Jeremy Bowen

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week, I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book, and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:45

My castaway this week is the journalist Jeremy Bowen. He's the BBC's international editor and has been reporting stories from the world's conflict zones for over 30 years. He's covered wars in Iraq, Bosnia, Chechnya, and most recently Ukraine, but he's most closely associated with the Middle East, where he was a correspondent for many years. With his trademark moustache often teamed with a bulletproof vest, he distilled the complexities of the region for audiences back home, making himself a household name in the process. His work has won him a shelf full of prizes, including a Royal Television Society Award for Interview of the Year for his encounter with President Assad of Syria. It's a world away from his early life in Cardiff, where he developed his nose for a story. His mother was a press photographer and his father a reporter. He cites his father's coverage of the Abervan disaster in 1966 as proof that empathy is just as important as bravery when breaking a story. He says doing a job in a war zone, handling it well and coming out alive can give a person the confidence to face anything for a while. Do too much of it and it will destroy you, if not physically, then mentally. Jeremy Bowen, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Jeremy Bowen1:56

Thank you very much. It's great to be here. I'm very excited.

Presenter1:59

So last year, Jeremy, you started debt reporting from Ukraine and increasingly wars fought in public, in real time, minute by minute on social media these days. It's not even just about that twenty four hour news cycle. What impact does that have on the way that you work and on your approach?

Jeremy Bowen2:16

I think it's made journalists themselves more exposed. It's more dangerous, I think.

Presenter2:20

Made the job more dangerous.

Jeremy Bowen2:21

I think so, because people want to influence. Knocking off a journalist might be if you're unscrupulous, might be one way of doing it. You certainly get a lot of publicity. And I think when I started

Jeremy Bowen2:33

It was much easier to be seen as a non combatant. In El Salvador we used to wave white flags and people would stop shooting and let us cross the road.

Jeremy Bowen2:40

You'd never, ever, ever do that. And we didn't have flat jackets and things. Of course people did get killed then.

Presenter2:46

Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Bowen2:46

But I think they weren't targets in the same way that they can be now.

Presenter2:51

Does it mean that when you do go there you're you're scared in a way that you didn't used to be?

Jeremy Bowen2:56

This may sound a bit weird, but I don't get

Jeremy Bowen2:59

Scared so much. I'm familiar with the pattern of emotions.

Jeremy Bowen3:04

The day before you go, I think, oh my god, what am I doing? When you're getting your stuff together, checking my flak jackets where it should be and I've got my blast boxes, which are Kevlar underwear that people have taken to wearing these days. And then you've got this conflict of wanting to get and do the story, but also thinking, oh my god, this might be awful. But I know from experience it's never quite as bad when you get there.

Speaker 23:17

Underwear.

Presenter3:32

I think you reckon this is something like your twentieth conflict that you've covered.

Jeremy Bowen3:36

Something like

Presenter3:36

Yeah.

Jeremy Bowen3:36

Twentieth.

Presenter3:36

Why do you keep going back?

Jeremy Bowen3:40

I think if I've got any credibility with the people who've watched what I've done and listened and read what I've done over the years, it's the feeling that I've actually seen it for myself. I'm not looking at a screen and extracting someone else's thoughts. I'm actually going there myself. And so I'm a big believer in the value for everybody of eyewitness journalism, which is what I try and do.

Presenter4:01

It's time for your first desk. What have you chosen and why?

Jeremy Bowen4:04

Let's Stay Together, Al Green, because it reminds me of Sarajevo, the war in in Bosnia. We had an office in the Sarajevo T V station.

Jeremy Bowen4:15

And there was a road connecting the hotel and the T V station, which was known as Sniper Alley because of all the snipers. I had this bulletproof Land Rover and I would drive it. There was a backway, but it became too tedious to go that way. So I'd drive down the main road, and I had a cassette of Al Green. And if I put on this track and drove at the correct pace,

Jeremy Bowen4:39

I could get from the TV station to the Holiday Inn and just as I was pulling up and parking in the underground car park it was in.

