Bridget Kendall

Presenter, 'The Forum' - BBC World Service

Bridget Kendall has been BBC diplomatic correspondent since 1998.  She is London-based and covers top foreign stories for radio, television and online news.
 
She reports on a wide range of international diplomatic and security issues, but has a particular interest and expertise in Russia and East/West relations, dating from when she was BBC Moscow correspondent at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
 
In the last eight years she has followed daily diplomatic and military developments from London in the run up to and during the recent war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, and the war in Kosovo.  She also reported from the ground during the military crises in Macedonia and Chechnya.
 
She has travelled frequently with the British Foreign Secretary, including on official trips to Iraq and Afghanistan, Pakistan, Darfur and Iran.
 
Bridget Kendall is the host of The Forum, the BBC World Service discussion programme about ideas in which acclaimed thinkers – from across national, social and cultural divides – explore and challenge thoughts, theories, opinions and beliefs from around the world through inspiring and provocative conversation.
 
Prior to this she was one of the main presenters for the BBC's flagship interactive programme Have Your Say, broadcast round the world simultaneously on radio, television and the internet.
 
Her special guests included UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, President Yushchenko of Ukraine, President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia, King Abdullah of Jordan, President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Russian President, Vladimir Putin.
 
She has made several documentaries for BBC television including profiles of Vladimir Putin, Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as a documentary on the rise of Russian nationalism and a profile of Hillary Clinton.
 
During 2006, she travelled to Russia to chair and present three hour-long debates on Russia's future, conducted with Russian audiences in St Petersburg, Moscow and Siberia and broadcast worldwide.  She travelled to Chernobyl in Ukraine for a BBC Radio 4 programme on the on the 20th anniversary of the world's worst nuclear disaster.  And also in 2006 she conducted a two-and-a-quarter hour interactive interview with President Putin, live from inside the Kremlin, which was broadcast worldwide – her second interview with the Russian leader.
 
In 2004 she made a five-part radio series for the BBC about daily life today in Russian rural regions, the Far North and Siberia.