Tim Whewell: Biography

Tim Whewell started his career in international journalism closer to home, working for the Sheffield Morning Telegraph after reading Russian at Oxford and attending the Cardiff School of Journalism.

He began his BBC career as a "talks writer" at Bush House, specialising in Russian affairs.

From 1990 to 1993 he was the BBC World Service Moscow Correspondent, and was one of only three Western journalists to be present throughout the three day siege of the White House in 1993.

It certainly demanded a steady nerve to broadcast from the building. At one point he had to work underneath a table for fear of snipers.

Later, he returned to the BBC World Service at Bush House.

Cult listening

Recently Tim's work has included presenting and producing for BBC Radio Five Live's morning programme, The Magazine.

His feature, 'Mad Magazines', looked at eccentric publications from around the world, and made for cult listening.

Tim also made a four part radio documentary series, The Windy Sea, on the oil boom in the ex-soviet republics bordering the Caspian Sea; and films for the BBC's Correspondent programme on the new scourges of drug addiction in the Ukraine, and corruption in Kalmykia.

For Crossing Continents, Tim has investigated Uganda's involvement in the long running civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

He also visited Yemen to examine its claim it was successfully using "Islamic dialogue" to fight terror.

He travelled to Poland to examine the impact an exodus of Polish workers had on the country they left behind.

And most recently he visited Turkey to ask if the rise of a new social class threatens Turkey's secular elite which has run the country for 80 years.