Former Journal editor Joe Riddle says they coped ‘extremely well’ under the circumstances. “It’s not every day a story of that magnitude happens


on your patch,” he says. “We didn’t have any extra staff so we had to make it work with the resources we had.” Public Health England was advising people to wipe their phones, handwash spectacles and double-bag dry-clean-only items and arrange for them to be collected by the council. It was only then that Hudson started thinking about how close she had been to the bench. “I’d been using my phone and wearing the same coat for


well over a week by that point,” she says. The feeling at The Guardian, like everywhere else, was


incredulity. Senior international correspondent Luke Harding was at home when he first heard about the poisoning. “I had two reactions,” he says. “The first was, ‘Oh my god,


not again’. The other was that I hadn’t heard of Skripal, so I was frantically googling and calling my contacts trying to find out who this guy was … for most of us who follow Russia, lived in Russia, speak Russian, this guy was unknown. Clearly, it was an enormous story.” Harding has written a book on Litvinenko (A Very Expensive Poison). He was The Guardian’s Moscow bureau chief between 2007 and 2011 and the first Western reporter to be expelled from Russia since the Cold War. (He was told the flat he had shared with his wife and two small children had been bugged by secret agents; this included a camera in the bedroom.) His focus in Salisbury was trying to explain what it all


meant aside from ‘a V-sign to the British state’. He retraced the steps of the poisoners and met Stan Sturgess, the father of Dawn, who had died from a contaminated perfume bottle. “The only thing I haven’t been able to do and no one has been able to do is talk to Skripal,” he says. “I had pretty much every single defector in my notebook apart from him.” For Harding, the stand-out moment was when Bellingcat


revealed the identities of the poisoners. “It’s one of the most spectacular pieces of digital investigative journalism that I can think of over the last decade,” he says. “It showed how the power had shifted away from traditional media to digital


sleuths. So, in terms of media history, it was an interesting moment as well.” In Bristol, ITV News crime correspondent Robert Murphy was watching events unfold. His patch stops just


“It had everything – a spy, all sorts of subterfuge and this extraordinary horror show inside Salisbury with men in ginormous protective chemical suits in the city centre searching in the undergrowth.” Luke Harding, senior international correspondent, The Guardian


“The main thing I learned was the power of the local press and its importance. When your city becomes the story, it really comes into its own. This needs protecting.” Joe Riddle, former editor, Salisbury Journal


“I had no idea there were double agents living in suburbia.” Robert Murphy, ITV news correspondent


outside Salisbury so he was not allowed to cover it. “I kept arguing, saying, ‘I’ve got to do this – this is a big deal’,” he says. In June 2018, when Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley fell ill in Amesbury, just a few miles away, he was straight there. “I saw this guy walking past a church that was sealed off and started chatting to him and it turned out he was Charlie’s best friend [Sam Hobson],” he says. Murphy got the TV exclusive – the interview that said for the first time it was novichok again. Aside from getting information out of the authorities, the


biggest challenge was getting it all ready for the early deadlines. “Logistically, we needed to be in a 4G area because we’re sending big video files and we edit remotely in our cars,” he says. “That was tricky. It was scorching hot and my old banger’s air con wasn’t working, so it was tough going.” James Fielding, global reporter for MailOnline, says the key


was building good relationships with local people, which led to them obtaining CCTV footage of Rowley at a supermarket hours after leaving hospital. “It showed him looking quite healthy,” says Fielding. “These were the first pictures of him since he was brought back from the brink of death.” Looking back, Hudson is proud of what she did at the


Journal, which she attributes largely to her former editor. The only thing she wishes she had done differently was to keep a diary. Although Hudson now works as chief of staff for MP Danny Kruger, she says she’s not ‘done’ with journalism. “I love local journalism,” she says. “If it was more


sustainable to do that job and be paid well, I would still be doing it now.” Harding also regards it as one of the most memorable


stories of his career. “In terms of sheer drama and crazy surreal plotting, it’s hard


to beat, not least because the killers go on Russian TV and say the reason they were in Salisbury was because they were beguiled by its ancient medieval clock and really tall spire.”


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