Christina Lamb

Lamb was educated at Nonsuch High School for Girls, Cheam and graduated with a BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from University of Oxford.

In 1988, Lamb was awarded Young Journalist of the Year for her coverage of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.[9]

As a journalist, Lamb travelled with the Mujahidin fighting the Soviet occupation, spending the next two years living in Peshawar. She has reported on Pakistan and Afghanistan for more than three decades.[10][11]

Lamb has been based in Islamabad and Rio de Janeiro for the Financial Times and Johannesburg and Washington D.C. for The Sunday Times.[9] She has covered wars from Iraq to Libya, Angola to Syria;[12] repression from Eritrea to Zimbabwe; and journeyed to the far reaches of the Amazon to visit remote tribes.[13][14] She pays particular attention to issues such as the girls abducted by Boko Haram in Nigeria,[15] Yazidi sex slaves in Iraq,[16] and the plight of Afghan women.[9][17]

In November 2001, Lamb was deported from Pakistan after uncovering evidence of a covert operation by rogue elements in the ISI, Pakistan's military intelligence service, to smuggle arms to the Taliban.[18] In 2006, she narrowly escaped with her life when caught in a Taliban ambush of British troops in Helmand.[19][20] She was on Benazir Bhutto's bus when it was blown up in October 2007.[21][22]

I Am Malala, an account of the life of main author Malala Yousafzai, has been translated into 40 languages, and has sold close to two million copies worldwide.[23]

Her book Nujeen: One Girl's Incredible Journey from War-torn Syria in a Wheelchair co-written with Nujeen Mustafa, was published by William Collins (London) in September 2016 and was translated in nine languages.[24] The book Nujeen inspired a five-movement cantata Everyday Wonders: The Girl from Aleppo written by Kevin Crossley-Holland (text) and Cecilia McDowall (music) first performed by The National Children's Choir of Great Britain in Birmingham Town Hall on 10 August 2018.[25]

Lamb's latest book Our Bodies, Their Battlefield was published by William Collins (London) in March 2020 and by Scribner (New York) in September 2020 and was translated in nine languages.[26]

Her first play Drones, Baby, Drones with Ron Hutchison was performed at London's Arcola Theatre in 2016.[27][28][29]

Lamb is a member of the international board of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR)[30] and is a Patron of the UK-registered charity Afghan Connection.[31]

In 2009, Lamb's portrait was on display in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.[32][33] A photograph of her by Francesco Guidicini is in the Photographs Collection of the National Portrait Gallery.[34] She inspired the character Esther in the novel The Zahir (2005) written by Paulo Coelho.[35][36][37]

In 2017, she was the first female former undergraduate of University College, Oxford to be elected an Honorary Fellow. The Fellowship was awarded in recognition of "her courageous, vivid and critically important journalism, as well as for her support of the College".[38]

• Waiting for Allah: Pakistan's Struggle for Democracy (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1991. ISBN 978-0-670-87727-0)
• The Africa House: The True Story of an English Gentleman and His African Dream (London: Viking, 1999. ISBN 9780241130551)
• The Sewing Circles of Herat: My Afghan Years (London: HarperCollins, 2002. ISBN 9780007142521)
• House of Stone: The True Story of a Family Divided in War-Torn Zimbabwe (London: HarperPress, 2007. ISBN 9780007219391)
• Small Wars Permitting: Dispatches from Foreign Lands (London: HarperPress, 2008. ISBN 9780007256891)
• I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban co-written with Malala Yousafzai (New York: Little Brown, 2013. ISBN 978-0-29787-091-3)
• Farewell Kabul: From Afghanistan to a More Dangerous World (London: William Collins, 2015. ISBN 9780007256945)[39][40]
• Nujeen: One Girl's Incredible Journey from War-torn Syria in a Wheelchair co-written with Nujeen Mustafa (London: William Collins, 2016. ISBN 9780062567734)[41]
• Our Bodies, Their Battlefield: What War Does to Women (London: William Collins, 2020. ISBN 9780008300005)[42]

• Official website
• HarperCollins
• BBC Radio Four Woman's Hour (2002)
• BBC Radio Four Woman's Hour (2006)
• BBC Radio Four Woman's Hour (2008)
• BBC Radio Four Woman's Hour (2020)
• Frontline Club Insight with Christina Lamb (2015)
• BBC Radio Three Private Passions (2015)
• The Moth War and Ham Sandwiches (2016)
• TEDx Talks Finding Hope in Dark Places: Women in War (2017)
• BBC Radio Four Desert Island Discs (2018)

Photographs of Christina Lamb:

• Getty Images
• National Portrait Gallery