Veteran journalist Hella Pick reflects on her remarkable life, from arriving in the UK on a Kindertransport in 1938 to becoming a trailblazer for women in journalism. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Being a refugee leaves you with a certain degree of insecurity which never really quite leaves a refugee.
I think whoever you talk to, they will make the same point.
And in my case, to try and fight this kind of insecurity, it meant that, you know, I've always applied myself with great energy and I hope a fairly workable brain to the situations that I found myself in, you know, trying to prove to others but above all to myself that I'm capable of doing quite a lot of things.
And I think in that kind of way, my reporting and the way my career has developed, that has something to do with that basic sort of sense of trying to overcome this sense of insecurity.
Between 1938 and 1940, in an operation which became known as the Kindertransport, the United Kingdom offered sanctuary to perhaps 10,000 Jewish children from Nazi Germany and Nazi occupied Europe.
One of those children, a nine year old from Vienna called Helle Pick, would become one of her adopted country's most distinguished reporters.
The journalistic career described by Hela Pick in her memoir Invisible Walls is the kind of thing that makes people want to be journalists.
She began reporting from West Africa in the 1950s and subsequently worked mostly for the Guardian, covering the United States, the United nations and Eastern Europe, among other datelines, meeting and in some cases befriending many crucial historical figures.
I'm Andrew Muller and I spoke to Hela Pick on the Big Interview.
Well, first of all, Hellepic, welcome to the Big Interview.
It's quite often the case with our guests that it's difficult to know where to start, but with your career in particular.
So I did want to start at the start and why, of all the things you could have decided to be, you decided to be a journalist.
Or was it one of those things which I have found is often the case?
It sort of gets decided for people.
People end up often the best journalists become journalists more or less by accident.
Well, it certainly happened with me it was completely by acc.
I did not have the great ambition to become a media expert while I was at university.
And when I first graduated I did some research work for one of my professors.
And then I went to work for a company or rather an institution called the Colonial Development Corporation.
And I got involved in market research for exports and development in West Africa.