Rosie Whitehouse describes the highs and lows of life as a war reporter’s wife
Rosie Whitehouse
Rosie Whitehouse is the author of Are We There Yet? Travels with my frontline family. She is a former editor at BBC World Service and a successful travel writer married to Tim Judah, one of the country’s leading foreign correspondents. They have five children and live in West London. Rosie is also the founder and editor-in-chief of Reportage Press, a new publishing house specialising in books on foreign affairs.
What inspired you to become a journalist?
My father had a friend who worked for Canadian Press who lived in the same street as us. We often went on holiday with his family and I thought it was fascinating that in the middle of the holiday he would dash off to interview Franco or Tito.
Then one day while he was covering the war in Vietnam his helicopter was shot down and he was reported missing. It was a hellish few days for his wife. I was riveted. Then all of a sudden she got a call to tell her he was alive. He had walked back across enemy territory. A few days later he stepped out of a taxi dressed in US military fatigues with a typewriter under his arm. I was eight years old. I decided that being an astronaut was boring in comparison, and I was hooked.
Did you receive any formal training?
Yes I did. I was a BBC News Trainee. It wasn’t exactly that I thought I needed training at the time that made me apply for the scheme, rather than it was a guaranteed step in the door. It was a hard fight to get on the course and I applied for three years running before being accepted. One of the key things about being a journalist is to never take No for an answer. With hindsight I do think that training helps especially when it comes down to the technical side of the job.
How did you find your first job in the media?
While I was a News Trainee I worked in many different departments in the BBC. I was surprised by how different it could be working in Northern Ireland as a reporter and on the desk at Newsnight. They were all great jobs and it was a terrific experience.
I found my natural home in the Current Affairs department at BBC World Service where I was a producer and presenter. My father was a doctor and was brought up with the idea that you should do something worthy. Nothing beats broadcasting to the world and back to the people in many cases who are making the news. It is so important it dragged me away from the glitzy side of the BBC.
How did you make the transition from being a journalist to being editor in chief of Reportage Press?
Now that is a long story. In fact you can read all about it in my book Are We There Yet? Travels with my frontline family.
Here’s a quick synopsis. One day I woke up and felt sick. Then I discovered I was pregnant. Then I had a beautiful baby called Ben and BBC World Service couldn’t compete. I wanted another baby. So I quit my job.
At the time I was the breadwinner in our house so my husband had to have a quick rethink. It was November 1989. Within months he had become the correspondent for The Times and The Economist in post-revolutionary Romania and I was pregnant again.
Although I had studied Russian government for my Masters and travelled a lot in the Eastern Bloc, nothing had prepared me for Bucharest. It was sinister, compelling and there was absolutely nothing to eat.
After 18 months we moved on to Belgrade as war had just broken out. We spent five years there criss-crossing frontlines in the back of the family saloon car as my husband covered a conflict that got worse day by day. It was fascinating.
Eventually, we had five children and moved back to London. I realised that we would never be able to afford to go on holiday unless I went back to work and became a travel writer, which is what I did. Writing travel guides was great training for writing a book as I learnt to carry 150,000 words around in my head and know where everything was.
What kind of books does Reportage Press publish?
We use ‘reportage’ in the broadest sense of the word to mean eyewitness accounts. Genocide: My Stolen Rwanda by Reverien Rurangwa is a good example of the sort of thing we publish. There is also a very strong journalistic element to what we do.
Many of our books are written by journalists and are deeply moving personal accounts like Red Zone: Five Bloody Years in Baghdad by Oliver Poole, or they are just cracking good stories that no journalist can resist like Bikila: Ethiopia’s Barefoot Olympian by Tim Judah.
The main thing we look for in a submission is that it has to be a cracking story.
What inspired you to write Are We There Yet?
The book just erupted out of me.
My husband was in Baghdad during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. I would watch the bombers take off from the UK on TV in the middle of the morning and I knew I had seven hours before all hell would be raining down on the city.
We live in typical London house with lots of different little floors. One evening I was putting the washing away and I walked past the office door on first floor. I could hear that the TV was on so I popped my head round the door and saw my nine-year-old daughter Rachel glued to a grainy picture of Baghdad. The news cameras were waiting for the bombardment to start.
I thought, “Good grief, I’d better sit down.”
We sat there for about ten minutes and nothing happened. She was holding my hand tight. It was so ridiculous that I burst out laughing and said, “I have to go and make dinner, I just can’t sit here like this.”
After the kids ate their dinner, Tim, my husband, called up and while we were chatting about the kids’ school reports a cruise missile crashed into the building next door.
After I had put the little ones to bed I came down to watch News at Ten with my eldest kids. The news reader said the hotel where Tim was staying had taken a direct hit.
I had to sit down while Ben phoned to see if he was alright. He was fine - busy eating room service! After an evening like that I thought, “No one has a clue what our lives are like and what we do to back him up and get the story in the papers.”
That was it - when Tim came home I just sat down at the kitchen table and started writing.
What are the biggest challenges of balancing writing, editing and motherhood?
Not going mad. Thank goodness we have a tight, close family and the kids help out on all fronts. They cook, clean, read manuscripts, edit and help sell the books.
What are the biggest perks?
Doing what you want to do when you want to do it. But falling in love and having a family has been the biggest highlight. It was the best thing that ever happened to me.
What advice would you offer an aspiring writer?
Go out and experience life, and never take No for an answer.
Don’t think you have to sit down and write the book from the beginning. I wrote the last chapter first and then bits all over the place. One day I was picking up the dirty clothes and I thought: I want to write about our trip to Ireland and sat down and dashed it off. Then phoned my mum and read it to her. Other chapters came together very slowly.
What are you working on now?
I’m editing one of our big titles for the autumn. It’s by the BBC’s Nick Thorpe and is called ‘89: The Unfinished Revolution. He is a great writer.
For further details, visit www.reportagepress.com
Books published by Reportage Press are available from Amazon.co.uk
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