From Our Own Correspondent

For almost 50 years, From Our Own Correspondent has been one of BBC Radio 4's flagship programmes. Every week correspondents from around the world report on the stories behind the headlines. There are few countries and subjects which have not featured on the programme. It covers places as diverse as the Faroes, Moldova, the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan and Sao Tome and Principe, one of Africa's smallest countries. Much of the correspondents' work is little more than writing to television pictures or covering the day's events in one report of perhaps only a minute's duration. From Our Own Correspondent gives some of Britain's most celebrated reporters the opportunity to describe much more: context, relevant history, characters encountered en route, a description of a foreign country or capital. The correspondents relay the unexpected: a 40-course Chinese banquet, swimming with sharks, a zero gravity on a flight with Russian cosmonauts, mud wrestling in Turkey or ballroom dancing in Cameroon. They offer a unique perspective - sometimes live to the sound of gunfire - to the background important world events as they happen. The book is introduced by Kate Adie.