cancelled peace talks aimed at ending 18 years of war in afghanistan. despite the cancellation, the us secretary of state, mike pompeo, said the conflict would ultimately be resolved through dialogue. the taliban, too, say they're committed to continuing negotiations. the head of a us aid agency says that hurrican dorian has left parts of the bahamas looking like they were hit by a nuclear bomb. a huge relief operation is under way to provide emergency shelter, medical care and food and water. 43 people have been confirmed dead — but the number's expected to rise. there've been fresh clashes between police and protestors in hong kong for the fourteenth week in a row. earlier, activists marched on the us consulate to call on donald trump to intervene personally in the political crisis.

now on bbc news it's hardtalk with stephen sackur. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. 80 years ago, hundreds of jewish children were smuggled out of nazi—occupied europe by train in a covert humanitarian mission which became known as the ‘kindertransport‘. my guest today, dame stephanie shirley, was one of those children. she went on to live an extraordinary life of achievement and philanthropy, blazing a trail for women in business. so, what lessons can we learn from a woman determined to make the most of a life so nearly extinguished in childhood? theme music plays.

dame stephanie shirley, welcome to hardtalk. thank you for inviting me. we've invited you almost 80 years — exactly 80 years — from that moment when you were forced to leave your home. your father put you on a train, it's called the ‘kindertransport‘, and you ended up in an alien country, in london, in england. what do you remember of that journey? well, of course, i was only five years old, so all the things that i remember, the childish things. i remember the little boy that kept being sick, i remember losing my doll and then finding her again. and the general — what is england, what is happening? i was with my older sister,

renata, who was aged nine, so if you think how small a 5—year—old is, it was a traumaticjourney and an extraordinary change to a new country, new family, new language, new food, new everything and i think my parents really did a very brave thing because they sent us basically into the arms of strangers. they knew the names of the people who had agreed to foster us and waved us goodbye, thinking never to see us again. and at five, were you in any way able to understand the grave danger that you were in as a little girl — your father wasjewish, of course — a little girl under nazi occupation? i don't think so. i think one had seen the gradual development of anti—semitism so that my sister had had stones thrown at her, my father had lost his job,

all these various things one was conscious of. and we became — since he didn't have any work — quite short of money and it became obvious that the family was in problems, but i thinkjews across europe knew that to remain in nazi europe really was catastrophe. there's so much to talk about in your extraordinary life and i don't want to telescope it, but i do want to just reflect, at this moment, as we are thinking about the kindertra nsport, i want to reflect on things that you have said where you have always maintained that this journey, the exile, the loss of your home and, indeed, for the most part, your parents — although, of course, you were reunited afterwards, but it was never the same relationship again. you've said that, "i constantly was aware that my life had been spared "and that i must do something worthwhile with it."

did you — even as a child growing up in england, did you feel that? i think the kindertransport experience did several things for me that most of them are lifelong things. as i've mentioned, i came to enormous change and that meant i have learned to manage change, in fact, i welcome change and that is very useful to me in a fairly still high—tech career. but secondly, even as a 5—, 6—year—old, people were saying — it is not a good thing to say to children — "aren't you lucky to be saved, aren't you lucky to be saved," so i very conscious that i was lucky and, indeed, i was because my foster parents were particularly good. but the feeling that i really needed to justify my existence has driven my life. that was planted early and, in a sense, you reflected on it, almost, what, every day?

yes, i try not to fritter my time away. i am conscious that i still have things that i can do for other people and that is what i aim to do, so i have a wonderful lifestyle, happily married, things are pretty good for me. well, i promise not to telescope everything in too much of a rush. so, now, let us go back to you as a young girl making your way in this new country, in england. it seems to me you showed a rather remarkable gift for mathematics and it was remarkable in a sense because, at the time, young girls were not really expected to excel in mathematics, they weren't really even expected to be interested in it or to even do it. 0h, all the sciences were not really considered suitable for young girls. the only one that was considered respectable was botany, the study of plants. so, you ended up, i think — because your foster parents saw quite early that you had a talent — for a while, you ended

up actually going to a boys school for mathematics... yes! you can imagine what fun that was. and then you sort of had to study at night school to become more of a specialist. you really had to push to get the education that you clearly benefited from. yes, but i love to learn, i love to do new things, and so that was no hardship as far as i was concerned. i reallyjust studied, i knew i had to get good results in order to get out of poverty and...i went for it. you went for it and you, at the age of 18, got yourfirstjob and i've written this down because it sort of amuses me because it sounds so sort of 1940s or ‘50s, i guess it would be then, "the post office research station at dollis hill in london." oh, you should not sneer! that was very a world—renowned research station! so, what was your role? i worked on the first electronic telephone exchange at highgate wood

