Sedbergh WI Bookclub

I had a busy day today. The Bookclub was at my house and I had to tidy up. As we have quite a few members in the Bookclub, not everyone can accommodate the group, so whenever I host it, I check if anyone wants to make the cake. This time Friend J said she would do the cake, and a delicious job she did too, with 3 different kinds of cake!. But back to the book. We had been reading The Kindness of Strangers by Kate Adie. A BBC reporter who had had a number of different roles across the organisation, but in the UK she is better known for her work as a Foreign Correspondent. She had had a fascination life, and had a lot of stories to tell. Her early days at the BBC were fascinating. At that time the journalists were nearly all men so she had a lot of luck getting to be a foreign correspondent. Having said that, the job wasn’t at all easy or glamorous. It’s a long book, and most of the group skim read it. Our view was that the Editors had let her down. By audio book was 16 hours long and a lot of the same things happened at the different news events - and she was at most of the important world events of the 80’s and 90’s. She is a very brave lady to do what she did, but if you want to read it, get an abridged version. We did have a very good discussion about the book, and journalism and I am finishing this blip with a quote from Kate. ‘Television news is a promiscuous medium alighting very briefly on a few facts’.