Karen Bartlett is a writer, journalist and film maker.
Karen writes for The Times, The Sunday Times,The Guardian, WIRED and Newsweek. In broadcast Karen has made documentaries for the BBC World Service, and directed a series on the economic meltdown.
Karen’s book 'Architects of Death' about Topf and Sons will be published in March 2018. She is also the author of 'After Auschwitz', a critically acclaimed biography about Dusty Springfield, and a book about disease eradication in the Twentieth Century.
Growing Up X
Fifty years after he was killed, the daughter of Malcolm X wants to make sure her father isn't written out of history Half way down a winding country road in New York’s wealthy Westchester County, one of America’s most famous revolutionaries lies buried under three feet of crisp white snow. I...
Newsweek
How one man gave Congo’s women hope
Life is hell for women caught up in the conflict in the Congo. But one remarkable doctor helps survivors to build a future Why are the lives of African women worthless? It’s a question that Denis Mukwege asks every day that he works with the raped and mutilated women of the Democratic Republic...
The Times - World
‘If they gave me a house, I’d take it tomorrow’
All I want is to die under this mountain.” Noor Ebrahim, a slightly-built former messenger for Reader’s Digest, has returned to the area where he grew up. Now retired, he likes to remember the old days; he can point out his school — “it was tough” — the mosque where his family prayed and the spot...
The Times - World
Momma D: Dionne Warwick, the Grande Dame of Divas
She learnt her stagecraft from Marlene Dietrich; 50 years on, she’s mentor to Whitney Houston and P. Diddy Dionne Warwick opens up her arms in a stage bow: “I’m looking pretty good, don’t you think,” she says. The singer seems slightly surprised to be turning 70, and, with pearly white teeth a...
The Times - Arts
India's Barefoot Revolution
What would it be like if women ran the world? In some parts of India, it’s already happening If all revolutions begin in unlikely locations, few could be as unpromising as Borda. It’s a poor village in the poorest district of one of the poorest states in India. Only the blasting from a nearby ...
The Times - World
It’s murder on your mobile, says The Killing’s Sarah Lund
Hit crime drama The Killing is back for a second series, and Karen Bartlett talks mobile phone forensics with actress Sofie Gråbøl Detective Sarah Lund is a Luddite. The loner heroine of Denmark’s hit crime drama The Killing is as much of a 70s relic as her Faroe sweaters: She makes notes by h...
Technology
Skateistan: How skateboarding took off with Afghan kids
It’s no surprise that in a world full of rules most kids want to do something with no organisation, and no adults. “This country has more restrictions than just about any other,” Oliver Percovich says, explaining how his own passion for freedom and fun led to groups of boys and girls flying acros...
The Times - World
Life and Love with 'The Greatest': Muhammad Ali
When Yolanda “Lonnie” Williams was six years old she looked out of her front door in Louisville, Kentucky, and saw an energetic young man holding court to a wide-eyed gaggle of neighbourhood boys, including her brother. “Who’s that big man?” she asked her mother, not knowing that the answer wo...
The Times - Arts
Polio's Last Stand
Eradicating the Last 1% of Polio Is Deadly But Essential When 40-year-old Liberian civil servant Patrick Sawyer died of Ebola earlier this year in hospital in Lagos, having carried the disease from his home country to Nigeria, global health workers feared the epidemic would spread in West Af...
Newsweek
Bringing Anne Frank Home – to Germany
Like many people in their seventies and eighties, Buddy Elias and his wife Gertie are downsizing – clearing out the attic and getting rid of several generations’ worth of papers, clutter and possessions from their family home in Basel, Switzerland. Unlike most other pensioners, however, Elias is ...
Newsweek
A Race Apart: the beauty queens of the apartheid era
The Miss World finalists are now at the World Cup, but the women who represented South Africa in its past have divided memories So far the game has not been beautiful for the World Cup’s “33rd official team”. They have gone largely unnoticed in South Africa’s impressive new stadiums, despite d...
The Times - World
Maki Mandela: “As Nelson's child, I can say I am proud of him”
In the week that London marks the statesman's 90th birthday, his daughter reveals how she overcame her resentment that he was a father to the world, but not to her Nelson Mandela arrives in London today for what is likely to be his last major public appearance; a 90th birthday charity concert ...
