A Sense of Place
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 20 October 2016
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Recollections of working in Warsaw thirty years ago prompt Kevin Connolly to consider how life there then informs Poles’ support now for freedom of movement within the European Union. Bethany Bell visits the birthplace of Adolf Hitler, the town of Braunau, and discovers Austrians are divided over whether or not his childhood home should be torn down. James Longman finds that Lebanon’s capital exerts a special attraction for him as Beirut Correspondent – even though he already knows it well. Adam Shaw visits one of the world's wealthiest men, Carlos Slim, in Mexico City and finds migration very much on the telecoms mogul’s mind. And Jane Labous gets parenting advice from her Senegalese mother-in-law. The programme is introduced by Kate Adie.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thank you for downloading from our own correspondent. |
| 0:03.2 | This edition was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Thursday the 20th of October 2016. |
| 0:09.2 | It's introduced by Kate Adi. |
| 0:11.8 | Hello. Today we're in Mexico where our correspondent meets one of the world's richest men and finds |
| 0:18.7 | that great wealth can't actually cope with a traffic jam. Most towns celebrate their famous sons, but yet |
| 0:26.4 | again the Austrian town of Brownau is faced with the legacy of being the birthplace of |
| 0:31.6 | Adolf Hitler. Our new correspondent in Beirut |
| 0:35.4 | though appreciates his family's roots in the city despite the mad property |
| 0:40.1 | market and irritating builders. |
| 0:43.4 | And all new mothers get a lot of advice about babies. |
| 0:46.8 | In Senegal, this involves sheep and earrings. |
| 0:52.0 | To Europe first, where the British Brexit will be high on the agenda at the European Heads of Government |
| 0:57.2 | meeting in Brussels, today and tomorrow. |
| 1:00.6 | Freedom of Movement is bound to be discussed, but it's well to remember that it has a different meaning for the countries which used to be under communist control. |
| 1:10.0 | The Poles feel this particularly keenly as Kevin Connolly and Warsaw explains. |
| 1:16.0 | There is no special prayer for reporters as far as I know, |
| 1:20.0 | but if anyone should ever write one, it ought to ask for an event for life, and for the grace and restraint not to tell too many stories about it. |
| 1:30.0 | It helps just to remember that not everything that ever happens to you is an anecdote. |
| 1:36.0 | I have to remind myself of this every time I come back to Poland, the first country to which I was posted as a foreign correspondent 30 years ago. |
| 1:44.9 | I came in the depths of winter at the time of year when the flat grey light |
| 1:50.7 | drained what little charm there was from the endless buildings constructed in porridge-colored concrete. |
| 1:57.0 | I used to worry that I was too young for the job. |
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