Speaker 44:48

Mm

Speaker 44:52

I'm so in love with you.

Speaker 44:56

Whatever you want

Speaker 45:01

Is it alright with me?

Speaker 45:07

Yeah.

Speaker 45:09

Make me feel

Speaker 45:11

Right.

Presenter5:18

Al Green and Let's Stay Together. An incredibly smooth track, Jeremy. It's now got, in my mind, the most stressful backdrop to it that you can imagine.

Jeremy Bowen5:27

It used to relax me, I think. Probably it was uh a good therapy as you drove along thinking, Well, I hope I'm not gonna get shot.

Presenter5:33

Let's go back to the beginning then, Jeremy Bowen. You were born in Cardiff. Your mother, Jennifer, was a press photographer, and your father, Gareth, was a journalist for BBC Wales. It sounds like it was much more than a nine to five job for him.

Jeremy Bowen5:44

For him it was something he lived and breathed the whole time. And he used to do I remember before he joined the BBC he was in newspapers. And one of my lasting memories when I was a kid is going to sleep with the sound of his typewriter, his manual typewriter, bashing away on the dining room table.

Presenter6:01

Your father covered the Abervan disaster in nineteen sixty six when a landslide of coal waste crashed into a small Welsh mining village. It killed one hundred and sixteen children and twenty eight adults who were in their classrooms on that day. You were only six, the same age as some of the children who died. Do you have any memories of that time?

Jeremy Bowen6:19

Well, my memories of Abervan were

Jeremy Bowen6:22

My father going off, disappearing for a few days and coming back with his trousers caked in this black slurry that had come down from the tip onto the village and onto the school. Then he slept in the middle of the day for ages because he was exhausted. I think they'd been up for a couple of nights. And it was something which for him was so close to home because that was you know where he grew up and his dad worked at the steel works but you know his grandfather had been a coal miner and it was something that I think he felt very deeply.

Presenter6:59

And as we've heard, your mother Jennifer was a press photographer, which must have been quite an unusual job for a woman back then. What was she like?

Jeremy Bowen7:06

She had come from um quite a middle class background and she'd gone into photography. She'd been apprenticed to a local photographer in Hereford, and then had got this job on the Merthyr Express, the local paper. And she was actually working with another woman, which was again in the late fifties pretty unusual. I'd imagine the South Wales valleys.

Jeremy Bowen7:26

quite a traditional patriarchal society.

Jeremy Bowen7:29

She always was a photographer. She kept going, even with five kids. But I don't think she ever particularly.

Jeremy Bowen7:38

thought of herself as being a trailblazer or anything like that. She wanted to be a photographer and that was the way that was the job that she got.

Presenter7:45

Time to make some room for the music. Your second choice today. What is it?

Jeremy Bowen7:49

Well, it's Elgar's second symphony, and I've chosen this'cause it does remind me of my father. He was the most musical person of

Jeremy Bowen7:58

My parents and in our family used to sing in a choir.

Jeremy Bowen8:02

And I do remember him talking about this particular symphony. He said, look.

Jeremy Bowen8:08

Listen to the music, he said. Listen to the there's some melancholy in it as well. It was I think it was first played in 1911. Think about that Edwardian period. Think about someone bowling at Lourdes in the, you know, in September at the end of the cricket season. Think about what was coming down the road in the First World War. He also asked for the second movement to be played at his funeral. So for me, yeah, it does remind me of my dad.

Presenter9:36

Elgar's Symphony No. Two, performed by the Halle Orchestra, conducted by Sir John Barbaroli.

Presenter9:42

Jeremy Bowen, your primary education was at a Roman Catholic boys' school. As a ten-year-old, did you have any career ambitions?

Jeremy Bowen9:50

I remember about that age the teacher going round the class and said well what do you all want to do and everybody said footballer soldier so a few people said astronaut it was the time of the Apollo space missions and I said foreign correspondent I was always a bit weird I never quite fitted in and I didn't even quite know what it was but

Presenter10:02

Awesome.

