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Hello and welcome to Women with Balls, where I, Katie Balls, speak to today's trailblazers.

My guest today was born in London and grew up attending non-such high school for girls,

for graduating with BA in philosophy, politics

and economics from the University of Oxford. Whilst there, she was edited the university newspaper

and in years of graduating she had been awarded young journalist of the year for her coverage

of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, where she lived for two years in Peshwar.

It would be the first of many awards. Since then, she has been based in Islamabad and Rio de Janeiro

for the Financial Times and Johannesburg and Washington, D.C. for the Sunday Times. She has covered

wars from Iraq to Libya, Angola to Syria, and journeyed to the far reach of the Amazon to visit remote tribes.

She has been ambushed by the Taliban, deported from Pakistan after uncovering evidence of a covert operation by rogue elements in the ISI,

narrowly escaped a suicide bombing and was on Benazir Buto's bus when it was blown up.

In 2013, she was awarded an OBE by the Queen for services to journalism, and in 2016, she won the

Foreign Press Association Award for Feature Story of the Year for an article on Girls in Nigeria.

Last year, she was known feature writer of the year in the National Press Awards.

Now, Chief Foreign Correspondent for the Sunday Times,

she is also known for her coverage and advocacy for women in war zones,

and her latest book is Our Bodies, Their Battlefield, War Through the Lives of

Women.

So thank you very much joining us today, Christina.

We really appreciate it.

Now on this podcast, we begin with a question that some of us receives a mixed reaction,

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