

From Our Own Correspondent
BBC Radio 4
Insight, wit and analysis from BBC correspondents, journalists and writers telling stories beyond the news headlines. Presented by Kate Adie.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Mar 3, 2016 • 28min
Trapped in a dead end
Having reached Greece after often perilous journeys, many migrants now find that their hoped-for route north is blocked. Danny Savage meets some of those who have to live in tents in Athens, and on the Greek-Macedonian border with little hope of reaching their final destinations. Many refugees have come from Syria, where neighbourhoods in some cities have been reduced to rubble. Warda al-Jawahiry visits Homs, parts of which have been completely bombed out. Yet there are those who still live there, and bear emotional scars that are as real as the physical destruction. In the Ethiopian capital Addis Abeba, James Jeffrey goes for his early morning run, and finds he's not alone. For early dawn is the time when hyenas finish their night time scavenging in the city. Chris Bockman is in the Spanish enclave of Llivia - a small town completely surrounded by France, but with surprisingly few French speakers. And in Mongolia many young people are giving up the outdoor life of herding sheep on the steppe, and reading novels by candlelight in a yurt at night, for that of a polluted city. Anthony Denselow meets some of them.

Mar 2, 2016 • 28min
Opting to go lower caste
The human stories behind the headlines. In this edition, we hear from India, where protests deprived ten million Delhi residents of their water. Members of the Jat caste want to force the government to reclassify them as lower-caste, so they can get quotas for government jobs and study places. Used Field Marshall for sale - the things you find on eBay in Egypt, when locals take the president at his word.
What happens when a Trump supporter meets a young Muslim refugee for brunch in Alabama? Our Moscow correspondent gets a distinctly chilly welcome in Siberia, and no, it's nothing to do with the weather. And arriving at the airport in Havana, it's an event in itself.

Feb 25, 2016 • 28min
Turkey points the finger
The stories behind the headlines. In this edition, we hear from Turkey, where the authorities are blaming a Syrian Kurd for a bombing that killed 29 people. Turkey is unhappy at US support for Kurdish fighters in Syria, who combat so-called Islamic State there. The complexities of the war in Syria are becoming mingled with those of the Turkish-Kurdish conflict. Sri Lanka suffered almost 30 years of civil war, and many an autocratic regime, yet now the country seems set on a path of reconciliation. But will a former President and his supporters try and scupper it? In Ethiopia, our correspondent faints at the sight of eyelid surgery - performed on sufferers of an infection that risks turning them blind. The Galapagos islands are home to wondrous wildlife, but there are fears that this year's seal pups might not survive the effects of the El Nino phenomenon. And Detroit, once known for its motors and recent bankruptcy, is now reinventing itself as a place that makes bicycles, and attracts crowds of hipsters.

Feb 20, 2016 • 28min
A Man Dies Twice
Meeting the people populating the world of news. In this edition: thousands were massacred in the Bosnian town of Visegrad during the war there in 1992 - today, as Fergal Keane has been finding out, the authorities there want it to become a tourist destination. Visegrad is also on Nick Thorpe's mind only he's talking about the town by the River Danube in Hungary, where the so-called Visegrad 4, a grouping of regional nations, was born. Nick says that in today's Europe, their voice can no longer be ignored. As the US-election spotlight turns to South Carolina and Nevada, Robert Hodierne examines gun control and why the laws governing it won't be changing any time soon. Beth McLeod is in Malawi travelling on a boat built in Scotland when the country was a British protectorate which continues to provide a vital service to local communities. And he may have lived in Paris for two decades, but our man Hugh Schofield explains why it's only now, finally, that he seems to wield a bit of influence!

Feb 18, 2016 • 28min
The Showdown Summit
Colouring in the space between the headlines. In this edition: behind the scenes at the EU as a meeting nears which could determine Britain's future in Europe; why many in Venezuela, mired in economic crisis, have a fond word for their former hardline socialist president Hugo Chavez; mass migrations's one of the biggest stories of our time but in Portugal they're concerned not about new arrivals, but about the number of people leaving; a visit to a jail in the US state of Oregon leaves our correspondent considering what it must be like to be locked up there and what it must be like to work there -- and clog dancing's not a subject tackled frequently on this programme but in Brittany, we find, it’s a good excuse for a bit of a knees-up!