Presenter10:10

What image did you have in your mind? What were you imagining?

Jeremy Bowen10:13

I had an image of a fan turning in the ceiling as I sat on some kind of wicker chair with my typewriter.

Jeremy Bowen10:20

I think that was probably a maybe, I don't know, in my memory now, there was probably a glass of whiskey, but probably not when I was ten.

Presenter10:27

After university you joined the BBC as a news trainee, and in nineteen eighty five you were sent to Belfast for your first assignment. This was during the final years of the Troubles. What types of stories did you cover?

Jeremy Bowen10:39

Of course, they didn't let me near any sec for very few security stories. I did things like

Jeremy Bowen10:45

new polar bear at Belfast Sioux and

Speaker 210:47

Alpha Su and

Jeremy Bowen10:49

And one of my colleagues, David Shutman, who'd been there a year before me, said, don't sit down, because it gives the wrong impression. You've got to look like you're ready for action. So the first two weeks they didn't let me do anything and they'd say, why don't you sit down? I said, I can't sit down. I'm ready to go. Pacing around the office. Pacing round the office like a caged tiger.

Presenter11:06

Pacing around the office.

Presenter11:09

There was one particular story where you learned to narrow the distance between yourself and what was happening.

Jeremy Bowen11:16

The program editor who was a

Jeremy Bowen11:19

At that time he was a martinette. He wasn't a nice wasn't nice to me anyway. And he said he want they wanted me to get hold of I think it was the head of the student union at Queen's University.

Jeremy Bowen11:30

And I was phoning and of course no mobile phones, so I was leaving messages all over the place and he can't say have you found that guy yet?

Jeremy Bowen11:37

I said not yet.

Jeremy Bowen11:38

So then I went to get my lunch.

Jeremy Bowen11:40

Fish and chips

Jeremy Bowen11:42

He said, Have you found that guy yet?

Jeremy Bowen11:45

I said, Not yet, but I've left messages He said, I don't bloody well care. Do you know where the Student Union is? I said, No. He said, About five minutes from here. So I walked in there, I found the individual, booked him, walked back, and my fish and chips were still warm.

Jeremy Bowen12:00

So, that to me was a really important lesson, which is narrow the distance between yourself and the story, and I still believe in that.

Presenter12:08

It's time for your next piece of music, Jeremy Bowen. What's it gonna be?

Jeremy Bowen12:11

Rachmaninov's second piano concerto.

Jeremy Bowen12:15

Quite a lot of my choices remind me of things which I found positive in bad moments. And I first heard this piece of music, or a fragment of it, after the terrible tragedy of the Lockerbie attacks, where a jumber jet came down on this Scottish town.

Jeremy Bowen12:33

In nineteen eighty eight.

Jeremy Bowen12:35

I went up there to cover it. We set up our office in the upstairs room of a one of the pubs in the town, and there was an old piano in the corner, and one of my colleagues played

Jeremy Bowen12:48

The very famous piano refrain from

Jeremy Bowen12:52

Rat Maninov's second piano concerto. And I said, Blimey, that's nice. What's that? He said, Haven't you heard it? It's really famous. And so when I got home,

Jeremy Bowen13:01

I bought a C D and I listened to it and actually now I preferred the third piano concerto but this was my way into Ratmaninov and all his other works.

Presenter14:10

Ratmaninoff's piano concerto Number two in C minor performed by Vladimir Ashkenazi with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andrei Previn.

Presenter14:19

Jeremy Bowen, in nineteen eighty nine you travelled to Central America to cover the civil war in El Salvador. Now you refer to that as your first war, but you you had been to Afghanistan by then in in'89. Why was it the first one?

Jeremy Bowen14:31

Well, it was the first one when they were shooting. It was the first one when I heard shots fired in anger. The first one where I found myself grovelling in the gutter.

