Reeta Chakrabarti: ‘Some journalists put themselves at the centre of the story. I don’t think you should’
Lotte Brundle meets the BBC journalist to talk about her fascination with the painter Amrita Sher-Gil, her shopping addiction and writing her first novel.
Reeta Chakrabarti has been in my living room more than a thousand times, but we have never met until now. It’s easy to have a parasocial relationship with the journalist, presenter and, more recently, author because she’s such a familiar face on BBC News, but it is hard in truth to truly know her.
‘There’s not much about me [online] because I have always guarded my privacy fairly carefully,’ she says. ‘I don’t give too much away and I like to maintain barriers between professional and public life.’ She strongly believes that journalists should report with impartiality. ‘Most journalists understand this, but there are some out there who put themselves at the centre of the story, and I don’t think you should.’
Nevertheless, Reeta has a book out, and while it is fictional she admits that the process of promoting it has been much more personal than presenting the news. Her first novel, Finding Belle, was published in May last year and her second novel, An Impossible Woman, is due to be published in 2027. She will be speaking about them at The Queen’s Reading Room Festival in Derbyshire on September 19-20.
At the BAFTA Television Awards in May.
Reporting from College Green, Westminster in 2010 in her role as political correspondent for the BBC.
The whole process has shown a much softer side of her. When we meet at a cafe near Broadcasting House (for convenience, of course) Reeta is softly spoken, composed and kind — asking me how I’m faring in yet another of this year’s sweltering heatwaves. Off duty she is very different to how she is on the job.
Reeta was born in 1964 in London to an Indian-Bengali family and raised in Birmingham and Hull. She lived in Calcutta (now Kolkata) as a teenager before studying English and French at Exeter College, University of Oxford, after which she became a journalist.
‘I wanted to be a journalist when I was about 10,’ she recalls. ‘I had all sorts of ambitions, and the only feasible one was to be a journalist. The others were: secret agent, astronaut or Wimbledon winner.’
Her first role was as a freelance reporter for the Arts pages of a local newspaper in Birmingham, but her heart was always in news. She originally joined the Beeb as a Radio 4 producer on the Today programme, The World at One and PM, before pivoting to reporting on 5 Live Breakfast.
With The Queen at Clarence House in March.
Later, as a community affairs correspondent, she covered the Stephen Lawrence inquest and Damilola Taylor’s murder trial. As a political correspondent, she reported on three general elections and she was in Lviv, Ukraine, just ten days after the 2022 Russian invasion and in Israel two weeks after the October 7, 2023, attacks.
She is married to Paul Hamilton, a former English professor at Queen Mary University of London, with whom she shares three children. The pair met at university and now live together in North London.
Did he worry when she’ was working in war-torn countries? ‘Definitely,’ says Reeta, ‘but I had talked to him each time before saying yes and he was wise enough to know that he shouldn’t stand in my way.’ Now that I’ve met her, I agree that this is wise indeed.
Your aesthetic hero
I love the way that some French actresses look — like Juliette Binoche. This is sort of unattainable, but also the model Inès de La Fressange. I mean, it’s their professional role to look the way that they do, but they do that while somehow being full of character. They are fully themselves. Charlotte Gainsbourg as well — she’s someone who puts on jeans and a T-shirt and just looks amazing.
Juliette Binoche on the set of 'Mauvais Sang' ('The Night is Young') in 1985.
The last thing of note that you bought for yourself
Well, I buy an awful lot of clothes, so that’s not really of note, but we went to Rome a couple of weeks ago and I bought something that I’ve coveted for a long time: a red handbag. Italian bags are just so gorgeous.
An exhibition that has really impressed you
Recently, we went to the Lee Miller exhibition. It was really fascinating. I didn’t really know much about her, but she seems like a woman who really grabbed her own destiny. She was in front of the camera, unbelievably beautiful, got bored of it, had an affair with Man Ray, lived in Paris and then came back to Britain to write for Vogue and became their war correspondent. Then eventually she did cookery books. I love that. I love women who don’t live within constraints.
