Emily Buchanan

Background

Born in Hammersmith, West London, Buchanan is the daughter of George Buchanan (1904-1989), a novelist and poet from Northern Ireland, and the Honorary Her mother (1918-1968), a manic depressive, committed suicide when Buchanan was nine.

Education

She was educated at the Saint Paul"s Girls" School, an independent school in Hammersmith. After graduation, Buchanan studied for a Master of Arts in Radio Journalism from the City University London, which she received in 1982.

Career

Janet Margesson, whose father was David Margesson, 1st Viscount Margesson, a Conservative cabinet minister in the 1930s. and read History, French and Spanish at Sussex University. Buchanan began her career at the British Broadcasting Corporation in Bush House, then the base of the British Broadcasting Corporation World Service, where her first interview was with Desmond Tutu, and a few years later joined British Broadcasting Corporation Radio 4 to produce Stop Press, "a programme which went behind the scenes of the journalism trade". After a period producing The Week in Westminster, she joined British Broadcasting Corporation Television and worked for British Broadcasting Corporation 2"s Assignment programme.

During 1992, while working in Zimbabwe, Buchanan survived an accident when her plane crash landed.

"The Baby Trade", also for Assignment, was about unscrupulous practices relating to international adoption in Paraguay. Towards the end of 1994 she was appointed the corporation"s British Broadcasting Corporation"s Developing World Correspondent.

Subsequently she became the Religious Affairs Correspondent for three years, from around 1998 to 2001, and is now the British Broadcasting Corporation"s World Affairs Correspondent. As the couple wanted to adopt babies, abandoned children from other parts of the world emerged as practically their only option.

In her book From China with Love: A Long Road to Motherhood (2005), she outlines the difficulties of the adoption service and discusses the issues relating to the adoption of children from an entirely different culture.

She deals with what she sees as "fallacies" attached to the issue. The couple now have two Chinese-born daughters, the first adopted at the beginning of the century, and the second three years later. In her book, the extreme prejudice against baby girls, to a large degree a result of China"s One-child policy, is also outlined.

Buchanan commented at the time her book came out that:

lieutenant doesn"t feel right, it doesn"t look right.

lieutenant looks odd. Participant of why I wanted to write the book is to say I"m not ashamed of lieutenant This is the way the world works now.".

Achievements

• Her Assignment programmes won awards. "Let Her Die", a report about infanticide in India, won the Golden Nymph at the Monte-Carlo Television Festival, "The Disposables", about the killing of the poor and criminals in Colombia, was nominated for an Amnesty International United Kingdom Media Award and One World Media nominated a programme about the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, which predominantly lends money to women.