Jeremy Bowen14:41

It s was so vivid and it was like uh it was like being in my own war movie.

Presenter14:46

What was your attitude to risk at that point?

Jeremy Bowen14:49

I had no idea what it was, in a way.

Jeremy Bowen14:51

The first time I heard shots and I was and they were near me, I was excited, I think. I was very excited. And then the first

Presenter14:59

Vivid is an interesting word to use. It's that adrenaline, everything is like.

Jeremy Bowen15:02

Oh, everything it's like the volume has been turned up on life. And I at that age, you know, I was twenty nine years old, twenty eight years old, something like that. And

Jeremy Bowen15:14

I felt indestructible. I mean that later on changed. But at the time that was very much how I felt.

Presenter15:20

The material that you capture in those dangerous places can be very graphic. Is it difficult to decide how much we at home should see?

Jeremy Bowen15:28

Yeah, I've had a long conversation over the years with the editors back in London.

Jeremy Bowen15:34

about how much to show.

Jeremy Bowen15:37

And the way that cultural norms work in in this country and practice in the the news business, we don't show that much.

Jeremy Bowen15:45

We don't show the impact of high explosive on bodies much. You know, we blob out faces now because

Jeremy Bowen15:52

People think that that somehow is more dignified for the the person concerned. I don't agree with that myself. I think it takes something away from them. So it's a long conversation I've had. I've had, you know, sometimes calm, sometimes you've got to be bloody joking. You know, we've been out all day getting this material and you're not going to show that.

Jeremy Bowen16:10

Having seen what it looks like when a shell lands in a crowd of people, I'm not saying we should show all of that. But sometimes I do feel that we pull our punches a bit. But it's a debate we have, and it goes on.

Presenter16:24

Jeremy, we've got to make some time for the music next. It's your fourth choice to day. What is it, and why are you taking it to the island?

Jeremy Bowen16:29

America, Simon and Garfunkel on family trips, used to play Simon and Garfunkel quite a lot, still doing the car. And I went to university as a postgraduate graduate school in the US. And I remember one trip particularly. I'd been to see a friend in Chicago and it was the winter. I was on a Greyhound bus going back overnight to Washington DC where I was a student. And I bought myself a Walkman, well a kind of imitation Walkman, and I had a Simon and Garfunkel cassette. And I remember looking out over the frozen wastes of the Midwest. And this was playing.

Speaker 417:06

Let us be lovers we'll marry our fortunes together.

Speaker 417:15

I've got some real estate here in my brain.

Speaker 417:21

So we've got a pack of cigarettes

Speaker 417:25

And the shoes went by And walked off to look for one may recall.

Presenter17:37

Simon and Garfunkel and America. Jeremy Bowen, you went to Iraq to report on the first Gulf War in 1991. Not long after you arrived, you covered the aftermath of a bombing by the US military of an air raid shelter in Amariya, a district in Baghdad. You were one of the first reporters on the scene. What had happened?

Jeremy Bowen17:58

Well, they made a terrible mistake. I don't think they they set out to kill so many civilians, but they put

Jeremy Bowen18:04

A bomb in through the roof, it was thick concrete and steel, and that made a hole, and then they put another bomb in through the hole.

Jeremy Bowen18:13

which basically killed everybody, almost everybody inside. So for hours I watched them pulling out

Jeremy Bowen18:19

burnt bodies, bits of bodies, and it was women and kids, old men, and surrounding it were lots of men, fathers mostly, who had got into the habit of taking their families there, thinking they'd be safe every evening, then going back to look after their houses. And then what was the

Jeremy Bowen18:40

I was really gobsmacked actually because then when I was on air talking about it and we had just started to do live rolling news at that point at the BBC, I was asked by Peter Sissons, I was describing what had happened, and he said

Jeremy Bowen18:55

Well, in London the MOD and in the States the Pentagon are saying that it was a military command centre.