Lee Miller, photographed for 'Vogue'.
A possession you’d never sell
It has to be something to do with my children's childhood — something sentimental. We have a great big teddy bear that my husband gave me when I was pregnant with our first child. He is called Picasso and he belonged to me and my first born, and I still have Picasso.
Your favourite painting
I’m fascinated by an Indian-Hungarian painter called Amrita Sher-Gil [the subject of Reeta’s upcoming book]. She’s not that well known in the west. She lived about 100 years ago and died tragically aged 28. She's a brilliant painter, a real colourist — absolutely fantastic. She’s got a very interesting life story and painted these amazing canvases of ordinary people who were very sad and melancholy. They were people who had no control over their lives and the poverty that had been handed to them.
Out of all of her paintings I’d choose one called Two Girls. It’s an extraordinary picture of two naked women. One’s white and one’s brown. It’s a picture of tremendous intimacy. Are they lovers? They’re certainly not sisters. One has her arm around the other and the brown woman looks very soft and relaxed, while the white woman is almost expressionless. It’s a very mysterious painting — sort of erotic. I have puzzled over it a lot.
Amrita Sher-Gil, photographed in 1936.
The music that you work to
I know that I could certainly not work to songs. Anything with lyrics would be distracting, but perhaps classical music or some not very characterful jazz, but maybe even that would be distracting. This is probably why I never have.
The last podcast you listened to
I listen to the news. I listen to Radio 4 a great deal, sometimes a bit of Times Radio. I do listen to the occasional podcast, like the Empire series. Also, Three Million by my colleague Kavita Puli — which was tremendous. It’s about the Bengal famine. I was just going to listen to half an hour in the gym and I listened to two and a half hours that morning.
A book you’ve found inspiring
That’s like asking: ‘Which is your favourite child?’. There’s just been so many. I guess I would choose books by women, just because I read a lot of classics when I was younger during my English degree. So, probably Wuthering Heights and Frankenstein. I read the latter late actually, in the last five years, which for someone of my vintage is very late. It blew me away. And she was 18 when she wrote it! There’s so much in it — and the fact that the monster of popular culture is not a monster at all, he just wants to be loved.
The items you’d take with you to a desert island
I mean, this sounds so utterly frivolous, but I would take lots of vats of face and body cream, because I’m a sucker for lotions and potions. So I might starve to death, but my skin would look great.
The thing that gets you up in the morning
Just having a very busy diary — that gets me up. And I’ll often have a swim in the morning too. It’s very rhythmic and monotonous so it sorts your head out.
The person that would play you in a film of your life
Wow, wouldn’t that be wonderful? It would be Indira Varma. She’s great. Much more statuesque than I am.
Indira Varma in 'Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One'.
The items you collect
I’m not really a collector, I don't have that sort of personality, but the one thing I have got more than one of is an orchid. I have a little bookshelf with four on, and they’re all doing well. I’m not a gardener, I manage to kill most plants apart from these orchids. One is almost ten years old now.
A hotel you could go back and back to
I’ve been to so many hotels with work, but I think there are some in Kolkata — where most of my extended family is — worth mentioning. One is called the Fairlawn Hotel and the other is the Kenilworth Hotel.
The most memorable meal you’ve ever eaten
There’s no contest for this. Me and my husband, a long time ago, went through a phase of saving up to experience fine dining. We went to one restaurant, maybe in the 1990s, in Versailles. We had a huge ten course meal. We pigged ourselves and after course five I was wondering how I was going to manage. The last pudding was called ‘The Head of Marie Antoinette’. It was a large macaroon that you dipped into very thick chocolate. I didn’t eat for the whole following day. It was a great experience.
The best present you’ve ever received
For our 10th wedding anniversary my husband took me on a surprise visit to Venice, which was absolutely lovely. We had quite small children then and I remember feeling slightly panicky about it, but it was really wonderful.
In a different spirit, I’d say things my children gave me when they were very small. So, a necklace given to me by one and another pair of perfectly impossible-to-wear earrings from another.