and — the one that everyone remembers me for — the premium bond computer, ernie. yes, now, you are using the word "computer". in those days, computers were a thing most people... i'm in a computer museum! are you? because you were on the cutting edge of... very early on. ..britain adopting computers, coming to terms with what computers could do and you, after this, as you say, it was actually quite a high—tech job at the post office. you then went into the private sector at icl. you spent a couple of years there, but this is what intrigues me about that — you say that you discovered, at icl - which was, again, at the time, was a leading technology company... oh, it was our national pride. yes. you said, "i discovered what is now known as the glass ceiling. "it was an excellent company, "but i felt unable to grow the kernels that were in me." so, what did you mean at the time by "glass ceiling"?

i think i was getting soft, mild discrimination. women did not do this, no, i could not apply for promotion there, no, it was not suitable for me to be talking about marketing, i was technical, and generally feeling that i was not allowed to expand from being a technical person to what i became, a manager. i hope a good manager, i've really worked very hard at that. but the fact that doors were closed or were very, very hard to open really made me quite assertive, aggressive — i believe in equal pay, i will carry my own things, i will do my own things, and that set a tone perhaps for what was going on in the rest of the world. well, we're now talking about the late 1950s and the very, very early 1960s, a time when perhaps

the word "feminism" was just beginning to be used although, frankly, for many women, it probably still was not a word they were terribly familiar with. i personally avoided the word because it was very much anti—male, which i assure you, iam not, but... you really felt the early forms of feminism to be anti—men? it was. yes, it was. the men did not like it and we had to — i mean, now, trousers you can't see, we had to have a house rule not to wear trousers because we thought it was threatening to the men. we were really moving into an area. at that time, women were earning about half the rates of men, they were unable to sign up a mortgage, hire a car, get a tv set because male signatures were needed for all that. so you had this idea in your head that there was a real gender issue

here and you were determined to improve the lot of yourself and other women. i believe in the world being really fair and it is not fair forjews in nazi germany and it is not fairfor women in the ‘50s, the ‘60s and even today, it's a little bit... mm, well, that's interesting you say that because what you did, and leaving aside terminology, what you actually did by deed and action was create a company which specifically looks to tap into the talent of women, women who were good with technology and with computers and whose potential was not being tapped elsewhere. you are quite right. i am a feminist in deed, though not in word. so, how did you, in the early 1960s, build a company that could use the potential of so many women whose potential was not being used? well, i was using a labour force that was skilled, that was highly motivated and that nobody else was fishing in.

and so i had the cream of some technical people... but female. female. i had to balance that with...what is the word i want? the fact that they wanted flexibility, the fact that they would not work in an office, they were all home—based, so it was a family—friendly, female—friendly organisation, which i became enormously motivated by because i felt it was notjust me i was fighting to get, it was all these women who... so, in a sense, you are a pioneer of something which today would be known as sort of workplace flexibility, focused on a work—life balance, focused on the sorts of flexible contracts that can allow people... i reckon i started all that with the gig economy and the lot, yes. the gig economy — you were the pioneer

of the gig economy? oh, yes. i was doing those sort of things. the number one minute in your compa ny‘s records is to provide jobs for women with children. all of this really matters because these are debates — extremely important debates that continue to this very day. isn't it disappointing that it is now 50 years on and we still actually have women saying, "i feel discriminated in, i feel i cannot do this, "i feel i'm not valued, i feel my skills are not valued." it is really rather pathetic. that is an interesting word. what do you mean by "pathetic"? i think it is very sad from society's point of view that so many people do not feel valued. the interesting thing, though, is, because you been quite outspoken on this, you have at times suggested that young women today, of this current generation of young workers, have it easy. you told thejewish chronicle in 2014 that, and i'm quoting you,

