Hella Pick

Hella Henrietta Pick CBE (born 24 April 1929) is a British-Austrian journalist of Austrian descent.

Hella Pick was born in Vienna, Austria into a middle-class Jewish family. Her parents divorced when she was three years old and she was raised by her mother. Following Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 and a visit from the Gestapo, Pick’s mother decided to leave Austria. Pick was put on a Kindertransport and arrived in Britain in March 1939. Her mother obtained a visa and joined her three months later.[1]

Pick went to school in the Lake District and learned English. Feeling awkward about her identity, for a while she refused to speak German at all, even with her mother. In 1948, Pick became a British citizen and she no longer felt herself to be a refugee.

Pick studied at the London School of Economics. In 1960 she became the UN correspondent of The Guardian newspaper where she was tutored by its chief US correspondent Alistair Cooke.[2] She has also written for the New Statesman.[3] Her successful career as a journalist and writer led to her being honoured with a CBE in 2000. In Germany she became known for her appearance on the TV shows Internationales Frühschoppen and Presseclub.

Pick is the Arts & Culture Programme Director at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an independent think-tank based in London.[4] She has dual British and Austrian citizenship, and visits Austria regularly, her "home away from home".

The Guardian archive contains a memoir of her time on the paper in the 1960s and 1970s.[5]

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