Hugh Sykes: Reporting from the frontlines
Hugh Sykes has reported for the BBC since the 1970s and has travelled far and wide to witness some of the most significant events of our age. Here, in conversation with Owen Bennett-Jones, he discusses what some of those stories mean to him, and explains the journalistic values he applied to them. From the historic British coal miners\u2019 strike of 1984-5 to the insurgency in Iraq, Sykes has faced down danger, surviving respectively an attack by angry strikers who threatened to throw him into a canal, and a roadside bomb. Yet he has always insisted on keeping his own feelings out of the story, in order to let his subjects communicate directly to listeners. Meanwhile, we hear too about his love of Iran, formed by years spent there as a child, about his preference for the medium of radio over television \u2013 and about how high spirits in the studio once nearly landed him in trouble with BBC bosses.
Producer: Michael Gallagher \nEditor: Bridget Harney
(Image: Hugh Sykes files a report on location \u2013 watched by a donkey. Credit: Hugh Sykes\u2019 collection)