Emily Maitlis is one of my journalism heroes. How could she not be? She asks the best questions and looks absolutely unruffled as she does it; she gets to travel to amazing locations and she has a penchant for dramatic Newsnight openings that me and my friends always talk about the next day.
So really, I should actually feel ashamed that I haven’t gotten around to reading this sooner. Fortunately, it lived up to every expectation I had- and then some. And I can tell you this for free: she is definitely not an airhead.
The book isn’t really your bog-standard biography. We don’t get much- if anything- about Maitlis’s childhood, time at university or what she wanted to do when she was an infant. What we do get is a collection of vignettes from her time as a reporter and presenter- and trust me, she has plenty of them. Want to know what it’s like to interview Bill Clinton on a farm in the middle of nowhere in India? Maitlis is your woman. What about trying to get a story filed from the depths of the Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong? According to Maitlis, the whole ordeal was stressful beyond belief. Trump, Piers Morgan, the Dalai Lama… the list goes on and on, and we get to see what it was like to film these stories. Once the cameras are on, most interviews go smoothly. The real stress test is getting them on camera in the first place.
These snippets of life are tantalising, but they are just that: snapshots. Maitlis tells these stories well- after all, she is a journalist and has an eye for a good turn of phrase- but there’s not a whole lot of personal detail here. The most personal she gets is discussing her infamous stalker, which had me gawping and furious in equal measure. It’s beyond belief that Maitlis has had to suffer this man for more than twenty years, and sheds a bit of light on her desire to keep her book strictly to stories from her time on air.
Regardless, this was an enjoyable read: witty, self-assured and a real window into what famous people can really be like on the other side of the interview table. Just nobody mention Prince Andrew.
The Roaring Bookworm 