Kate Adie

Kate Adie is one of Britain’s best-known and most-loved journalists, known principally for her time covering the biggest international stories of the 1980s and 1990s for the BBC, and for her best-selling and critically acclaimed books. She is now heard presenting BBC Radio 4’s long-running foreign affairs programme From Our Own Correspondent.

Adie joined the BBC as a station assistant at Radio Durham, and gained her first television experience as a regional reporter in Southampton and Plymouth. From 1979, she moved to national news, and soon came to international prominence when she was the first journalist on the scene of the Iranian Embassy siege. Over the following years, she reported on many major events and conflicts throughout the world, and became the BBC’s Chief News Correspondent in 1989. Among the age-defining stories she reported on were the Tiananman Square protests, the Gulf War, the Rwandan Genocide, and the war in the former Yugoslavia.

Since leaving frontline news, Adie has worked as a presenter, writer and speaker. She has hosted two series of the BBC One series Found, exploring the lives of those affected by adoption, and is now the regular presenter of From Our Own Correspondent on Radio 4. Her bestselling books include her autobiography The Kindness of Strangers, and her works focusing on forgotten and untold stories, including Corsets to Camouflage: Women and War, and Nobody’s Child.

Adie is known for her extensive charity work, having served as an ambassador for military charity SSAFA, education charity SkillForce, the agricultural and environmental NGO Farm Africa, and the medical charity Overseas Plastic Surgery Appeal. She is Chancellor of Bournemouth University, and holds Honorary Degrees, Doctorates and Fellowships from several universities. She is the winner of BAFTA’s Richard Dimbleby Award, has received the BAFTA Fellowship, and was appointed a CBE in 2018.