Speaker

Kate Adie OBE – Keynote Speaker

Journalist, Author

Kate’s career with the BBC started in 1968 as a studio technician at Radio Durham and Radio Brighton before producing shows for Radio Bristol.

Kate Adie soon switched to television journalism directing outside broadcasts and presenting in and around Plymouth, Southampton and Brighton. Kate later joined BBC TV News in London in 1979, working initially as a court correspondent.

Kate gained national prominence as a journalist with her reports from the Iranian Embassy siege in 1980. At that time it represented a breakthrough for women journalists as until then war zones and other hotspots were the preserve of male journalists. As that afternoon’s duty reporter, Adie was first on the scene as the SAS stormed the embassy. The BBC interrupted coverage of the World Snooker Championships and Adie reported live and unscripted to one of the largest news audiences ever whilst crouched behind a car door.

After the Iranian Embassy Siege, Adie was regularly dispatched to report on national disasters and conflicts throughout the 1980s, including the American bombing of Tripoli in 1986, and the Lockerbie bombing of 1988.

She was promoted to Chief News Correspondent in 1989 and held the role for fourteen years. One of her first assignments as Chief News Correspondent was to report the brutal suppression of the student uprising in Tiananmen Square. Other assignments followed including, The Gulf War, Conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, the 1994 Rwandan Genocide and the British evacuation of foreign nationals from Sierra Leone in 2000.

In 2003, Kate Adie withdrew from front-line reporting. She continues to work as a freelance journalist and presents From our own Correspondent on BBC Radio 4.

As an author, Kate’s books include:

  • The Kindness of Strangers
  • Corsets to Camouflage: Women and War
  • Nobody’s Child
  • Into Risk: Risking Your Life For Work

Her honours include three RTS Awards, The Richard Dimbleby BAFTA Award, and the Broadcasting Press Guild’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to Broadcasting. Kate Adie was awarded an OBE in 1993.