Jeremy Bowen19:02

Something clicked in in my head and I said, Look, I can only go by what I have seen with my own eyes and I have seen the bodies. I've seen no soldiers. I've seen no evidence of being able to go around the whole place.

Presenter19:14

And your report attracted strong criticism from the Pentagon and the MOD for going against what they were saying they believed about what had happened. I think one British newspaper even compared you to the Nazi propagandist, Lord Hawai. What did the piece say?

Jeremy Bowen19:27

Lord Horhaw reborn in Baghdad. Big picture of me, small picture of him, comparing me to someone who was executed for treason. Well it was I opened and shut the libel. So I got some money out of it. I was more concerned about the fact that it was an egregious libel against

Presenter19:43

Against

Jeremy Bowen19:44

Reputational damage was settled in the end.

Presenter19:48

And what about the effect on you of having your integrity questioned in that way?

Jeremy Bowen19:53

I didn't think, Oh my God, what if I did get it wrong? because I knew I was right, because I'd been there and I'd seen it, so I had no doubts in my own mind that my journalism was good.

Jeremy Bowen20:02

Not many years later, I met a general.

Jeremy Bowen20:06

British general who'd been at the MOD at the time.

Jeremy Bowen20:09

And I asked him about that, he said, Yes. He said, You were right and we were wrong.

Presenter20:14

Jeremy Bowen, we've got to make room for the music. This is your fifth choice today. What are we going to hear next and why?

Jeremy Bowen20:20

I spent a year as a postgraduate at university in Italy, in Bologna. I shared a a flat with three guys who are still great friends of mine. Belgian, a Dutchman, and a Swede sounds like a joke. And a Welshman. And

Jeremy Bowen20:37

One of the things that students did in Bologna at that time was there was a great opera house, the Teatro Comunale, and you could get subsidized season tickets, and they would have a

Jeremy Bowen20:50

Quite a lot of intervals, and we would have a bottle of the local sparkling wine, which is called pinoletto, in every interval. So we're quite, we enjoyed it no end. We had a great time. And so from Laboem, Piccini's Laboem, Osuave Fantula, which is one of the great songs of opera.

Speaker 421:21

Let's receive

Presenter22:11

O Suave Fantula from Puccini's Labo M., performed by Placido Domingo and Montserrat Caballier, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir George Shorty.

Presenter22:21

Jeremy Boyen, in two thousand your friend and colleague Abed Takush was killed in Lebanon while you were working on an assignment together.

Presenter22:29

Tell me what happened that day.

Jeremy Bowen22:31

The Israelis were leaving South Lebanon after a very long occupation.

Jeremy Bowen22:35

And Abed, who was uh

Jeremy Bowen22:38

Driver Fixer.

Jeremy Bowen22:41

And myself and the cameraman, Malik Kanan, were covering the story.

Jeremy Bowen22:47

And villages which had been under Israeli control by then for more than twenty years suddenly opened up again and there was rejoicing, people throwing rice, it was like a wedding, they were so happy that the Israelis had gone.

Jeremy Bowen23:03

So it probably lulled us into a bit of a false sense of security, because we were keeping well back from the retreating Israeli army, or thought we were.

Jeremy Bowen23:13

But the road winds along the border wire between Lebanon and Israel.

Jeremy Bowen23:19

And so we stopped uh and I thought

Jeremy Bowen23:24

Let's do a piece of camera overlooking Israel and to be honest, it was sli I didn't have much to say, but it was a kind of whimsical thought because at the time I I was living in Jerusalem.

Jeremy Bowen23:34

And I just thought it was sort of

Jeremy Bowen23:37

interesting thing to do. And I got out with Malik.

Jeremy Bowen23:41

And we walked about 50 yards away. Normally Albert would have got out of the car too, but he was on the phone talking to his son.

Jeremy Bowen23:49

And behind me there was this enormous explosion and I spun round and Malik was filming, so there's video of it, I've seen it.

