Bridget Kendall

you are here: Literature > Russian Literature Week > Speakers > Bridget Kendall

Bridget Kendall

Bridget Kendall, the much-admired BBC diplomatic correspondent, never fails to delight and impress audiences by the clarity of her delivery and the perceptiveness of her insights into many societies and cultures from around the world, and especially on Russia. She has spent several extended periods of study in Russia as a British Council Exchange Student at Voronezh State University in 1976-77 and again in 1981-82 at Moscow State University, while reading modern languages at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. She subsequently undertook postgraduate research in Soviet Studies at St Antony’s College Oxford and Harvard (USA). As a fluent Russian speaker who studied in the former USSR and was subsequently posted by the BBC as Moscow Correspondent from 1989 to 1994, she was uniquely placed to witness the momentous changes as the old Soviet Union collapsed and the new Russia emerged amidst the tumultuous social and political upheavals, often not fully understood by foreign commentators with less experience of the two, very different regimes. Bridget has made several documentaries for the BBC on Putin, Yeltsin and Gorbachev, and in 2006 she chaired and presented three one-hour debates on the future of Russia, held with Russian audiences in St Petersburg, Moscow and Siberia, and broadcast worldwide.