"the young women of today have got it dead easy "compared with the women of my generation." and i would say that again today. you have no idea how difficult it was when i was young and started to work in the early 1950s. my firstjob was in 1951. it's, um...i hear the young women and they have things that they need to struggle with, things that they perhaps need to remedy in themselves, but the world is still not fair to women... which is precisely what they would say and they would say, have it easy?! just look at the facts, look at the degree to which, for example, in the uk, the ftse 100 biggest companies in the country still dominated by women are only seven — last year there were seven... i was the first this, the only that... it was very hard to push it. but i guess the point is that young women would make is that, for all of the deeds and actions

you took to try and create a flexible workplace for women, others did not follow and, today, the situation for women, young women, looking to work in the tech sector or many other sectors still is reflective of, frankly, of a man's world. that is certainly true and the thing that needs to happen to make the world a fairer place is not that women should change and try to be more following the male but that men should actually understand the skills that women have, the different way in which we approach life, the different value systems, the different body language. and that actually equates the two genders in that way. i also think, i mean, i've advocated for women for 50 years or something, it's never really going to happen until the men start advocating for us. it is difficult. but gender diversity is only one,

it is the main one, i suppose, but only one of the different diversities that companies are struggling with at the moment. i don't wish to belabour the issue about gender and about discrimination but some women, and i guess they would call themselves feminists, have been rather ta ken about by your notion and again, i am quoting your own words, i hope that's fair, that "women don't want to pay the cost of success". you say, "i rememberfriends being surprised that i never went to the national theatre but when i was setting up my business, there was no time for such things, and this", you say, "is the price for success". "you have to be prepared to pay the price, whether it's the cost to your health, your family, and it can be enormous". are you suggesting that there are women who aren't prepared to go all the way in the way that men are in terms of committing to their careers?

i think that is quite clear in certain situations. there are also some men that opt out and say, i'm not going to study, i'm not going to do this, that or the other. that is one of the ways in which people decide how and to a certain extent why they're going to live their life as they do. let's talk about that, and if i may get personal, let me talk to you about how you struggled as an increasingly successful business woman and goodness knows, through the ‘70s and ‘80s, your original freelance programmer company took off. i think at one point, amazingly, one of the papers said that you were worth more, your wealth was at least theoretically greater than that of the queen of england. no, quite incorrect. i trailed her majesty the queen. well anyway, it made a good line. but the point is, at the very same that you were becoming increasingly successful, you were really struggling in your home life. indeed. you had a son whose condition, his autism, was really problematic. and this is one of the things that's

taken me into areas of diversity at the moment. i struggle to get people with autism to actually have the opportunity to do professionaljobs and do all the things that they want to do even though they have a condition that makes it not easy. tell me, if you can, frankly, how difficult it became. because your son, as he grew up, as a very young baby, there was no sign... 0h, he was a lovely baby. but the condition worsened. and as a teenager and then a young man, it was very difficult. well, to summarise, he did have to go to hospital permanently at the age of 13. ijust could not manage him anymore. he was strong, he was violent at times and ijust couldn't take anymore. for many years i had managed the various stresses of my business and the home pressures and they sort

of balanced in a sick sort of way. the only time i forgot my son giles was when i was working and i am a workaholic, and the only time i forgot giles was when i was at work. and that is not a terribly healthy way to work but it kept me going for many, many years. but as things got better, ijust could not cope at all and eventually broke down, good old —fashioned nervous breakdown, finished up in hospital myself. again, i hesitate to go into this because it is difficult but nonetheless, you have been public about it and i think people around the world listening would relate to it in a very profound way. you say that your breakdown was so extreme that there was a time when you, and indeed your husband, talked about ending your lives. yes. well, that was before he went into hospital. we just could not manage any more.

and we just spoke seriously about a family suicide. my husband actually had the good sense to dissuade us because he felt that it while it might be suicide for us, it wasn't suicide for our son. and so he pulled out and i'm very glad he did because we have come through it all. i think we're all very glad he did but it is extraordinary that you, you're a business leader who's known across the country and indeed internationally. you have become a philanthropist who has given tens of millions of pounds to many different causes but particularly to autism and research to autism causes. you have opened up about the degree to which this struggle was part of your life. when my son was young,

i felt very inadequate, guilty... that i should have a child like that. am i not fit to be a mother, am i doing something wrong? and there was indication from outsiders that, "oh, you're bringing him up all wrong". but in fact, i think children like my giles need parents like me to actually fight for them and fight i did. and made myself pretty unpopular, i took some complaints right up to the health ombudsman. and across the world there are families going through these sorts of difficulties and i mourn for them. there are fewer, perhaps, than they were when my son was young. about more than one in 100 children are on the autistic spectrum so it's not a rare thing anymore. and we really need to understand how

people with autism think, how their brain works, so instead of it pressurising vulnerable people, many without speech, to join the society that you or i enjoy, we really have to learn to modify society's ways in order to embrace and cherish the skills of people with autism. and your commitment to that, to doing your absolute best to give people with autism the best chance of a good life, that continues. you have given away, as i said, some people say, roughly around £17 million to this. you've written, "i do it because of my personal history", "again, i need to justify the fact that," going all the way back to the beginning of our conversation, "that my life was saved". i am so lucky, stephen, my life was saved.

