You're listening to Her Story Made History on the BBC World Service with me, Lee's Dusset.

Vairvike Freiburga is a woman who's always taken a long view.

When I was 10 years old I read a novel about the last king of the Zengalians who were a tribe on a border with Lithuania.

Their last battle with the Crusaders, at the end of the 12th century or the beginning of the 13th. Their castle was taken, was burnt down,

and 100,000 Zengaleans went into exile. I read that book and I cried for a week as a 10 year old saying to myself there must have been a way of fighting those crusaders so that our people would not be conquered and

reduced ultimately to second-class citizens and even later to serve them.

And I thought if I had been king I would have found some way of fighting better.

History has been very cruel to us and it became clear to me that one had to be vigilant

and wait for the cracks in a march of history when an opportunity arises. Our grandfather did it at the time of the

First World War when we got our independence and the cracks appeared when the Soviet Union collapsed, they had to be seized.

Vair Vike Freyberger, former president of the Baltic state of Latvia, its first female president, a two-term president, until the summer of 2007.

Today we meet in her Latvian home, a flat full of photographs and flowers for this first conversation in our new series of

Her Story Made History here on the BBC World Service. Some of you may remember our first interviews broadcast last year to mark a century

since British women won the right to vote. We return to these personal stories behind powerful women with Vira, elegant in her

tailored teal blue suit, as perfectly poised as she always was when I used to see her at

international summits, standing in the midst of all the men.

Her life story has been one of chances, of astonishing twists and turns.

You were born in 1937 on the cusp of what was historic and turbulent times,

not just in Latvia, but across Europe. 1940, they... in young child then. Do you remember anything of the war? I remember actually seen when the Soviet

occupying forces had driven factory workers, university students, high school students, out in the streets

to supposedly manifest requesting for Latvia to be admitted into the Soviet Union.

And it was a scene where Mother and I are standing on a street near a lamppost.

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