From Kindertransport survivor to pioneering Foreign Correspondent at the Guardian - the extraordinary life of Hella Pick
Pick was the doyenne of the diplomatic press corps and her legend preceded her... Invisible Walls is a book of great power and honesty, packed with vivid detail of her reporting adventures from the newly independent African states of the late 1950s, through the US of the turbulent 60s and on, through the cold war and into this uncertain age of populist promise-makers, all told with a keen intelligence and relentless dedication to the facts... She brought to the job the intellectual hunger and moral purpose of one who had escaped the great catastrophe that descended on Europe in the 1930s... I commend her book to the widest audience possible but particularly those setting out in journalism. Pick is testament to the necessity of having a broad intellectual hinterland and an open mind, the value of cultivating sources and finding things out. There is no better manifesto against the current clickbait culture and narcissistic social media obsession. This voice from before the age of Facebook and Twitter is profound and urgent