I'm a broadcaster and writer. I was born in the UK, raised in Kenya and Switzerland, and studied History at Oxford, with a Masters in African Politics and Geography from London.
I
worked for the BBC from 1991-2006. During this time I was a producer at
the BBC World Service, and freelance reporter ('stringer') in
Mozambique (1993-4) and Angola (1997). Later I became a BBC
Correspondent in Nigeria (1998-2001) and Southern Africa (2001-2006).
During this time I travelled and reported from countries across Africa. I
speak fluent French and Portuguese.
In
2006 I joined the new Al Jazeera English television station, where I'm
now a Senior Correspondent. I was based in Athens from 2006-2011, and
have been living back in London for the last four years. With Al
Jazeera I've reported from across the world; including Japan, India,
Burma, Africa, the Middle East and the United States, although the main
focus of my work has been in Europe, recently concentrating on the
migration and Eurozone crises.
My talk
My
talk will be will be about a forgotten aspect of the Second World War;
how Britain took 100,000 African soldiers to the jungles of Burma to
fight against the Japanese. These were the so-called ‘Burma Boys’. In
particular, I will tell the story of Isaac Fadoyebo, who signed up as a
16 year old in rural Nigeria in 1942. He was shipped to India the
following year. In March 1944, in Burma, Isaac was horribly injured in a
jungle ambush deep behind Japanese lines. His British officers were
killed and so were many African colleagues. Too sick to even crawl,
Isaac was saved by a family of courageous Burmese rice farmers who hid
and fed him for 9 months, before his eventual rescue by the British.
Isaac returned to Nigeria in 1945, where he lived a life of respectable
obscurity. Many decades later, in his final years, Isaac became my
friend in Lagos; at his urging I went to Burma, carrying a letter of
thanks and photographs for the family who'd saved him and of whom he'd
been thinking these past seven decades.
Through
Isaac’s tale, I will look at the bigger picture. Were these African
soldiers volunteers, or were they forced to fight for King and Empire?
How were they treated by the British, and how did they fare afterwards?
What impact did their experiences have on them and on Independence
Struggles after the War? I hope to make your audience think about the
Second World War in new and less Eurocentric ways; from the perspective
of a Nigerian youth or a Burmese rice farmer it was more a struggle of
dying Empires than a heroic stand against fascism.
My book 'Another Man's War: The Story of A Burma Boy in Britain's Forgotten African Army' tells this story.
Some useful links
For those who are interested in background reading, here are some reviews/articles about the book.
'Another
Man's War' was published in late 2014, and was chosen by NPR in the US
as 'One of The Best Books of 2014' and by the Daily Telegraph in the UK
as 'One of the Best History Books of 2014' . It's now out in paperback
and on kindle- Amazon link with reader's reviews is here
And
for those with a bit more time on their hands- I made an award winning
documentary about Isaac Fadoyebo and the Burma Boys in 2011 for Al
Jazeera English (a couple of years before I wrote the book). It's free
online, 45 minutes long, and all are welcome to watch
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/aljazeeracorrespondent/2011/08/2011828135228487172.html
A couple of other links if people are keen-
my own website is
and if you want to hear an interview with me by Justin Webb on the BBC R4 Today Programme on this story it's here
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