Over many years, I have conducted a huge number of interviews - as a radio and TV journalist, as a programme maker and as oral history - and under the 'Voices' category I am posting some of these on this website. There are three main categories:
- Partition Voices: based on the interviews I did in the 1990s for a radio series, India: a people partitioned, looking at the lived experience of Partition, but also including later interviews about Kashmir in 1947 conducted for my book A Mission in Kashmir and subsequent research. The original recordings, and some partial transcripts, have been deposited at the archive of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. I'm posting one of the interviews here here as an appetiser:
- Kashmir Voices: interviews related to the Kashmir conflict, with politicians, activists, separatists and soldiers. I've made many visits to the Kashmir Valley over the decades - and managed once to get to Pakistan or Azad Kashmir - and a few of the interviews I conducted are assembled here, among them:
- Communist Voices: largely interviews I conducted in 1992 for a radio series What's Left of Communism?, which as well as a broad look at the history of the worldwide communist movement focussed on parties in India, Cuba. Italy and South Africa. Interviews with British Communists are, by-and-large, included in the Political Voices section below. Here's one of the Communist Voices interviews:
- Political Voices: the interviews I have conducted down the years - largely as oral history or from radio programmes with a historical aspect - with British political radicals (and one or two non-Brits), including communists, anarchists, socialists and a few from the far right. Most of the original recording have been deposited with the National Sound Archive at the British Library. Here's a taster:
- South Asia: memorable interviews I conducted and audio gathered largely when a Delhi-based BBC correspondent
- Burma: interviews I conducted in Yangon/Rangoon of those with memories of Burma in the 1940s