Kate Adie, National Theatre Platform

Award-winning journalist and author Kate Adie will be talking at the National Theatre about her new book Fighting on the Home Front: The Legacy of Women in World War One.

Adie is a distinguished journalist best known for her time with the BBC, where she frequently covered major conflicts from the heart of war zones around the world. Her continued excellence in covering some of the most important stories of conflict in the 1980s led to her becoming BBC Chief News Correspondent in 1989

After studying at Newcastle University, Adie joined the BBC as a studio technician for local radio in 1968.While serving as a BBC Duty Reporter she was suddenly thrust into the public eye when she was first on the scene to cover the Iranian Embassy Siege in 1980.

The high profile of the siege brought her instant public recognition and led to her covering a string of important events including the Tiananmen Square protests and the Gulf War in the early 1990s. Her contributions to television journalism have been recognised through several accolades, including the Richard Dimbleby Award and an OBE.

As well as her sparkling journalism career, Adie is a best-selling author who has published five books, the latest of which forms the material for her talk at the National.

Her new book explores the changing role of women during and after World War I and examines, through the eyes of the women involved, how that period saw a wave of social change which led to a societal paradigm shift. The war effort showed women to be capable of doing ‘man’s work’ and forced considerable progress in bringing equality between men and women in Britain.

Adie will be interviewed by fellow BBC journalist Rosie Goldsmith, who specialises in arts and current affairs.