Women of the World, unite and take over!

11th - 13th March 2011
Southbank Centre, London

WOW – Women of the World – is a joyous celebration of the formidable strength and inventiveness of women – a pioneering, groundbreaking annual festival, which will present, recognise and celebrate women, and act as a conversation space for issues of all kinds.

If you can get there, it promises to be a great festival with speeches, performances, debates, and more, discussing issues facing women today. Highlights for me include: Bird's Eye View Sounds & Silents, Life Cycle with Mara Carlyle, and the conferences that take place over the three days. Look here for more information.

Kate Adie

Uncompromising,

authoritative,

straight-talking,

cool and courageous

in her 'pearls-and-flak-jacket'.

I used to be obsessed by the news in the late 1980s, when I was young (this obsession still continues).

I remember my Dad telling me about Kate Adie and why she mattered on television - until that point she was just another news reporter to be fascinated by. Maybe that's the best way to see her, as a reporter doing a job. However, like my Dad expressed to me at that impressionable age, she's one of the only female correspondents who reported from the front lines and she was the Chief News Correspondent at the BBC for fourteen years. From the London Iranian Embassy siege in 1980 to the war in Sierra Leone in 2000, via several bullet grazes, Kate Adie saw me through my childhood.