

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

Jun 7, 2014 • 28min
Mort Pour La France
The news -- with added insight, colour and perspective. In this edition, the unsung French civilian heroes who gave up their lives in World War Two. The people in eastern Ukraine who fear the consequences of being caught up in a power struggle between east and west. Why Libyans are wary of the former general who's pledged to rid the country of Islamist militias. There's an historical battle re-enactment in Don Quixote territory in Spain. It's a bit like rugby, a bit like boxing. But why haven't the Russians been invited? And another question: why have the North Koreans opened a chain of restaurants across Asia? Our man tries to find out whether they're just proud of their cuisine, or if they have more sinister motives?

Jun 5, 2014 • 28min
the Education Minister's Watch
Looking behind the headlines: the new patriotic conservative mood in Russia -why it's making the country's beleaguered opposition feel under siege; the Thai military which has seized control of the country promises increased prosperity but warns protestors must keep quiet; the Nigerian authorities try to improve educational facilities in the north as the insurgency by Boko Haram gathers pace; education's under discussion in Mexico too - the president's decreed there must be improvements and the politicians in the United States who're not tightening up the firearms laws, they're GIVING guns away!

May 31, 2014 • 28min
The News in 2039
Global despatches: will the African elephant be extinct in two decades? And which of the stories preoccupying correspondents today will still be seen as important in the future? In this edition, reporters in Kenya, Egypt, Kashmir, Niger and China.

May 29, 2014 • 28min
Thurs May 29 2014: Spinning Myths
Insight, colour, analysis and description. In this edition the stories come from Odessa, Rio de Janeiro, Naples, San Francisco and Saintes-Maries-De-La-Mer.

May 24, 2014 • 28min
Less Freedom, More Stability
Correspondents telling us more: how there's always been someone lying awake in Egypt waiting for the policeman's midnight knock; on mounting anger in Nigeria that the authorities aren't doing enough to counter the threat posed by the militants of Boko Haram; why the fishing communities of the far west of Ireland feel it's not just distance which separates them from the bureaucrats in Brussels and Strasbourg; why, in Brazil as the World Cup approaches, so many feel disillusioned, disrespected and discriminated against and our reporter's in Texas, flipping pancakes with the oldest Congressman in the House of Representatives. At 91, the veteran politician says, he's certainly not too old to continue serving the public. Tony Grant is the programme's producer.

May 22, 2014 • 28min
Walk Warily in Waziristan
Correspondents worldwide: Owen Bennett-Jones attends a Christian church service in Waziristan, Pakistan's Taliban country; Mark Tully considers whether India's secular tradition is under threat now the Hindu nationalist BJP has been voted in to power; Justin Rowlatt watches the Brazilian authorities trying to protect 'the most endangered tribe on the planet'; Thomas Fessy visits a ski shop on the edge of the Sahara Desert in Niger and on 'Good Neighbours Day' in France, Joanna Robertson finds suspicion, hostility, grievance and gossip alive and well in the apartment blocks of Paris. Programme produced by Tony Grant.

May 17, 2014 • 28min
The Tourists Have Gone
Stories from reporters around the world. In this edition: empty hotels and a deserted holiday coastline in Kenya as tourists head home after a Foreign Office terrorism warning; five years after the defeat of the Tamil Tiger rebels, the Sri Lankan government says the country's on the path to ethnic reconciliation - but is it? The coming European elections: will they reflect a growing wave of scepticism about the effectiveness of pan-continental government? A disaster in central America three hundred years ago which brought to an end the last independent kingdom of Scotland. It's a city even Parisians want to move to! how Nantes has been transformed from a grimy old port into a dynamic, artistic powerhouse. The producer - Tony Grant.

May 10, 2014 • 28min
Beauty and horror in South Sudan
Beauty and brutality coexist after a battle in South Sudan: a bullet whistles over the head of our correspondent in eastern Ukraine: watching the maple syrup wars in Canada: out on the town in Colombia, despite the threat from FARC rebels: and a memento in Bosnia of Gavrilo Princip, the assassin who sparked World War I. Presented by Kate Adie.

May 3, 2014 • 28min
Heroes of Baghdad
Global viewpoints. In this edition: Kevin Connolly visits the Baghdad book market and salutes the bravery of those who carry on with their daily lives amid a constant threat of violence; Jeremy Bowen considers the impact on the Middle East of the apparent coming together of the two rival Palestinian factions; Chris Terrill's on a perilous day out with the fishermen of Mauritania in west Africa; Katy Watson is in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo where housing's a serious problem - this is a place with the world's largest slum population. And fish and rice they are used to, but Robin Lustig was in the Burma's Irrawaddy Delta when the locals, for the first time, were invited to sample German sausages and tomato ketchup.

Apr 26, 2014 • 28min
Dilemmas in Damascus
Despatches: Syrians, exhausted by a seemingly unending conflict, face agonising decisions over their future, as Lyse Doucet has been finding out. Misha Glenny's in Rio as violent protests continue less than two months before the Brazilian city hosts the World Cup. The far-right Front Nationale could emerge from next month's European elections as the best-supported party in France -- Emma Jane Kirby encounters Euroscepticism, verging on Europhobia, in the south of the country. Matthew Teller's in Qatar: its economy's growing at nearly twenty per cent a year but its people are finding it hard to cope with a rapid pace of change. And Simon Worrall in the United States hears a love song as he witnesses the annual migration of Hispanic workers to Long Island.


