Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1999, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week has devoted her life to helping people who've been tortured.

At the age of 20 at the end of the war and a rather joyless childhood in North London, she

found herself working with the Jewish Relief Unit in Belson. There she learned to

listen and understand. After that she studied psychoanalysis, worked in medical organizations

and with amnesty.

Until in 1985, she founded the Medical Foundation

for the Victims of Torture.

This is the culmination of her life's work,

her determination to understand the trauma of torture and to try to

alleviate it. Inevitably a life lived so close to so much pain needs its

escapes. I take great joy in small things, she says, pottering, even ironing.

My work makes all these things seem very precious. She is Helen Bamber. And it's work Helen which you go on doing even though you're now in your

70s you you still see people you still do case work do you? Oh yes I see people

frequently I came away this morning having seen someone who was tortured in his

country of origin who has many physical and some psychological difficulties and who is

who is fearful that he may be returned to the country which tortured him.

Which country is there?

That's Turkey.

Because what is amazing as I read about your work is that there are 91 countries

that you have come across since 1985 where such torture goes on. I suppose one

...