Ian Waller enjoys a evening with the BBC’s International Editor on the final evening of the Bath Festival
This year’s Bath Festival has been an wonderfully successful week and a bit, with a fantastic selection of events spreading across talks, events, productions, walks, demonstrations, discussions and so much more. A huge congratulations to the organisers and participants.
One of the clear highlights came on the final evening when the BBC’s International Editor, Jeremy Bowen, took to the stage at the Guildhall to talk with Anu Anand from the BBC World Service to talk about his 35 years with the Beeb, his roles across the Middle East and Europe, and his new book The Making Of The Modern Middle East.
Right from the off Bowen showed himself to be a charming, informed and entertaining speaker, who looked genuinely touched to be greeted enthusiastically by a very full crowd. Anand proved to a perfect interviewer, as both a BBC colleague and obvious admirer of Bowen, providing perfect questions to cover his life, career and hopes for the future.
What the audience received was a vignette of a wonderful career in political reporting that had started on a newspaper in Cardiff and developed to see Bowen reporting from political hotspots around the world, and interviewing world leaders, including the likes of LIbya’s Gaddafi and al-Assad of Syria.
It was fascinating to learn how Bowen was able to talk so professionally to such tyrants by focusing on the core of his role, to discover the news and report the truth, despite being face to face with someone responsible for gas attacks against his own people. This inner focus and professionalism was clearly tested even further when Bowen saw the car carrying his close friend being destroyed by a shell from a tank while he and another too cover nearby.
And alongside this, inevitably, is Bowen the family man, rushing back from assignments to spend time watching films with his young children, before departing again for another conflict.
Core to this professionalism is a real understanding of the people of Middle East, which can only be developed through years of living across the zone and taking part in the day to day challenges of the life, some amusing, some terribly challenging and real.
This was shown best when replying to the questions from the audience, covering subjects such as who will stand up for the Palestinian people and what was the hope for a resolution in the Middle East. While the answers were sadly negative, they were not completely without hope, albeit tainted with a frustration that supposed solutions parachuted in by superpowers with no real proximity to the probems are doomed to failure.
This was a fascinating talk which could only inspire the audience to want to learn more about the troubles of the Middle East. For me, a copy of the new book by Jeremy Bowen seems like a perfect starting point.
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