Hella Pick, journalist

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 19 December 2018

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As one of the Guardian’s first female foreign correspondents, Hella Pick reported on events that shaped the world in the second half of the 20th century, from Martin Luther King's civil rights activism to Watergate, the Gdansk shipyard strikes to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Born in Vienna in 1929, she was raised by her mother who, in March 1939, put her on a Kindertransport train to Britain to escape the Nazis. Her mother was able to follow her to England a few months later and Hella spent her formative years in the Lake District. After reading Politics at London School of Economics, she worked as commercial editor of a London-based weekly publication called West Africa. After she left, she offered her services to The Guardian – and spent the next 35 years or so with the paper. While UN correspondent, she worked alongside Alistair Cooke in New York and subsequently held posts as European Integration correspondent, Washington correspondent, Eastern Europe correspondent, and diplomatic editor before retiring in the mid-1990s. Since leaving The Guardian, she has nurtured a new career as a writer, publishing a biography of Simon Wiesenthal and a book about Austria’s post-war history. BOOK: Scorn by Matthew Parris LUXURY: Recliner armchair FAVOURITE TRACK: Mozart's Marriage of Figaro Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts
0:04.9	Hello, I'm Lauren LeVern and this is the Desert Island Disks Podcast.
0:08.6	Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take
0:13.3	with them if they were cast away to a desert island.
0:16.5	For right reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast.
0:20.6	I hope you enjoy listening.
0:30.0	Music Radio Music
0:42.4	My cast away this week is Heller Pick.
0:45.1	As a journalist, she covered the stories that shaped the 20th century.
0:49.2	She was there for Martin Luther King's March from Selma, the Paris protests of 1968,
0:55.1	the Watergate scandal in America and the Gdansk shipyard strikes in Poland.
1:00.6	One of the very first female foreign correspondents, she spent 35 years at the Guardian and says
1:06.4	it's no accident that foreign policy was her specialism. She arrived in the UK alone
1:12.0	on a kinder transport train as a 10-year-old refugee from Nazi-occupied Austria.
1:17.7	Celebrating her 90th birthday next year, she's far from retiring.
1:22.3	She's published a biography of Simon Viesenthal and is currently working with the Think Tank,
1:27.2	the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and with Sussex University to establish the
1:32.1	Videnfeld Institute of Jewish Studies. I have a deep sense of belonging to Britain,
1:37.3	she writes, but I still wonder whether anyone not born in this country is ever wholly accepted
1:42.8	or integrated. This kinder transport person needs to know that there are also wider horizons
1:49.7	that remain to embrace her and to embrace. Helipic, welcome to Desert Island Discs.
1:56.0	Thank you. And, Helip, you were one of the first women to occupy the role of foreign correspondents.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.