Jeremy Bowen23:58

And I saw, first of all, the grass was on fire, the miles went up, and I saw the car was

Jeremy Bowen24:03

pouring smoke and flame. They'd fired a tank shell into the back of it. And very short range, because we were very near the border wire. Subsequently we found it was about a kilometre.

Jeremy Bowen24:16

And Abed was in the driving seat on the left and he he somehow forced his way out. He was on fire, his clothes were on fire, out of the car and slumped down onto the road and we couldn't see him from where we were. So I said to Malik, let's get up there. And Malik said, Don't go up there, Jeremy. Abed is dead now.

Jeremy Bowen24:36

or he's going to die any any second, and if we go up there they'll kill us.

Jeremy Bowen24:41

I know this to be true because

Jeremy Bowen24:44

The team from the Times were on the other side and listening into the radio traffic and they heard one of the Israelis say

Jeremy Bowen24:53

We've got we've got one of them, we'll get the other two with the machine gun.

Jeremy Bowen24:57

So after a while I said, Malik, I can't stand this. I stuck my nose up. We were hiding behind a building.

Jeremy Bowen25:02

and they immediately opened up with a heavy machine gun. We were stuck there for a couple of hours.

Jeremy Bowen25:07

My partner Julia was running the BBC operation in Lebanon, at the time she was also a journalist working for the BBC, and they had news of bodies on the road.

Jeremy Bowen25:17

And Malik had managed to get a call out, but he hadn't mentioned

Jeremy Bowen25:20

before the battery went, that I was safe as well, so for a while they thought I was dead too. Uh and you know, Julia was pregnant with our first kid.

Jeremy Bowen25:32

So

Jeremy Bowen25:34

I mean, looking back, and it was a terrible, terrible day. And then

Jeremy Bowen25:38

The next day I went to Beirut, I went to the funeral.

Jeremy Bowen25:42

the traditional Sunni family. I was sitting outside with the men in the courtyard.

Jeremy Bowen25:48

And then the message came down they'd like to talk to the women upstairs, so I went up.

Jeremy Bowen25:54

Explain what had happened.

Jeremy Bowen25:58

No, it was uh it was an

Jeremy Bowen26:00

It was a awful, awful day and I and I do I feel I bear some responsibility because I decided to stop. However, had we kept going, they might have killed us all in the car. You know, the thing was, his family, their

Jeremy Bowen26:12

The women wore headscarves, they were believing Muslims, they said, you know, it was God's will.

Jeremy Bowen26:17

But I can't help thinking that maybe I made a bad mistake that day. And so but that's something.

Jeremy Bowen26:23

you know, I've got to deal with.

Presenter26:25

Let's take a break for some music, Jeremy.

Presenter26:28

Tell me about your next track.

Jeremy Bowen26:30

It's memories of Baghdad during the war of 1991. There were three of us in our office. My esteemed BBC colleague Alan Little, good friend. Rory Peck was the cameraman. Rory had a knackered old cassette player with about three home recorded tapes. It was all the music we had. And in the evening, when we'd more or less finished and we were trying to cook something on a horrible primer stove and bombing was going on outside, the windows were shaking, you could see the tracer. And we'd play this music. And the one I liked best of Rory's crap collection of tapes was the Brahms German Requiem, and particularly the section where it's all flesh is grass.

Speaker 227:06

Yeah.

Jeremy Bowen27:15

It's uh it's a quote from the Bible. And Rory was killed in an attempted coup in Moscow a couple of years after that. So when I hear this, and I I actually play it quite a bit, it does remind me of

Jeremy Bowen27:29

That time.

Presenter28:29

Brahm's German Requiem, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Herbert von Karrion.

Presenter28:34

Jeremy Bowen, you have been shot in the course of your work. Many of your colleagues have been killed reporting from war zones, as we've heard. Others have gone on to suffer from poor mental health, been unable to sustain relationships, developed substance abuse problems to help them cope with what they've witnessed. How have you coped?

