Copyright Ivan Weiss
Lucy Ash is an award winning presenter of radio and TV documentaries. Driven by a passion for justice and human rights, she focuses on characters at the margins of society and conflicts which have dropped out of the headlines.
Although she mostly does current affairs, she is also fascinated by the way stories from the past century inform the present like the great mystery of the Dyatlov Pass , The Night Witches, the world’s first female fighter pilots, and Operation Pedro Pan, about the mass exodus of children from Castro’s Cuba.
She presents programmes on international theatre, film and visual arts. She speaks fluent French, Russian and she is a trustee of Jerwood Arts.
Lucy’s work has been described as “unforgettable” and “taken from journalism’s top drawer”. She has won the Sony Gold, Amnesty International, the One World Radio Documentary Award, New York Festivals Radio Award and Radio Story of the Year award from the Foreign Press Association
Awards
Sony Gold Award, Chechnya, 2010
Foreign Press Association Award, Chechnya's Missing Women, 2009
Commonwealth Broadcasting Association Rolls Royce Award, Exceptional News Feature, Global Account: Turkmenistan
Amnesty International Media Award, India's Dowry Deaths, 2004
Sony Gold Award, India's Dowry Deaths, 2004
One World Media Award, India's Dowry Deaths, 2004
Amnesty International Award, Israel Palestine 2002
New York Radio Festivals Award, The Swallowers Undertaker 2000
European Community Humanitarian Office TV and Radio awards for outstanding programmes highlighting humanitarian crises Russian Jails 1997
Shortlist
Foreign Press Association Award, Ukraine The Paper Trail To Corruption, 2014
Press on Awards
"The winner stood out for the unflinching way in which issues were addressed and politicians put on the spot without ever losing respect for the country or its culture."
— The Judges Verdict From The Amnesty International Award
"Lucy Ash's eye-witness accounts of the daily deaths of newly-wed women who are burnt deliberately by their husbands was unforgettable."
— One World Radio Documentary Award
“What was coming out of the radio wasn’t a play, a fiction. This was a young Western reporter meeting a dictator with a brutal reputation and saying, ‘I’m in Chechnya to make a programme about women.’ I heard this Crossing Continents by accident. I can’t forget it.”
— Gillian Reynolds, Daily Telegraph
"The best documentary about marriage since My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. For the effective use of a weird wedding to illuminate a weird society, it must rank among the best nup doc (let me coin the term) ever."
— The Times
"Stolen Brides, a stunning report from the BBC journalist Lucy Ash, investigates the tradition in the former Soviet autonomous republic of men kidnapping women and forcing them into marriage…It's an interesting theory, and further hammers home how Ash's report is taken from journalism's top drawer”
— The Independent
"This documentary about an anti-corruption guerrilla war waged by six young Russians was all the more fascinating for letting all participants have their say."
— The Guardian