Feb 13, 2016 • 28min
Trapped in a Nightmare
Human stories behind the headlines: Fergal Keane is on the frontline in Ukraine with a husband and wife who are determined to stay on in their home even as war consumes their town. Two boys talk to Quentin Sommerville about life, death and indoctrination in an ISIS-held town in Syria. Grace Livingstone is in the Venezuelan countryside finding that livelihoods are being hit hard by the financial crisis. On Mafia Island, off the coast of Tanzania, Hannah McNeish finds there are two principal topics of conversation - the performance of the new president and a fish called Jesus which, so the story goes, is as big as a car. And it is now official: the very best baguettes in the world are baked by Koreans. Steve Evans, in Seoul, talks of changing tastes in a young market with a global, fashionable appetite for the trappings of European culture and cuisine

Feb 11, 2016 • 28min
Black Lives Matter
The fuller story. In this edition, crime's a major talking point as campaigning intensifies in the US presidential election - activists under the banner 'Black Lives Matter' are drawing attention to the number of young African-American men who've been shot by the police; security forces are standing by as a presidential election looms in Uganda - some aren't happy that President Museveni is trying to extend a rule which has already lasted thirty years; Malaysia may be a rainbow nation made up of ethnic Malays, Chinese, Indian and indigenous people but resentment is festering and a controversy over the prime minister's financial affairs threatens to polarise the country further; thousands of migrants have come ashore on the Italian island of Lampedusa - it's a place which used to rely on its tourism, today the holidaymakers are staying away and … as Valentine's Day approaches, we look inside the world of internet dating - more and more people are using it but some say it's addictive, impersonal and it's made looking for love a depressing business

Feb 6, 2016 • 28min
A Nightmare of Uncertainty
The human stories behind the headlines. In this edition one correspondent flies through the Latin American night visiting three countries in search of the truth about the Zika crisis; another accompanies members of a private militia on patrol in Kenya. They're looking for rhino poachers and if they find them, they'll kill them; the kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been built on oil. But the oil price has nosedived and for the Saudi leaders, it's a time of unprecedented insecurity; the Syria peace talks in Geneva have been put on hold - no point talking just for the sake of talking, says the UN special envoy. And 'imagine a dolphin or a unicorn jumping through your third eye!' That's one of the suggestions at a group therapy session out in the Sahara Desert. But what did the man from the BBC make of it all?

Feb 4, 2016 • 28min
Nervous Sweden
In this edition: how Russian military activity above and below the surface of the Baltic Sea is causing increasing concern in Sweden; Ethiopia's suffering its worst drought in years - but with a buoyant economy why does it need international aid to help it cope? We find out why Finns appear to have fallen out of love with the migrants and why the migrants no longer seem fond of Finland; Belarus might have a reputation as Europe's last dictatorship but a visit to its capital Minsk reveals a positively gleaming city - a cathedral with standing room only and an opera house thronged with the well-heeled and the expensively turned-out. Mali's best-loved export, music, has struggled to make its voice heard during recent years of instability in the country. But a festival's just been staged in the capital, Bamako. Its aim, to show the world there's more to Mali than disorder and violence

Jan 30, 2016 • 28min
The Colonel's Camerman
Correspondents around the world tell their stories. In this edition Gabriel Gatehouse is back in Tripoli as speculation grows about a new military intervention in Libya; Mark Lowen is in Diyarbakir where there's been intense fighting between Turkish security forces and Kurdish militants; Miles Warde is in a dusty town on the edge of Kenya where there are plans for pipelines, resort cities and Chinese-built railways but the locals wonder if any of them will ever materialise; Claudia Hammond visits what they call a 'geriatric rehabilitation centre' in Cuba where, apparently, there's never a dull moment and Victoria Gill is in Antarctica meeting the rather amusing residents of a place called Moot Point