Jeremy Bowen28:53

I think I'm

Jeremy Bowen28:54

Reasonably well adjusted. I think I'm able to see things in context. There have been some very difficult moments, you know. I ended up with a few years ago with some very severe depression. I took time off work, I took meds. I think you've got to count your blessings in life and not get too tied up in things. And I had cancer a few years ago and touch wood. I've been in remission now for four and a half years, and it was quite a serious tumor. So I think that has also helped me get a sense of perspective on life because I've always been a fairly glass half full rather than half empty person, and that maybe changed for a while. And I think actually.

Jeremy Bowen29:36

Having had cancer.

Jeremy Bowen29:38

brought back the more optimistic Jeremy.

Presenter29:42

Jeremy, you talked about shifts in perspective and I know that fatherhood was a major one for you. That was a turning point. How did it change your outlook becoming a parent? Your kids are grown up now.

Jeremy Bowen29:52

By the time I became a dad I was

Jeremy Bowen29:56

Only a couple of days short of my 41st birthday, so the changes were very much appreciated. I wanted to have a different kind of life. I had spent, you know, years staying out late and boozing and doing all those sorts of things. And I was very happy to stay at home and cook things for the kids. And my only regret is that I probably wasn't there as often as I would like to have been or should have been because of the way my job took me away. And sometimes I would break my neck to get back by, say, Friday night, so I could be there over the weekend, even if I was going away on the Monday or Tuesday. I'd sit down with the kids when they were small to watch something on TV and I'd fall asleep. They'd hate that.

Jeremy Bowen30:43

So I then learned, and Julia said to me, you know, there's just no point.

Jeremy Bowen30:49

In you coming back and falling asleep on the sofa, have a rest, come back and be back properly. You know, be in the moment.

Presenter30:55

Uh

Jeremy Bowen30:55

It's time s

Presenter30:55

Some more music, Jeremy. What's your next choice?

Jeremy Bowen30:58

When I was

Jeremy Bowen31:00

A small kid, we lived in part of Cardiff called Whitchurch, and my dad had this gramophone. And they had a whole lot of records, a lot of them were 78s from the 50s. But they did buy a copy of Hard Day's Night, which we played no end. And I always remember the smell of that. You lifted the lid of the gramophone, and they had this smell of dust and green bays that was on the inside, and probably a bit of wood or something, and you'd turn it on, and there'd be this thrum as the valves inside warmed up. And I haven't actually chosen something from Hard Days' Night. I've chosen In My Life by the Beatles because it reminds me of that time when I was a kid, and I like listening to it. And it sounds like it's been written by someone of my age. But in fact, they wrote it when they were about 25.

Speaker 431:46

There are places I remember

Jeremy Bowen31:48

Cause I'm not

Speaker 431:51

All my life, though some have changed.

Speaker 431:56

Forever, not for better

Speaker 432:00

Some have gone and some remain All these places have their moments

Jeremy Bowen32:06

This is at the moment.

Speaker 432:10

Lovers and friends, I still can recall Some are dead and some are living

Presenter32:18

The Beatles and In My Life. Jeremy Boyen, you've seen so much of the worst that the world has to offer. I wonder where you find joy, fun, relief, all those other things.

Jeremy Bowen32:24

The world

Jeremy Bowen32:28

Relief. Well, all those other things. I'm very interested in food and wine, cooking. I have a large wine cellar. I've got more wine than I'll probably ever be able to drink. And so, no, I like a lot of my leisure thoughts revolve around what are we going to eat next. And I like going back to Italy and back to Bologna, which is

Jeremy Bowen32:54

one of the great centers of cuisine.

Presenter32:58

Now you know where you're off to next though, Jeremy Bowen. You are off to the island. I'm imagining that you will take its challenges in your stride, but but how will you prepare for the journey? Because I know

Jeremy Bowen33:01

Um

Jeremy Bowen33:04

I think

Presenter33:07

That you do like to be as prepared as you can for a new challenge.

