Christina Lamb
Encyclopedia
Christina Lamb is a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 journalist who is currently Foreign Correspondent for The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times (UK)
The Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet newspaper, distributed in the United Kingdom. The Sunday Times is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International, which is in turn owned by News Corporation. Times Newspapers also owns The Times, but the two papers were founded...

. She was educated at University College, Oxford
University College, Oxford
.University College , is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2009 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £110m...

 (BA
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...

 in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics
Philosophy, Politics, and Economics
Philosophy, politics, and economics is a popular interdisciplinary undergraduate/graduate degree which combines study from the three disciplines...

) and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

. She is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society
Royal Geographical Society
The Royal Geographical Society is a British learned society founded in 1830 for the advancement of geographical sciences...

. She has won Foreign Correspondent of the year four times.

Journalistic career

Lamb says she always wanted be a writer and be able to write about other people. The sense of adventure was the real draw to the career. In her book Small Wars Permitting: Dispatches from Foreign Lands she says she used to be mischievous at school and wasn't particularly studious in lessons. She gained entry into Oxford but soon changed from a chemistry degree to enroll in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics
Philosophy, Politics, and Economics
Philosophy, politics, and economics is a popular interdisciplinary undergraduate/graduate degree which combines study from the three disciplines...

. Her journalistic career began at the Financial Times
Financial Times
The Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....

 as a summer intern, it was here she described the foreign correspondents as 'Man-like-Gods' in reference to their gender and the exoticness of their lives and suitases, it was something she wanted to be a part of.

Her first major interview was with Benazir Bhutto
Benazir Bhutto
Benazir Bhutto was a democratic socialist who served as the 11th Prime Minister of Pakistan in two non-consecutive terms from 1988 until 1990 and 1993 until 1996....

 in London in 1987 where subsequently she was then invited to her wedding in Pakistan later that year. From here, she began her life as a foreign correspondent in Pakistan, journeying through Kashmir and along the frontiers of neighbouring Afghanistan, a place where the Mujahideen were fighting the Soviets occupiers. In her time she interviewed and became good friends with many in the local community including future Afghan President Hamid Karzai
Hamid Karzai
Hamid Karzai, GCMG is the 12th and current President of Afghanistan, taking office on 7 December 2004. He became a dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001...

. She was deported back to London, by a less than friendly Inter-Services Intelligence
Inter-Services Intelligence
The Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence , is Pakistan's premier intelligence agency, responsible for providing critical national security intelligence assessment to the Government of Pakistan...

, who did not like the content of her journalism and views from within the country . Lamb was soon posted to Brazil and fell in love with the country and its whole culture and romanticism. She interviewed the then President Fernando Affonso Collor de Mello who was embroiled in corruption and influence peddling
Influence peddling
Influence peddling is the illegal practice of using one's influence in government or connections with persons in authority to obtain favors or preferential treatment for another, usually in return for payment. Also called traffic of influence or trading in influence ...

 scheme. She moved briefly to Harvard University to become a Nieman Fellow where she met her future husband, Paulo Anunciacao.

She then moved to post-apartheid South Africa but did not have the same love for it as she did in Brazil. Throughout the next ten years she floated between London, Portugal, Zimbabwe, Brazil, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

She married Paulo in Zanzibar in early 1999 and gave birth to Lourenço that summer, the next day she interviewed the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet
Augusto Pinochet
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte, more commonly known as Augusto Pinochet , was a Chilean army general and dictator who assumed power in a coup d'état on 11 September 1973...

, who was being held under house arrest at Wentworth. Lamb describes her most harrowing reporting on the plight of Zimbabwe. Since 1994, she has the devastation and destruction by Robert Mugabe
Robert Mugabe
Robert Gabriel Mugabe is the President of Zimbabwe. As one of the leaders of the liberation movement against white-minority rule, he was elected into power in 1980...

 and how it seems to be getting worse every time she returns.

In 2006, Lamb was with reporting with the British Parachute Regiment on a 'hearts and minds' mission in Southern Afghanistan. After a meeting with town elders, they were directed to a safe route out of the dwelling. Soon after they had left the British were attacked by Taliban fighters. Lamb describes how for two and half hours, with no air support, they ran through irrigation trenches under RPG, Kalashnikov and mortar fire from all directions. Soldiers were discussing among each other about saving bullets for themselves if it became inevitable, Lamb was asked if she had ever used a pistol. Fortunately, they were able to escape after such a close encounter.

In October 2007, Christina was one of two Western journalists to be aboard Benazir Bhutto's campaign bus in Karachi. Dozens of Bhutto's supporters were killed by two suicide bombers, an early attempt to her own eventual death two months later.

Awards

  • 1988 British Press Awards
    British Press Awards
    The British Press Awards is an annual ceremony that celebrates the best of British journalism. Established in the 1970s, honours are voted on by a panel of journalists and newspaper executives...

     Young Journalist of the Year
  • 1991 British Press Awards
    British Press Awards
    The British Press Awards is an annual ceremony that celebrates the best of British journalism. Established in the 1970s, honours are voted on by a panel of journalists and newspaper executives...

     Reporter of the Year
  • 1992 Amnesty International Award for Periodicals Writing
  • 2002 British Press Awards
    British Press Awards
    The British Press Awards is an annual ceremony that celebrates the best of British journalism. Established in the 1970s, honours are voted on by a panel of journalists and newspaper executives...

     Foreign Correspondent of the Year
  • 2002 Foreign Press Association award for reporting on the War on Terror
    War on Terror
    The War on Terror is a term commonly applied to an international military campaign led by the United States and the United Kingdom with the support of other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as well as non-NATO countries...

  • 2002 BBC What the Papers Say
    What the Papers Say
    What The Papers Say is a BBC radio programme that originally ran for many years on British television.Its first incarnation was the second longest-running programme on British television after Panorama...

    Foreign Correspondent of the Year
  • 2003 Runner-up Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers award
  • 2006 Runner-up Martha Gellhorn
    Martha Gellhorn
    Martha Gellhorn was an American novelist, travel writer and journalist, considered by The London Daily Telegraph amongst others to be one of the greatest war correspondents of the 20th century. She reported on virtually every major world conflict that took place during her 60-year career...

     Prize for Journalism
  • 2007 BBC What the Papers Say
    What the Papers Say
    What The Papers Say is a BBC radio programme that originally ran for many years on British television.Its first incarnation was the second longest-running programme on British television after Panorama...

    Foreign Correspondent of the Year
  • 2007 British Press Awards
    British Press Awards
    The British Press Awards is an annual ceremony that celebrates the best of British journalism. Established in the 1970s, honours are voted on by a panel of journalists and newspaper executives...

     Foreign Correspondent of the Year

Sources

By Christina Lamb


About Christina Lamb
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