Inaugural Roddy Scott Lecture

Roddy Scott was an OR and journalist who was killed, tragically, in the Chechen conflict in 2002. His parents have set up a foundation in his memory - www.roddyscott.co.uk - and we are pleased to be hosting an annual memorial lecture at Repton, which will be inaugurated this term.  The first speaker, on Friday 10th September, will be David Loyn, the BBC Foreign Correspondent, below are some further details of his background. 

David Loyn: Reporting from the Frontline

David Loyn is a foreign correspondent for the BBC who has won major awards for both TV and radio reporting during 30 years in the field, including Britain’s premier award as Royal Television Society Journalist of the Year. He has covered conflict across the world, including in Iraq, Kashmir, Bosnia, Kosovo, Sri Lanka, and Gaza, and has secured unparalleled access to the war in Afghanistan. He was the only foreign journalist with the Taliban when they took Kabul in 1996, and has travelled with them, on assignment in southern Afghanistan in the war since 9/11.

His first book Frontline – the true story of the mavericks who changed the face of news reporting was shortlisted for the Orwell prize. His most recent book BUTCHER AND BOLT – Two Hundred Years of Foreign Engagement in Afghanistan is a sweeping narrative beginning with the first British mission to Afghanistan exactly 200 years ago and brought up to date as US and UK forces take on the Taliban. It is a history littered with misunderstandings and broken promises, in which the British, the Russians, and later the Americans, constantly underestimated the ability of the Afghans.

Butcher and Bolt brilliantly brings to life the personalities involved in Afghanistan's relationship with the world, chronicling the misunderstandings and missed opportunities that have so often led to wars that the Afghans have won. It is a story full of richly-drawn characters – from the Afghan kings who would wear ancient armour bedecked with jewels including the Koh-i-Noor to greet foreign envoys – to the hard-drinking Texan congressman Charlie Wilson, accompanied by beauty queens as he handed over briefcases full of dollars to Islamic militants in the 1980s war against the Russian invasion. Now foreign armies, with the US and UK at the front, confront those same Islamic fighters in the latest attempt to try to control this unruly and beautiful country.