i'm now quite healthy. i've come to terms with a loss of my only child. i still miss his need of me, but i'm now a very happy person, together with my husband of 60 years. this country, your country today, britain, is now wrestling again with questions of how to view itself in the world, how open or closed its borders should be. what its attitude should be to people seeking refuge in this country, say, from conflict in syria or afghanistan or deep, deep poverty and troubles in africa. for you, as a kindertransport survivor, what do you make of that debate in britain today? i've found a wonderful charity called safe passage which brings today's unaccompanied child refugees to britain and so i'm supporting that and i think in that way, one has that cycle, the circle that

makes sense of the things that happen to us. it is horrific that children who have family in this country are not able to come to england in a legal way and this is what safe passage of course does. a final thought. you've talked about survivor's guilt. are you able to tell yourself today that yes, i did it, my achievements absolutely represent a success and that you can shed all notions of guilt? i've probably shed notions of guilt because if there's any antidote to survivor's guilt, it's compassion and for the last 25 years, i've been working as a philanthropist and i get enormous satisfaction and joy from what i do so that guilt has gone. i still feel that there are things that i can do and things that

i should do, things that i must do, things that i'm want to do, and that's what drives me. it has been a pleasure having you on hardtalk. dame stephanie shirley, thank you very much. thank you very much, stephen. hello once again. so it's a pretty decent weekend for many parts of the british isles. however, i suspect the way that monday's going to start for some, that's going to be but a distant memory, because if you're anywhere near that frontal system, which really doesn't want to move away very quickly from

the british isles, then it is going to be a soggy old start to the day. this is how it's shaping up first thing, with quite a bit of rain for the greater part of scotland, save the shetland isles. it should just about clear northern ireland in the first part of the day. it'll be there to be had across certainly a good part of england and wales. through the afternoon, we lose the intensity from the rain, save for the south—western quarter. best temperature on the afternoon about 16 or 17, pretty shabby for the time of year. the rain eventually clears away even from that south—western quarter, there's a ridge of high pressure building in. so that offers the prospect of a drier, brighter, chillier start to tuesday, for sure. temperatures widely across central and eastern areas in single figures. and it's a decent enough day, but again, here we bring in some very wet and very windy weather to finish off the afternoon across northern ireland and into the western side of scotland. where you keep the sunshine further to the south and east, well, we'll tick those temperatures up by two or three degrees or so. now, from tuesday into wednesday,

see the number of isobars we've got on the chart here. tuesday night a really windy one across the northern half of the british isles, and very wet too. couple of inches of rain, top gusts around 60 mph or so as we see it at the moment. this is wednesday, that weather front easing its way, weakening all the while, down and across england and wales. brighter skies following on behind, but the wind will be a feature of the day widely across the british isles. some of those gusts in exposed locations still exceeding a0 mph or so. temperatures really not bad. at least the wind is coming in, and there's plenty of it, from the west and the south—west, helping to boost the temperatures widely, across england and wales, up to around about 20, 21 or so. this little system was the remnants of a tropical storm that was sitting in the mid—atlantic and brings the prospect of yet more wet and windy fare back towards northern ireland, then onto scotland, to the north and west of england, the north of wales. again, generally speaking, the further south and east you are,

the drier and finer your day will be. and warm, too — some of that tropical air really boosting the temperatures by this stage, to around 22, possibly 23 degrees. now, once that system has quit the scene, then a high pressure is going to build in, not only for friday, but for a good part of the weekend, for a good part of the british isles, although you'll notice it doesn't keep the front away from the northern parts of scotland.

this is the briefing. i'm sally bundock. our top story: seeking a snap election for the second time. borisjohnson attempts to win the backing of parliament to push ahead with his brexit plans. the head of a us aid agency says hurricane dorian has left parts of the bahamas looking like they were hit by a ‘nuclear bomb‘. and a 5—set thriller, as rafael nadal beats daniil medvedev to win the us open final and stake a claim as the greatest men's player of all time. british airways grounded. the first—ever strike by the airline's pilots cripples