Jeremy Bowen33:14

I've been to a few remote places, but I was I haven't been on my own in them.

Jeremy Bowen33:18

I think I could probably use branches and make a shelter, maybe string a few together and make a raft to go to a neighbouring island or out into the trackless wastes of the sea. And I hope I'd be resourceful and try and keep myself going.

Presenter33:37

We'll let you have one more track before we send you there and we find out.

Presenter33:40

What's it going to be? Your last choice today?

Jeremy Bowen33:42

When I first came to live in London,

Jeremy Bowen33:44

I lived in North London when I was a student. Then I was abroad for a few years and I came back and temporarily moved to South London.

Jeremy Bowen33:52

That's about 40 years ago, and I'm still there. I think Ray Davis was from Muswell Hill, so

Presenter33:57

North London Bath

Jeremy Bowen33:57

He's a North London lad, yeah the Kinks is the North London band but I'm choosing as my final record Waterloo Sunset by the Kinks because there isn't one called Camberwell Sunset where I live but Waterloo is quite close.

Presenter33:59

Thinks is l

Speaker 434:09

Dirty old river must just keep rolling, floating into the night.

Speaker 434:19

Even so busy, make me feel dizzy, taxi lights shine so bright.

Speaker 434:28

But I don't need no friends.

Speaker 434:36

As long as I case a wan to this

Presenter34:40

The Kinks and Waterloo Sunsets. So, Jeremy Bowen, I'm going to send you away to the island now. I'm giving you the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and you can take one other book. What would you like?

Jeremy Bowen34:50

Well, I'd like a bumper edition, I know they exist, you wouldn't have to bind it specially, of uh George Orwell.

Presenter34:54

Evol.

Jeremy Bowen34:57

Not that relaxing, but immensely stimulating.

Presenter35:00

The collected works of George Orwell, it is then, they're yours. You can also have a luxury item. What would you like?

Jeremy Bowen35:06

I thought about choosing my wine cellar, but I thought it's not that portable and I wouldn't get anything done. So I recently bought myself a manual typewriter at a charity shop, a portable one. So I'd like to take that with paper, ribbons, tipx, and I'll try and maybe write that novel that I've been meaning to write and haven't quite got around to yet.

Presenter35:28

And finally, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today would you save from the waves?

Jeremy Bowen35:33

I'd go with the Algar Second Symphony, so I'll be transported back to Edwardian London when I listen to it.

Presenter35:39

Jeremy Bowen, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Jeremy Bowen35:43

Been a great pleasure.

Presenter36:04

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Jeremy. Perhaps the sound of his typewriter will bring back some happy childhood memories. We've cast away many other correspondents, including Jeremy's colleagues Lise Dussette and John Simpson. Alex Crawford and Christina Lam are in our back catalogue too. You can find their episodes in our Desert Island Discs programme archive and through BBC Sounds. The studio manager for today's programme was Emma Hart, the assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky, and the producer was Paula McGinley. Next time, my guest will be the poet Claudia Rankin. I do hope you'll join us.

Jeremy Bowen36:49

Hello, I'm Jeremy Bowen, the BBC's international editor. For nearly 40 years, I've been reporting from some of the most complex and dangerous places in the world. In my new 10-part series, Frontlines of Journalism, I'm taking you to some of the most difficult stories I've had to cover. Six mortar rounds landed in or around the graveyard.

Jeremy Bowen37:11

Get a bit emotional about it actually. To look at the obstacles that get in the way of the truth and how journalists like me navigate around them. It is never definitive.

Speaker 437:20

We can have this argument.

Speaker 237:21

German

Jeremy Bowen37:21

Journalists tend to argue. Every word that comes out of your mouth is a form of opinion.

Speaker 237:25

If the world saw the world would react.

Jeremy Bowen37:29

Subscribe to Front Lines of Journalism from BBC Radio 4 Now on BBC Sounds.