Product Description

Kate Adie's story is an unusual one. Raised in post-war Sunderland, where life was 'a sunny experience, full of meat-paste sandwiches and Sunday school', she has reported memorably and courageously from many of the world's trouble spots since she joined the BBC in 1969. THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS encompasses Adie’s reporting from, inter alia, Northern Ireland, the Middle East, Tiananmen Square and, of course, the Gulf War of 1991. It offers a compelling combination of vivid frontline reporting and evocative writing and reveals the extraordinarily demanding life of the woman who is always at the heart of the action. Although an intensely private person, Kate Adie also divulges what it's like to be a woman in a man's world – an inspiration to many working women.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19128 in Books
• Published on: 2003-06-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Daily Express
Sharp, witty and full of insights into the BBC and the sometimes crazed world of broadcasting

Review
Sharp, witty and full of insights into the BBC and the sometimes crazed world of broadcasting (Daily Express )

About the Author
Kate Adie was born in Sunderland and educated at Newcastle University. She joined the BBC in 1969 and has been their Chief News Correspondent since 1989. She was awarded the OBE in 1993.

Customer Reviews

Couldn't put it down
If you area contemporary of Kate Adie and grew up in England in the 50s and 60s you will relate to much in this book - from the overhang of WW II, to dreary council estates and pirate radio. But it is from about 1970 that your world and that of Kate Adie will probably diverge. Kate takes us through an incredible journey of local radio and TV, ultimately reporting from many of the world's major trouble spots. Of course if you live in England you know her well. If, like me, you've lived overseas for the past twenty years you have probably never heard of her.
Her book is a gripping behind the scenes look at how the news is made and the risks and sacrifices that someone with a seemingly glamorous job has to make - including 3 bullet wounds. It is somewhat disconcerting to realize that the reporters can sometimes be in greater danger than the military - at least the latter are trained and have weapons to defend themselves.
Early on in the book Kate tries a little too hard to be witty and amusing in just about every sentence - but this becomes less noticeable and irritating as the action moves to the streets of Belfasts or Sarajevo.
Although it is an autobiography, Kate reveals practically nothing of her personal life - the odd mention of a boyfriend or a family gathering. Perhaps she intended it that way, or perhaps her work is her life.
In the final chapter she summarizes the changes occurring in TV news - instant satellite pictures, dumbed down chatty shows etc. Much different from her hey day of lying in a trench somewhere with bullets wizzing overhead. She cannot resist the odd jibe but the punches seem to be pulled.
She makes much of the difficulties of succeeding in a man's world .. where women were once regarded as best suited to cover flower shows and cooking programs. Most of the men who seem to have given her a hard time, particularly early on in her career, are probably still drinking in the pub. She has beaten them all.
You'll never think of a live report from Iraq or Indonesia or Bosnia the same way again after you read this book.

How Kate brings the news to you
When I was 19 and a naive and carefree student, I had an older boyfriend of 25 who had just come out of the army. He used to tease me about my privileged lifestyle, and told me that when he was 19, he had been serving in Northern Ireland. A woman once came up to him and demanded to know what he was doing in her town guarding a checkpoint with a gun. 'It made me think,' he said. That story is one thing that helped me understand the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The other is a chapter headed 'Northern Ireland Perhaps' in this book.

Reporter Kate Adie describes the horrors of this war which, according to the BBC, should not be called a war. Her Northern Ireland is populated by grey-faced people who hate each other, '...a mass of badly nourished bags of nerves'. She tells of fights breaking out at funerals, of riots stopping dead because a Glasgow Rangers match was about to start. Of bleach thrown at soldiers, of soldiers sweeping ornaments from a woman's mantelpiece.

She recounts how her career took her from local radio where there was some question as to whether anybody was listening; to Libya, where someone was listening even when she wasn't on air - if you wanted room service, the best way to get it was to ring London and complain about how slow it was.

As with many autobiographies of women doing traditional men's work, the personal details were fascinating - the anecdote about what happened to the grubby tabloid hack going through her tent while she was reporting the first Gulf War was particularly good. This book also shows clearly that our Kate can use her elbows and fists if she has to. However, the book gave the impression of a very private woman - she drops hints about 'above average shopping' and singing and sailing and finding her biological mother, and then clams right up again. I wanted to stop her and ask for more - but that's better, I suppose, than wishing she would shut up.

I found this book badly edited. Possibly, the publishers were too scared of her to curb the sheer joy of a woman used to reporting in three-minute segments suddenly released into 400 pages. It is certainly very chatty and immediate, but a bit of careful red pen work would have tightened it up.

Read this book:
* if you want to work for the BBC
* if you want to be a journalist
* if you are a news junkie
* if you want to know what really happened in Libya, Northern Ireland and Kuwait
* if you admire Kate Adie's work

Pick of the crop
The world is not short of books of memoirs by journalists, but this is one of the best.

About her early career in local radio, Adie is screamingly funny. Not in an arch, here comes the next anecdote, sort of way, but in the dead pan style of Three Men in a Boat - one thing happened, and then another, and the next, apparently not noticing that the reader is rocking with laughter.

When she gets to her later career in TV News, the laughs disappear, because this is serious stuff. She is very illuminating about the differencec between the news as the journalist sees it, and how it ends up on our TV screens. She has been to many of the big news events of the last twenty years , and this book gives a new insight into most of them.

You don't see much of Kate Adie in this - you see what she saw. But what she saw is fascinating - and extremely well written.