ANITA ANAND: Empire, kick-ass women & learning from history

By Jon Snow

Snowcast

04/07/23·37m 54s

The voice of broadcaster and writer Anita Anand will be familiar to many. Her career began while she was still at university, in the newsroom of satellite channel Zee. Anita was then snapped up by Radio 5 Live and she has since presented many news and current affairs programmes on the BBC.

In 2012, Anita became the host of Any Answers on Radio 4, where she also hosts The Reith Lectures. A few years later, she published her first book: a compelling biography of Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, daughter of the last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire and a goddaughter of Queen Victoria.

This book launched a divergent career in history. After the sucess of her debut, Anita wrote Koh-i-Noor: The History of the World's Most Infamous Diamond with William Dalrymple, and then investigated the massacre at the Jalllianwala Bagh in Amritsar and the revenge of Udham Singh in The Patient Assassin.

Anita now reaches a huge audience with the Empire podcast, which she co-hosts with William, and which looks at the rise and fall of empires and how they shape the world today. And, though her new book about the kick-ass undercover reporter Olive Malvery may be a little late, it sounds well worth the wait.