Reviewed by Stine Eckert
Tiananmen Square in 1989, the violent toppling of Liberia’s president in 1990, the Arab Spring in 2010, and the massacre in Bucha in 2022 – these are just a few of the numerous stops in Colleen Murrell’s intense and impressive journey across recent world history through the eyes of ten BBC women foreign correspondents: Kate Adie, Diana Goodman, Liz Blunt, Lyse Doucet, Orla Guerin, Carrie Gracie, Sara Beck, Caroline Wyatt, Sarah Rainsford, and Shaimaa Khalil. Murrell dedicates a chapter to each of them, bringing these prominent women journalists closer to the reader through long and detailed interviews, systematically inquiring about how their gender played a role in their work. A mixture of journalistic and academic writing style, referring to the correspondents by first name, and a color photograph of each of them turns each chapter into a lively portrait.
Murrell conducted qualitative, open-ended interviews – in person with all but two of them – between August 2021 and July 2022, and kept in touch with them via email for more recent turn of events. She traces their careers from upbringing and childhood interests to school and college education and through many journalistic steppingstones to them becoming BBC foreign correspondents, often being firsts in their roles. Their ability to quickly learn and speak languages, their extraordinary drive, deep specialist knowledges of regional politics and cultures, and cultivation of sources and professional networks in different parts of the world, as well as their flexibility to change posts at the drop of a hat impresses across the book’s 237 pages.
The author selected her interviewees to chronicle many firsts within the BBC and explore the obstacles they had to overcome to reach these milestones, such as Kate Adie, »the first woman who rose to prominence as a staff reporter on a normal salary« (p. 11) in the 1980s, Diana Goodman in Bonn and Elizabeth Blunt in Abidjan becoming the first BCC women foreign correspondents in 1986 or Caroline Wyatt becoming the BBC’s first woman defense correspondent in 2007. The chapters are arranged chronologically and demonstrate how subsequent women journalists are benefitting from these pioneers to this day. Encouragingly, her interviewees repeatedly speak about how knowing of or working with these women and other women colleagues helped them to imagine and pursue their own careers. Similarly, they all lauded the stringers, fixers, and local journalists with whom they worked abroad, and are often not acknowledged enough.
Murrell, a Professor of Journalism at Dublin City University who herself worked in foreign newsgathering for the BBC before, also brings readers to scenes of war, conflict, and historic events through paraphrased and direct quotes of her interviewees, making the book at times a page-turner. For instance, Kate Adie recounts how she raced one of the cassettes with recording from the shootings at Tiananmen Square under fire back to the hotel, facing off with police officers, but making it in time to report live via phone:
»And as I was starting, the shooting really started and there were people running in all directions. It was terrifying. And someone crashed straight into me. I fell over, went my length, tore all the skin off my forearm on the gravel. And he fell on top of me. And he was dead because a bullet had hit him. And as I lay on the ground, I saw something very odd. I saw little red ticks. And they were bullets hitting the ground. And I got up and I just ran. …And one of them came towards me and I just attacked him….by that time I was out of my mind with rage and determination… I went all over, one got a kick, another one I hit with furniture. I was lucky they never pulled their guns. And I went for the stairs, and I remember going up those stairs to this day.« (p. 31).
Murrell supplements their memories with citations from their own books and previous interviews, archival research for examples of their reporting, and current links for further reading and watching. The impressive geographic breadth of the postings ranges from Europe and the Middle East to Africa, Asia, and Australia and Oceania. Dozens of countries make an appearance in the book. Eastern Europe especially is featured in several portraits, including the ongoing war in Ukraine. For instance, Senior International Correspondent Orla Guerin is shown in a helmet and heavy protective gear (p. 126); she tells three harrowing stories of men, women, and children fleeing from the fighting in Bucha, Irpin, and Lysychansk in 2022. And Eastern Europe Correspondent Sarah Rainsford recounts how Russia refused to let her back into the country in August 2021, concluding »Russia today is such a different place and such a dangerous place […] and Russia for now has been lost« (p. 205). In contrast – and perhaps due to the selection of the interviewees, the BBC postings for women correspondents, and/or the BBC’s fewer posts in Latin America in general tied to British colonial history – North, Central, and South America rarely make an appearance (exceptions are for instance mentions of Venezuela, Cuba, and Los Angeles).
The main goal of the book for Murrell, however, is to chart the development of the BBC’s employment of women foreign correspondent and how it measures up today, concluding that many improvements have been made. Her 17-page introduction sets the context: Initially ahead of its time for employing women as journalists in the 1920s, the BBC introduced a »marriage bar« in 1933 to ban married women (not men), which was dropped during the Second World War and paved the way for the first accredited woman war correspondent for the BBC, Audrey Russell. Murrell then takes readers though the 1970s equal pay and anti-sex discrimination acts in the UK to highlight gendered pay gaps and discriminations at the BBC in the 1980s and beyond. The revelation in 2017 that the BBC severely underpaid women compared to their men peers shook the BBC. Murrell asks each of her participants how they experienced this moment and how it impacted their sense-making of their work and value. For Carrie Gracie, fluent in Mandarin and serving as the BBC’s China correspondent and editor, the report about her pay versus that of her men colleagues »dropped out of the blue and ›was just so disappointing‹« (p. 144). Murrell recounts how together with at least 43 other women journalists Gracie battled the BBC for a year to eventually receive several years of back pay, which she donated to the Fawcett Society for its Equal Pay Advice Service.
In these and other ways, the book offers detailed insights into the hierarchies and workings of the huge operation that make up the BBC and its many programs. The producing side and management are also explored in depth through the example of Sara Beck, who served as Bureau Chief in Moscow, Jerusalem, and Singapore and was head of the Russian Service and BBC Monitoring. A glossary helps readers to better understand BBC-specific terminology and practices.
Scholars may be a bit disappointed that Murrell did not use her impressive and rich interview collection for a deeper analysis of gendered issues within the BBC in a conclusion chapter to further address overlaps and differences between the interviewees’ responses. This could have also included thoughts on the connections between socio-economic backgrounds of the participants and their careers to explore intersectional aspects regarding which women have been able to make it to the top of the BBC reporting posts. Perhaps such an analysis is still forthcoming in another way. Meanwhile, the book is a stirring read and a fascinating trip around the world through the (career) stories of BBC women correspondents, several of which continue their reporting today, such as Tokyo Correspondent Shaimaa Khalil who navigates being Arab and a woman in journalism or Chief International Correspondent Lyse Doucet who frequently reports on Gaza, Israel, and Iran. Moreover, the book can also serve as a teaching tool as each chapter includes practical tips and messages to encourage young women to consider foreign reporting as a riveting and rewarding career choice.
Murrell’s book leaves readers with the greatest respect for these journalists’ achievements and with a fresh appreciation for their important work to illuminate the truth in what are often messy constellations of history, place, and time. Staying sanguine herself, Murrell cautiously projects to see a woman at the very top of the BBC for the first time, as director-general, before »too long« (p. 15). The vacancy of the post as of this writing, in January 2026, gives hope for another BBC first for women.
A big thank you goes to Sigrun Rottmann for providing feedback for a draft of the review.
About the reviewer
Stine Eckert is Associate Professor of Journalism in the Department of Communication at Wayne State University in Detroit and one of the editors of Journalistik/Journalism Research.
About this book
Colleen Murrell (2025): BBC Women reporting the world. Conversations with foreign correspondents. Palgrave Macmillan, 237 pages, ca. 27 euros