Lucy Ash on Muck Rack

Lucy Ash

Verified
London
As seen in: Bottom Line, UOL, BBC, BBC Mundo, BBC News, Terra, The Guardian, The Independent (UK), The Telegraph, Yahoo Canada and
Covers:  Foreign Affairs with a special interest in Russia and the Former Soviet Union, social affairs, history and culture.
Foreign affairs broadcaster and author; BBC presenter. Author @iconbooks *SHORTLISTS : BRITISH ACADEMY BOOK PRIZE ; ORWELL PRIZE 2025* & PUSHKIN HOUSE PRIZE

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Lucy Ash’s Biography

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Lucy Ash is an award-winning presenter of radio and TV documentaries. Awards include the Sony Gold, Amnesty International, the One World Radio Documentary Award, New York Festivals Radio Award and Radio Story of the Year award from the Foreign Press Association.

She engages audiences with humour, insight and emotional power to take them on unexpected journeys around the globe.
Although Lucy’s emphasis is current affairs, she has also presented several programmes on history and culture.

She …

Lucy Ash’s Journalist Portfolio

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Inside Poland's 'LGBT-free zones'

Inside Poland's 'LGBT-free zones'

In Poland, dozens of small towns have declared themselves free of "LGBT ideology". Politicians' hostility to …

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Talking Books

Talking Books

Reading may be a solitary activity, but getting together to discuss a book is a booming phenomenon.

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Dyatlov Pass

Dyatlov Pass

In the dead of winter, a group of students set out on a trek into the Ural Mountains. Their frozen bodies - w…

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Russian domestic violence: Women fight back

Russian domestic violence: Women fight back

Two years ago, many Russians were shocked when the parliament significantly reduced penalties for domestic vi…

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Why are graduates competing to be prison officers?

Why are graduates competing to be prison officers?

The government-backed Unlocked Graduates scheme trains university leavers to work as prison officers. But how…

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'I rented a mouldy flat - from the deputy mayor'

'I rented a mouldy flat - from the deputy mayor'

The collapse of two apartment buildings in Marseille last November left the city in mourning for eight people…

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Articles

Russia's Blasphemy Laws Are Just Kremlin Censorship in Disguise

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By Lucy Ash Verified
| The Moscow Times Verified
Recent incidents involving a kulich Easter cake sparked a social media frenzy. One involved the cake being used as a base for a hookah. The other featured a sex toy. But disputes over what counts as blasphemy are nothing new in President Vladimir Putin’s Russia. One August day nearly a decade ago, Ruslan Sokolovsky walked into a church in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg, armed with his mobile phone.
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Poland’s History War

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By Lucy Ash Verified
| INTERNATIONALE POLITIK QUARTERLY
Not long after we crossed into Poland, I glanced out the train window and did a double take. Looming over the snow-covered cabbage fields was a colossal statue of Jesus. His golden crown, the height of a man, sparkled in the winter sunlight. The rest of him was draped in white. I grabbed my phone to find out whether I was hallucinating. I soon learned that he was real enough—if not that solid—made of fiber glass and plaster.
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Peace Unto All

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By Lucy Ash Verified
| INTERNATIONALE POLITIK QUARTERLY
The first time I was invited to lunch by Archpriest Andrey Kordochkin, we feasted on his wife Alexandra’s homemade chicken pie. We enjoyed an equally delicious fish pie next time, but we were sitting around a table more than 1,700 kilometers away. The only hint of the cleric’s former home was a little side plate of Serrano ham. When we first met, Kordochkin was the dean of the gold domed Orthodox cathedral of St. Mary Magdalene in Madrid.
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Interview

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What was your first job as a journalist?

Glasgow editor of THE LIST - the magazine about culture in Scotland's central belt.

Have you ever used a typewriter?

Yes - it used to make a terrible racket and even now I bash my laptop keyboard far too hard.

How is social media changing news?

It means news editors can no longer decide what matters most and we get some amazing insights from citizen journalists.

Awards

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Sony Gold Award

2004 - News Programme of the Year

The programme won the Sony Gold Award because according to the judges it was "moving and anger-inducing, with excellent reportage and actuality." They added: "Lucy Ash's sensitive presentation both stood back to tell the story, whilst sharing the emotion of the subject with the listener. Powerful radio, which peeled back the layers of a horrifying story." Although illegal for 40 years, the system is flourishing, as Presenter Lucy Ash, Producer Giselle Portenier and Editor Hugh Levinson made clear. "Demands for money now extend beyond the wedding, with burnt brides and aborted foetuses testifying silently to the darkest side of the dowry economy. "

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Amnesty International Radio Award

2002 - Radio Documentary

The Radio award went to Lucy Ash for an edition of Radio 4's Crossing Continents - Israel/Palestine - where she joined a quiet, little-known world of remarkable individuals who are working to make peace and watched them operate outside a political process which they see as failing. Maria Balinska the programme's editor said: "We are honoured to have won the 2002 Amnesty International Radio Award. And very pleased that through this award for Crossing Continents, recognition has also been given to those people - like the protagonists in our documentary, Palestinian Dr Izzeldeen Abuelaish and Israeli Hagit Ra'anan - who continue to work for peace and mutual understanding in the Middle East."

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Amnesty International Radio Award

2003 - Radio Documentary

India's Dowry Deaths won the Amnesty International Radio Prize and this was the judges verdict: "The winner stood out for the unflinching way in which issues were addressed and politicians put on the spot without ever losing respect for the country or its culture."

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One World Media Awards

2003 - Radio Documentary

The judges' report said: "Lucy Ash's eye-witness accounts of the daily deaths of newly-wed women who are burnt deliberately by their husbands was unforgettable."

Foreign Press Association

2010 - Radio Documentary

Lucy Ash reported from Grozny on the growing number of women snatched from the streets of the Chechen capital. Some are taken as brides, some have simply vanished without trace, others are killed and their bodies dumped. The programme includes one of the last recorded interviews with the prominent human rights activist Natasha Estemirova whose bullet ridden corpse was found by the roadside. What was coming out of the radio wasn’t a play, a fiction. This was a young Western reporter meeting a dictator with a brutal reputation and saying, “I’m in Chechnya to make a programme about women.” I heard this Crossing Continents by accident. I can’t forget it. Gillian Reynolds, Daily Telegraph

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