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Diary

Gwyneth Williams

Wednesday, 9th April 2008

Gwyneth Williams on delivering the World Service

Monday: the nine o’clock meeting. I have measured out my days with BBC meetings, and none rivals this. It is the queen of meetings, a jewel; a crisp attempt to order the world coupled with a dark humour acknowledging the absurdity of the task. This is, after all, the World Service newsroom at work: driven by a deeply felt mission to unpick and explore, decode and analyse, above all tell our 40 million weekly English listeners and the 143 million in other languages what is going on. It is parody and irony, occasional brilliance, wit and wisdom, daily and all in 40 minutes.

I come in late and prop myself on the table at the back of the windowless room. All the nations of the world are here, arranged in dense format in a large square. The newsroom chief opens proceedings. We go round the room: Newsgathering is quietly pleased to have got us into Zimbabwe in spite of the ban; the formidable Olexiy Solohubenko was the first to tell us recently that the new Russian president is known on the street as the nano president; Pakistan is briskly decoded by Nazes Afroz who also tells us of plans to tone down sex education in India since their flip charts are seen as too graphic. Then Monitoring; they have been waiting patiently on a video screen at Caversham from where they listen to the world’s airwaves in all languages. Gaza? A sigh. Now I need coffee from Henri on the first floor.

Tony Banks, when he was sports minister, said that was his dream job — because of the football tickets. The World Book Club makes my position, Director of the English World Service, my dream job. I have so far encountered Umberto Eco, Sara Paretsky and Patricia Cornwell. On Thursday in Studio S6 in the Bush House basement, Khaled Hosseini discussed The Kite Runner. I have just finished reading another of his books, A Thousand Splendid Suns, about Afghanistan. He tells the story of two women which everyone should read if they want to know why our troops seem to be running into trouble there. The trick of the Book Club is to be highbrow (no author is deemed too clever) but to choose the most famous and popular books. Presenter and academic Harriett Gilbert wears her lit crit lightly, infusing the programme with a deep-voiced authority. How do we at the World Service manage to conceal this and other gems so well?

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