Kate Adie CBE
Kate Adie presents From Our Own Correspondent on Radio 4. She became a household name as BBC Chief News Reporter, covering the Gulf War, the demise of the Soviet Union, the protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square and NATO's campaign in Kosovo.
Kate started work in local radio and TV, before starting her career with the BBC national news in 1979.
She was the duty reporter one evening in May 1980 and first on the scene when the Special Air Service (SAS) went in to break up the Iranian Embassy siege. As smoke bombs exploded in the background and SAS soldiers abseiled in to rescue the hostages, Adie reported live and unscripted to one of the largest news audiences ever, while crouched behind a car door. This proved to be her big break.
One of Adie's most significant assignments was to report the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. She was reportedly injured after being grazed by a bullet that had "shaved the skin off her arm", as she ran through Tiananmen Square at the height of the protests. She and her team were the only crew out in the square, and so were able to witness what has still never been acknowledged by the Chinese government nor reported in China.
In Libya she was once shot by a drunk and irate Libyan army commander after refusing, as a journalist, to act as an intermediary between the British and Libyan governments; the bullet, fired at point-blank range, nicked her collar bone but she did not suffer permanent harm.
Aside from her autobiography, The Kindness of Strangers, Kate has published Corsets to Camouflage and Nobody's Child. She has won the Royal Television Society Journalism Award and the Monte Carlo International Golden Nymph. Kate has also received BAFTA's Richard Dimbleby Award.
Today, Kate talks about the importance of getting to the truth, seeing through a haze of complexity and the courage required to face change with curiosity.
