Lindsey Hilsum, journalist

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 27 April 2025

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Lindsey Hilsum is a multi-award-winning journalist who has been a foreign correspondent for the past four decades. She has been Channel 4’s international editor for the past 22 years and has reported on every continent except Antarctica.

After studying French and Spanish at University, she worked as an aid worker in Mexico and Kenya before becoming the East Africa stringer for the BBC World Service.

After realising her calling was journalism she devoted her career to covering events around the world including the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the 2003/4 war in Iraq.

She also spent two years in Beijing as the China correspondent for Channel 4 News.

Among her many awards for her work, she has been named Amnesty International Journalist of the Year, RTS Specialist Journalist of the Year and has received the Charles Wheeler Award in recognition of her outstanding contribution to broadcast journalism. She is also the author of three books.

When she is not abroad reporting, Lindsey lives in London.

Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Sarah Taylor .

DISC ONE: Dancing in the Dark - Bruce Springsteen DISC TWO: Carey - Joni Mitchell DISC THREE: Shauri Yako - Orchestra Super Mazembe DISC FOUR: Summertime - Billie Holiday and her Orchestra DISC FIVE: Hurricane - Bob Dylan DISC SIX: The Butterfly Lovers' Violin Concerto (Arr. for Violin & Chinese Orchestra): Andante cantabile "Transformation" Composed by He Zhanhao and Chen Gang and performed by Lü Siqing and the Taipei Orchestra, conducted by Yiu-kwong Chung DISC SEVEN: Piece of My Heart - Big Brother and the Holding Company and Janis Joplin DISC EIGHT: Who Knows Where the Time Goes - Fairport Convention

BOOK CHOICE: Collected Poems by W H Auden LUXURY ITEM: A Tang Dynasty horse CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Carey - Joni Mitchell

Transcript

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0:00.0	If a Banksy appeared on your house, you'd be sitting on a fortune, right?
0:07.0	At first you think you're gifted, but you're actually not.
0:10.5	This is a tale of two murals, Margate's Valentine's Day Mascara and the lowest off seagull.
0:17.3	And the true cost of free art for the people who have to live with it.
0:21.5	40,000 pounds cost per annum.
0:23.8	We didn't know what to do.
0:25.5	Nobody's turned up to say, we'll help you protect it.
0:29.0	The Banksy story.
0:30.3	When Banksy comes to town, listen on BBC Sounds.
0:36.0	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:39.7	Hello, I'm Lauren Levern, and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast.
0:43.4	Every week, I ask my guest to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them
0:48.5	if they were cast away to a desert island.
0:51.2	And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening. My castaway this week is the journalist Lindsay Hilsom.
1:22.5	She's been a foreign correspondent for the past four decades and Channel 4 News International Editor for 22 years. During that
1:29.7	time, she's reported from every continent except Antarctica, covering the major conflicts of our time
1:35.2	and winning numerous awards for her work. She has a reputation for bringing clarity and insight
1:40.9	to complex stories, as well as an eye for the human details that help her coverage
1:45.7	resonate with viewers at home. She grew up in Worcestershire, with a keen desire to see the world.
1:51.4	Starting out as an aid worker in Guatemala and Haiti, she soon began working as a freelance writer
1:56.4	alongside her humanitarian work. That's how, in April 1994, while she was working for an NGO
2:02.9	in Kigali, she found herself the only English-speaking journalist present to witness the horror
	...

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