Emily Maitlis’s book isn’t an autobiography. By the end we are none the wiser about what she was like as a child, her personal relationships or the pivotal moments that led to her becoming arguably the BBC’s sharpest interviewer and lead presenter of Newsnight. While she does devote a chapter to her experience of being stalked, Airhead is mostly a compendium of her biggest interviews with politicians, celebrities, thinkers and, in one case, an actual living god. In showing us what happens in front of the camera as well as the chaos behind it, her aim is less to tell her life story than reveal the blood, sweat and tears that go into planning and delivering the news. “Unlike print there is no room for annotation or commentary as you go along,” she writes in the introduction. “What appears on the screen is what people see. Everything else is just interpretation.” Martin, Guy. "Prince Andrew's Public Relations War With Virginia Roberts Giuffre: Her Direct Appeal To Britain Harries His Retreat". Forbes. New York . Retrieved 23 January 2020. Emily Maitlis was born in Canada and raised in Sheffield. After graduating from Cambridge she worked as a journalist in Hong Kong, then returned to the UK for a stint at Sky News before joining the BBC in 2001. She started on Newsnight in 2006, became lead anchor in 2018 and the now-infamous Prince Andrew interview the following year. In February Maitlis announced she’s leaving the BBC to co-host a daily podcast for Global. Her eight-part documentary series The People Vs J Edgar Hoover starts on BBC Radio 4 on 13 June.

BBC journalist Emily Maitlis on her history with Hong Kong BBC journalist Emily Maitlis on her history with Hong Kong

Maitlis paints a vivid picture of the intensity and unpredictability that come with her assignments, which punctures the perceived glamour of life reporting the news . . . Her writing is excellent: precise, economical and accessible * Guardian * Maitlis with Edward Llewellyn (second from left), who is now the British ambassador to France, at a party at Government House, in 1997. Photo: courtesy of Emily Maitlis Wilson, Benji (1 May 2023). "Andrew: The Problem Prince, Channel 4, review: who convinced him that Newsnight was a good idea?". Telegraph.co.uk . Retrieved 18 May 2023.

Brexit: Rod Liddle and People's Vote's Tom Baldwin on 'betrayal' – BBC Newsnight". Archived from the original on 21 December 2021 – via YouTube. a b Waterson, Jim (24 August 2022). "Emily Maitlis says 'active Tory party agent' shaping BBC news output". The Guardian. Her ability to hold whoever accountable, from Russel Brand to Bill Clinton and humanising what we see on our TV screens Grierson, Jamie (5 September 2022). "Emily Maitlis stalker jailed for eight years over letters sent from prison". The Guardian. London . Retrieved 6 September 2022.

First look at Cambridge Festival 2023 - University of Cambridge

I remember how moved I was at how young the protes­ters were. It was kids in their school uniforms – trying not to miss out on their own futures. What I heard that night was that Tiananmen made a difference because lives were lost – and it was the most awful thing. The journalist in me went, and I just thought about the kids, and about my kids.”Tobitt, Charlotte (24 September 2019). "BBC upholds complaint against Emily Maitlis over 'sneering' Newsnight discussion with Rod Liddle". Press Gazette. Emily Maitlis is a driven journalist in a male dominated world who beyond her natural good looks has succeeded at the BBC and fronted Newsnight with a degree of grace and an ear for a story. Post Paxman she has come to our attention but she has been around for longer than than we may think.

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But without the data, how did she know she was losing out? She hesitates, working out how she can answer with­out giving too much away. “I knew that, erm, for example, Jeremy Vine and I were literally doing the same job [during election coverage]. I was standing in front of a touch screen, he was in front of a [virtual-reality screen] and we were doing the same job with the same preparation. And there was a massive disparity in salaries.” Winners of RTS Television Journalism Awards 2020 announced". Rts.org.uk . Retrieved 27 February 2020. I wouldn’t call myself a fan of Emily Maitlis, I know who she is and have seen her on TV, but I knew very little else about her. That’s just fine, because the book isn’t about her. It’s about the characters, the movements, the questions, the stress, the humanity, the humour and the guilt and the grief. My dad died last month. One of the things that brought him great joy in hospital was listening to the music he loved. One day I thought he was asleep and he started mouthing this name, Dinu Lipatti. I couldn’t understand at first. Then I typed it into Google and up came this extraordinary Romanian pianist whose life was tragically cut short at the age of 33. So I played my dad his version of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No 1. Even as he was dying, my dad was still introducing me to great music. 5. Film

The last thing I saw in the cinema was Olga, about a young Ukrainian gymnast (Anastasiia Budiashkina) who leaves home for Switzerland to compete for the Swiss team. Her mother’s a television journalist in the middle of the 2014 standoff and – spoiler alert – Olga eventually decides that her homeland is more important than her career. I went to see it after I’d taken part in a flash-mob in Victoria Station with a bunch of friends to raise money for Ukraine – a very out-of-character thing for me to do. It’s a quietly powerful film and beautifully told. 6. TV While one gets the sense that many Westminster journalists have few intellectual or cultural interests beyond the intrigues of parliament, Maitlis can boast the hinterland of a small country. The polyglot had landed in Hong Kong with a job tutoring Spanish, French and Italian, which left her plenty of free time to learn Mandarin, perform with a semi-professional theatre company and go on Buddhist meditation retreats. You know, I’m going a full five stars on this one. I toyed with four, but then asked myself what needed to be different to bump it up to a five, and the only thing I came up with is I’d have liked it to be longer. Five it is then. In the run-up to an interview with the former US president Bill Clinton, she agonises over whether to quiz him about Monica Lewinsky, the White House intern with whom he had an affair, in light of a recently published Vanity Fair piece in which Lewinsky described her treatment at the hands of future employers, feminists and the press. The meeting is due to take place in rural India where Clinton is campaigning about HIV and – of all things – women’s rights, but, on Maitlis’s arrival, a presidential aide informs her that Clinton has had a “funny turn”. Suddenly her main concern is not the Lewinsky question but whether he will drop dead with the cameras rolling. “One thing I learnt in that split second: the belief that you have any control is mythical,” she reflects. “Like those children’s books where you choose your own adventure but ultimately end up at the same place whatever you do.”