From Our Own Correspondent
A Celebration of Fifty Years of the BBC Radio Programme
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- £6.49
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- £6.49
Publisher Description
The flagship Radio 4 programme From Our Own Correspondent gives Britain's most celebrated reporters the chance to describe much more than they can in a normal report: context, history and characters encountered en route. And for the fiftieth anniversary of the programme Profile collected together the programme's best pieces. From Our Own Correspondent has been one of BBC Radio 4's flagship programmes for fifty years. And this book, containing dispatches from all around the world, shows why FOOC, as it is affectionately known, has become such a well-known and much-loved institution. It contains not only the observations of journalists covering the big news events of the day, but also their personal insights into how people around the world live their lives. There are dispatches from Misha Glenny in Russia, Mark Tully in India, Charles Wheeler in the USA, Jeremy Vine in the Congo, Ben Brown in Zimbabwe and Orla Guerin in the West Bank. All offer a unique perspective describing the background to events around the world as they happen.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Middle East peace accords, elections in South Africa, grief and Grieg in Sarajevo, tremors in L.A.--just a few of last year's headlines. In these selected essays written for radio, the BBC's far-flung correspondents offer highly personal impressions of those stories and other events, people and places around the world. Their observations are near perfect gems of content and narrative voice. Included in the anthology are the stories behind Haiti's unrest, the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas, Russia's second October Revolution (1993). Of note are Paul Reynold's poignant essay on a classical music concert in Sarajevo during a shelling; Andy Kershaw's eyewitness account of the slaughter in Rwanda and his own near brush with death. Tim Whewell paints a dismal portrait of post-Soviet Russia as he takes the reader from Moscow's grim train station across the street to the luxurious Hotel Slavyanska. Uber correspondent Martin Bell ponders Jimmy Carter's diplomatic knack in North Korea. On the lighter side, Stephen Jessel explores a dog's life in Paris, Simon Calder ruminates on the Danish theme park Legoland and an old girlfriend of Bill Clinton's talks about her ``squeaky-clean date.'' In the trade, broadcast journalists get their fair share of knocks from print reporters of sporting charisma over substance. Some hard-bitten print reporters owe a few pints to their BBC counterparts.
