They were the only two redheads in her family, and \u201cthere was this sort of running thing that my mother would say, \u2018well, you know, your grandmother had red hair\u2019,\u201d Lang says. <\/p>\n
\u201cShe died when I was five, of breast cancer, and I then got breast cancer at exactly the same age as my grandmother, so clearly I had inherited the red hair and the breast cancer gene.\u201d <\/p>\n
It took Brexit<\/a> to begin a search for her grandmother\u2019s birth certificate, so Lang could apply for an Irish passport; then she discovered her grandmother Winifred Warden, n\u00e9e Merry, had been born, not in Ireland, but in the workhouse in Stafford in the north of England. \u201cIt was a bitter disappointment, because I felt this connection … there were so many mixed emotions, and a great deal of sadness. <\/p>\n \u201cI couldn\u2019t get an Irish passport, and I was furious, but also, I felt I had this Irish identity taken away from me. <\/p>\n \u201cIt was my great-grandmother [who was Irish], not my actual grandmother, but it deprived me of being able to become Irish, which I really, really wanted to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Lang\u2019s story is the story of many in Ireland and indeed Britain, and of the complex relationship between these two islands. Her understanding now is that her great-grandmother came from \u201csomewhere near Kilkenny\u201d and \u201cwas a domestic servant, born in 1911, and whether she was a domestic servant in England, and then got pregnant, or whether she was shipped off from Ireland, we don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n \u201cShe was just registered as coming to the workhouse pregnant, giving birth, and then leaving the child, my grandmother, presumably because she couldn\u2019t look after her.\u201d<\/p>\n The story Lang\u2019s grandmother always told was that \u201cher family were from Ireland, and she was adopted from Ireland, or fostered, by this farming family in Staffordshire, and that they were horrible to her, and she ran away when she was 16\u201d.<\/p>\n Lang emphasises the \u201cterrible sadness\u201d when she discovered the reality: \u201cShe must have lived with this terrible shame all her life that she was born in a workhouse.\u201d<\/p>\n This, too, is part of the more recent history of Ireland and Britain; how stories such as these, which would once have been kept hidden, have been uncovered, acknowledged and reclaimed. Does Lang think about her family\u2019s place in this history? <\/p>\n \u201cYes, a lot. When you read things like that brilliant book by Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These, absolutely, I always think about my grandmother and my great-grandmother. <\/p>\n \u201cI definitely feel a connection to that, and I feel terribly sad about it.\u201d<\/p>\n So she does not have an Irish passport, even though her husband, the writer and broadcaster Misha Glenny, did become an Irish citizen thanks to his Newry-born grandfather. <\/p>\n \u201cI was so jealous,\u201d she laughs. \u201cHe whizzes through the passport queues and I\u2019m in the other one [queue] and I look at his Irish passport with so much envy.\u201d <\/p>\n Lang is a Londoner; it is where she went to university and where her family had a home, even though her father\u2019s job meant she grew up in different countries around the world. \u201cLondon, being a big, cosmopolitan city, I was able to identify [with it].\u201d<\/p>\n She is about to move back to London permanently after almost four years in Vienna, where Glenny was rector at the Institute for Human Sciences; following in his wife\u2019s footsteps as the custodian of another BBC Radio 4 institution, he replaced Melvyn Bragg as the presenter of In Our Time in January. <\/p>\n As a reporter, Lang has been all over the world. Her first overseas posting was to Hungary for the BBC in 1989, just in time to witness the fall of the Iron Curtain. She covered the war in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, was posted to Paris for the BBC and then the Sunday Times, and was Channel 4\u2019s Europe editor before returning to the BBC \u2013 first as a news presenter, and later as one of the long-standing presenters of Radio 4\u2019s Front Row. But it all began with a six-month stint in Northern Ireland in the late 1980s. <\/p>\n \u201cPretty much all of us wanted to go to Northern Ireland because it was exciting. Obviously, if you\u2019re a journalist, you want to run towards the flames, don\u2019t you, not away,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n On one of her first days in the BBC newsroom in Belfast, a bomb exploded in the city centre. \u201cI threw myself to the ground underneath my desk, and when I appeared again, everybody was laughing. \u2018Don\u2019t worry love, it\u2019s miles away.\u2019 That was my starting point.\u201d<\/p>\n She recalls \u201cthe first time I went to somebody\u2019s house with an open coffin … it was an incredibly steep learning curve, and it made me realise how incredibly ignorant we were in England of what was happening. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve always hated the word \u2018Troubles\u2019 as a kind of euphemism, because it was a war, in my view, and it should have been called a war, and we should have called it a war, and I think those things about language are really important.\u201d<\/p>\n She learned about the North by reading novels, something she still does when she goes to other countries, devouring fiction and poetry. \u201cI tried in that way to get under the skin of what it meant to live in a society so riven by sectarianism, and it was incredibly useful training for covering the collapse of Yugoslavia later on. <\/p>\n \u201cIn eastern Croatia in the summer of 1991 … it was familiar, to be in this small place where everybody looks the same, speaks the same language, and yet have these divisions. <\/p>\n \u201cI understood it in a way I think I wouldn\u2019t have done if I hadn\u2019t had that experience in Northern Ireland.