
When you're chewing on life's gristle, that grumble, give a whistle.
Speaker 4
This'll help things turn out for the best.
Christina Lamb
Hey.
Speaker 4
Playing
Speaker 4
Always look on the bright side of life.
Speaker 4
Always look on the light side of life.
Presenter
Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, sung there by Eric Idol, and it was featured in the film Monty Python's Life of Brian. It's time now, Christina, for me to give you some books. You get the Bible, you get the complete works of Shakespeare, and you're going to take what along with them.
Christina Lamb
So I'm a big Hemingway fan, so I would say Hemingway is for whom the bell tolls.
Presenter
It's yours, and you're allowed a little luxury, or indeed a big one. What would you like?
Christina Lamb
Not very original, but I am a writer and if I had lots of time I would love to write a novel. So paper and pencils.
Presenter
Certainly, you may have those. And if you had to save just one of these eight disks that you've chosen for us today, which one would it be?
Christina Lamb
Yeah. Always look on the price. It's sort of my motto, I think, in all these horrible places I go to.
Presenter
I hear it.
Presenter
It's yours, Christina Lamb. Thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs.
Christina Lamb
Thank you.
Presenter
I hope you enjoyed this edition of Desert Island Discs. You'll find over 2,000 interviews with artists, musicians, scientists, sports stars, comedians, and more at bbc.co.uk/slash desertisland discs. And I have a favour to ask: if you could rate and review the Desert Island Discs podcast wherever you download your podcasts, it'll really help other people find us. Thanks again for listening.
Christina Lamb
Uh
Speaker 2
This is the BBC.
Speaker 2
Oh hey, fancy meeting you here. I'm Sindhu V, and if you enjoyed that, why not let Radio 4's Comedy of the Week podcast into your feed? I host the podcast, and here's what happens. I bring you comedy fresh out of Radio 4's Funny Factory. Sometimes I bring you interviews with writers and performers, and a little bit of my take on the world and what's going on.
Speaker 2
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Presenter asks
How do you make complex stories about foreign conflicts approachable and engaging for your readers?
I've always wanted to be a storyteller. I wanted to write novels. I ended up working as a journalist and telling other people's stories. And if you can tell one person's story powerfully, it seems to me that that is the best way to engage people.
Presenter asks
You've written about women being the real heroes of war. What have you seen on the ground that led you to that conclusion?
I actually get hope and inspiration from what I see women doing in these difficult situations. For example, in Aleppo, I was there when Aleppo was under siege, and women were doing remarkable things to try and feed and protect their children. All they had was flour, and they were growing little herbs in what areas they could find to do that. And so they were frying these flour sandwiches and ripping down window frames and doors to be able to have firewood to keep their children warm. Of course there are places I go to that are very misogynistic and can't believe that you're really a journalist for a serious newspaper. But I think as a woman I'm able to talk to anybody, whereas my male colleagues can't go and speak to the women behind the purdah curtains. And so that's a very important part of the story that they're not getting.
Presenter asks
Have you ever worked under a female foreign editor in your career?
Shockingly, I mean, I would never have imagined I'd be saying this when I started out at twenty-one... that in thirty years I have never had a female foreign editor. At the Sunday Times the magazine is edited by a woman, and that's great, and she's a passionate supporter of women.
Presenter asks
What were your first impressions of Benazir Bhutto when you met her?
Well, the first time I met her was the day that she announced her engagement to Asif Ali Zardari. So her flat in London was absolutely full of bouquets of flowers. I'd never seen so many flowers or such beautiful bouquets. She was very eloquent and very charming. She was the bravest person I had ever met, and she was doing amazing things on one hand. But, you know, when she became Prime Minister, actually, she didn't do a lot of the things that she had promised.
“I've had far more than my nine lives by now.”
“If you can tell one person's story powerfully, it seems to me that that is the best way to engage people.”
“I actually get hope and inspiration from what I see women doing in these difficult situations.”
“I have never had a female foreign editor.”
“I didn't carry anything with me, I didn't even have a plaster.”
“The hardest thing often is coming back.”