Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A journalist and author whose first-hand accounts of turmoil in the Middle East have established her as a first-class war reporter.
On the island
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.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:54What 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
2:22What 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.
Presenter asks
3:12How 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.
The keepsakes
The luxury
Presenter asks
5:18You'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
6:44Have 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
16:08What 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.”