11th July 2025


Books


Author Profile


Lyse Doucet


The BBC’s chief international correspondent’s first book is a captivating people’s history of Afghanistan told through the collected stories of those who have worked at Kabul’s famed ‘Inter-Con’ hotel. Caroline Sanderson reports


I


Imprint Hutchinson Heinemann Publication 18th September 2025 Formats HB (9781529151022, £22); EB (9781529151053, £9.99) Editor Rowan Borchers Agent Claire Conrad, Janklow & Nesbit


08


t feels somehow appropriate to be interviewing Lyse Doucet – the BBC’s chief international correspondent – on a rooftop. Still vivid in the memory are her reports from a Kyiv rooftop, days


after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. Today in the outdoor bar on the 16th floor of a hotel close to BBC Broadcasting House in London, a glass wall is all that separates the sofa where we sit from a multi- storey drop. “I know we both have vertigo but at least we know a rocket isn’t going to come through the glass,” laughs Doucet. “We have to count our blessings!” Doucet has been reporting for the BBC


for nearly 30 years, with posts in Abidjan, Kabul, Islamabad, Tehran, Amman and Jerusalem. There are so many potential topics of conversation with a journalist of her stature and experience, not least the war between Iran and Israel, which is dominating the news agenda on the day we meet. Midway through our interview, she nips back to Broadcasting House to appear live on Radio 4’s PM programme. “I’m trying to go to Tehran,” she tells me when she reappears, and indeed a few


Books Author Profile


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