no one s asked me that before. um. i m tenacious, i m a. ..a bit adventurous. that s how i got into it to begin with. and i think the biggest piece of it was hoping that i had done something worth doing, and that it had made a difference. so the values behind the work were important to you, but on a day to day basis, you were having to deceive and to lie. are you good at that? and protect. she chuckles and i got rather good at it indeed. yes, ican. ican. i can prevaricate with the best of them. let me take you back to the beginning. you ve described entering the cia through a side entrance, by which i think you mean that you weren t sort of formally recruited. that s right. you sort of fell into it because you married a guy who, it turned out, just before your wedding, you learned was in the cia. wasn t there a movie or a book? something titled marrying the mob? there was a similarity, yeah. i didn t realise until shortly before we were getting married that my first husband h
welcome to this special year ending edition of hardtalk with me, stephen sackur. it s our chance to look back on some of the most telling and compelling encounters of 2023. how will this past year be remembered? well, a grim new phase in an intractable conflict will loom large. on october the 7th, hamas the islamist group which controls gaza and is proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the uk and the us launched a murderous attack on southern israel. 1,200 israelis were killed. israel s response was a ferocious assault on gaza, now in its third month, which has already inflicted tens of thousands of palestinian casualties. we cannot guarantee 100% safety for the people in gaza who will be around hamas militants. and that s why i keep saying, move out, move out from those neighbourhoods, because we are coming to hunt down hamas and we will do whatever is necessary from the air, from the sea, from the land. we will get to those people and we will kill them. you cannot d
hi there, thank you for being with hi there, thank you for being with us israel s prime minister benjamin netanyahu says the military will deepen its fight against hamas in the coming days. his comments come despite the us urging israel to lower the intensity of its strikes. and these images show the aftermath of an air strike on the al maghazi refugee camp which reportedly killed more than 70 people. israel says it is investigating. the hamas run health ministry in gaza says at least 250 people have been killed in the last 2a hours. meanwhile, in bethlehem in the occupied west bank, christmas celebrations were muted because of the ongoing conflict. shaimaa khalil sent this report which some viewers may find distressing. crowd chants: achshav! achshav! heckled by the families of the hostages. achshav now they chant, a demand for the immediate release of their loved ones. benjamin netanyahu reiterates the only way to get them back was to keep fighting and that t
the novocherkassk was hit during an attack on the port of feodosia in russian occupied crimea. local officials say at least one person was killed, and ukraine said the ship was destroyed. president zelensky wrote on telegram, the occupiers will not have a single peaceful place in ukraine. james waterhouse reports. for ukraine, this was a high value target. explosion the novocherkassk landing ship struck by a guided missile. the blast was colossal. moscow claims it was only damaged. kyiv says destroyed. it s going to need more than a lick of paint, regardless. crimea has been in russia s grasp since 2014. but sights like this have become more common with ukraine striking deeper into the peninsula. the novocherkassk would have almost certainly been loaded with either soldiers, hardware, or both. its loss will hamper russia s ability to supply troops further north, as well as further weaken its naval dominance in the black sea. what attacks like these have yet to do is apply
most households had a piano, an upright piano, and.and we were no exception, and so he would just sit down and play scottish traditional music. and of course, he left school at the age of 1a, and immediately started working on farms and he was the youngest of 13, so, you know, you can imagine the sort of scenario, and so he was always working. my mother, on the other hand, she could read music, but she didn t have a very good ear, so, in a way, it was the opposite. and i remember when she told the story whereby she was asked to play in the village, or if she would help out for the village church and play the organ there, because she was really, kind of, the only one who could maybe play a few hymns. and she said, oh, no, i really don t want to be doing this i m far too busy , and so on. and. but they pleaded with her and she said, well, i lljust do one sunday , and 36 years later she was still there. i went to a primary school that had 36 pupils in the entire school and