\u201d <\/p>\n Yet, as she reflects on her nearly 40-year career, most of it with the BBC, Lang is keen to emphasise how worried she is about the broadcaster\u2019s future, not least given the announcement last month that it would cut almost one in 10 staff<\/a> in a bid to make savings of \u00a3500 million (\u20ac575 million). \u201cI do think it [the BBC] faces an existential crisis, and I don\u2019t think that\u2019s too strong to say. <\/p>\n \u201cI think we take it for granted, and having lived in a lot of other countries and being aware of what\u2019s on offer there, I realise how incredibly valuable the BBC is.<\/p>\n \u201cIn an age where we have endless information but very little wisdom, it provides us with wisdom and analysis.<\/p>\n \u201cI have Radio 4 on all day, and I would feel absolutely bereft [without it], as would millions of people.\u201d <\/p>\n She has seen first-hand the \u201cundermining of public sector broadcasting\u201d under right-wing populist governments and warns of the \u201csystematic attack\u201d under way in Europe and the US. <\/p>\n \u201cThe fourth estate is a very important part of our democracies, and that\u2019s why I worry about the BBC being salami-sliced to death.\u201d <\/p>\n Round Britain Quiz is the longest-running quiz in the world, and celebrates its 80th birthday next year \u2013 which comes with its own set of pressures. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like somebody\u2019s handed you a very valuable bit of Radio 4 crystal and you\u2019re thinking \u2018oh no, I don\u2019t want to drop it\u2019,\u201d says Lang.<\/p>\n [\u00a0\u2018A wake-up call for every country\u2019: public service broadcasting in crisisOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n She took over in 2022, much to her own surprise; as she confessed to the BBC Radio 4 controller who offered her the job: \u201cI\u2019m not very good at quizzes.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cI enjoy them,\u201d she stresses, \u201ceven though I can very rarely answer anything. <\/p>\n \u201cBut I like watching other people do it, and of course it\u2019s sort of aspirational, because when you do manage to get something [right], you feel really clever.\u201d <\/p>\n In a world where everything is dumbed down, why shouldn\u2019t we have something super smart?<\/p>\n \u2014 \u00a0Kirsty Lang<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Round Britain Quiz is complex and hard to define. \u201cThe Everest of quizzes,\u201d says Lang. Teams from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland tackle \u201cmulti-part questions that mix general knowledge with cryptic clues\u201d, with plenty of hints from their host. <\/p>\n There was a \u201cDublin\u201d team in the 1940s and a \u201cRepublic of Ireland\u201d team in the late 1970s and 1980s. The current Irish representation comes from this journalist and Paddy Duffy, a broadcaster and film-maker from Lifford, Co Donegal, representing Northern Ireland; former competitors include writer Polly Devlin, political columnist Brian Feeney and magistrate Martin McBirney, who was shot dead by the IRA in 1974. <\/p>\n A friend of the poet Michael Longley, he recalled how McBirney would return from recording the latest series and meet them in Belfast\u2019s Crown Bar with the questions so that their group of poets and friends could all have a go. <\/p>\n This is the \u201cunique quiz culture\u201d of Britain and Ireland that the show taps into, says Lang. \u201cOther countries have gameshows, but they don\u2019t have quizzes embedded quite so much in the community \u2013 be it pubs, schools, working men\u2019s clubs, universities, whatever \u2013 it\u2019s a sort of social glue, and it\u2019s actually something really important.\u201d<\/p>\n At home, Glenny \u201cmakes up quizzes all the time, at every family event, for Christmas, or somebody\u2019s birthday … we\u2019ve done that with our kids since they were little\u201d and she brought this to Round Britain Quiz.<\/p>\n [\u00a0When people hear I won University Challenge they want to know what Paxman was really likeOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n \u201cMy vision was to see it as a kind of parlour game whereby, if you\u2019re at home, you can join in and not feel intimidated if you can\u2019t get something.\u201d <\/p>\n Unsurprisingly, it has its own community \u2013 many of the questions are sent in by listeners \u2013 and an online group plays along with the show as it is broadcast, though some \u2013 \u201cmen of a certain age\u201d, says Lang \u2013 found her triggering. \u201cThey wrote in \u2013 still do, actually \u2013 to complain that I laugh too much and it\u2019s annoying. <\/p>\n \u201cIt was a little bit upsetting … I don\u2019t want to say it was a huge amount, but it was quite a few.\u201d<\/p>\n She followed her producer\u2019s advice and ignored them. Round Britain Quiz \u201cis joy and a privilege, and I think the fact that it was unexpected \u2013 I mean, if you\u2019d said to me when I first started working in news as a reporter that I would end up hosting a quizshow, I would have laughed in your face.\u201d <\/p>\n Round Britain Quiz grew out of Transatlantic Quiz, designed to boost Anglo-American relations during the second World War, and subsequently reinvented as Trans-Britain Quiz; in the decades since, it has survived both geopolitical crises and BBC cuts. <\/p>\n Lang hopes the celebrations will get listeners even more involved \u2013 \u201cI just love the idea of groups of people getting together, or at home, wherever, and playing with us\u201d \u2013 while also bringing in younger fans. <\/p>\n \u201cIn the current series, we had a 17-year-old girl who sent a question in. That warmed my heart, because she\u2019ll be listening to Round Britain Quiz for the rest of her life,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n![\"Kirsty](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/4D3GRBB4N5CMBFOR6MF6RYF2IY.jpeg\")
Kirsty Lang, journalist and broadcaster with the BBC. Photograph: BBC <\/p>\n![\"BBC](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/A2DXOXJU6NFQ3C3IHRTLEZT67E.jpg\")
BBC Broadcasting House in central London. Lang is worried about the \u2018undermining of public sector broadcasting\u2019. Photograph: Mike Kemp\/In Pictures via Getty Images <\/p>\n\n
![\"Kirsty](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/C5MGOSETUNH65LLPDLR6XGBYNU.jpg\")
Kirsty Lang’s journalism career has taken her all over the world. Photograph: Mike Marsland\/Mike Marsland\/Wireimage <\/p>\n