The Times - World
The Vagina Monologues turns ten
Eve Ensler transformed the New Orleans Superdome into ‘Superlove' for a celebrity-studded event to campaign against violence towards women Few people know that New Orleans is the vagina of America. Few would suggest it. “It is fertile. It's a delta. And everyone wants to party there,” explains...
The Times - Arts
Tony McLaughlan plays bass guitar in a band and enjoys skiing, quiz nights and photography. “I’m an ordinary electrician from Luton,” he said. He pursues his hobbies alongside his job; the difference is that when he fin-ishes the afternoon shift he emerges into a world where it is snowing and seals are playing on the beach in front of ice cliffs.
In November, McLaughlan, 49, left Luton and joined the British Antarctic Survey at the Rothera research station on the Antarctic peninsula. He did so knowing that he was committing himself to 18 months in some of the most hostile conditions in the world. “I haven’t been through a winter here yet,” he said. “But by the end of March we’ll be completely cut off until October.”
The sea will freeze over and stop shipping, while snow and wind make it impossible for planes to land. Along with only 20 other “winterers” as they are known, McLaughlan will live on the base in 24-hour darkness, with temperatures dropping as low as -40C.
“In the summer we had 24-hour daylight, which was hard to get used to. I missed the stars. Now we have an hour or two of darkness and I can see the night sky again. Soon it will be dark all the time. I don’t know how I’ll react, but it was the winter that I signed up for. That’s the challenge for me, psychologically and physically.”
Each year the British Antarctic Survey recruits up to 40 technical support staff, including carpenters, chefs, electricians and plumbers, to join scientists doing research at the five British bases. The organisation has been operating in the region for 60 years, and has a staff of 400 studying marine biology, geology and wildlife.
Jill Thompson, who heads technical services based in Cambridge, said a good candidate needed a sense of adventure and an open mind, combined with excellent practical skills – and the willingness to cope with unexpected situations. “You can’t go out and order a part if something goes wrong,” she said. “We are our own emergency services.”
The bases make their own drinking water, operate sewage-treatment plants, and have a sophisticated heating system that runs on aviation fuel. Things do go wrong – six years ago a building caught fire and burnt down, although nobody was injured.
“The biggest factor here is the cold,” said McLaughlan. “Everything revolves around the cold. Doors freeze shut, equipment can fail. If you go out walking you could fall down a crevasse, so we have to stay linked together. The frozen sea could collapse – and you do not want to fall into the water in the Antarctic. Even in summer we are a four-hour flight from South America.”
Though the climate itself is a hazard, the greatest difficulty is perhaps coping with the isolation. It is too expensive, and remote, for family visits – so employees have to rely on phone calls and the internet. What can happen to 18 men, and three women, cut off from the rest of the world in sub-zero temperatures for an entire winter sounds like the start of a psychological thriller.
McLaughlan said that “being able to work together harmoniously in a small team is very important”. He applied to work with the British Antarctic Survey after separating from his wife, but said that the Antarctic was no place to run away from personal problems. “It’s not like joining the French foreign legion. You don’t go there to reflect on the things that have gone wrong with your life – it’s too extreme for that.”
Thompson explained that while the British Antarctic Survey usually avoided formal counselling, all medical staff on site were trained to deal with psychological problems, and there was a 24-hour phone line to Cambridge. “We try to get managers to sort out things on site if any problems arise – that’s the best way to help the team bond. There is usually a peak of personal tension, followed by the good times – and it’s better if people can work through it together.”
These days the British Antarctic Survey actively recruits more women and a greater age range. Thompson said: “We’ve found the teams are better balanced when they have women and a range of people from young men in their twenties to older people in their fifties. But most of the staff are still men, and under 35.”
Marine biologist Katrin Linse said that gender had never been a problem in the 10 trips she had made to the region over the past 13 years. “There are more women now than there used to be, but for me one of the good things about Antarctica is that those points of conflict that arise between men and women, and between scientists and support staff, are dissolved by the sheer harshness of the conditions. If we didn’t all pull together we wouldn’t survive.”
Linse said the experience was tense, difficult and inspiring – and one that could never be replicated. “I had never seen an iceberg before. I had never seen a penguin. You get off the plane and you can actually hear the air blowing around you. The sunset was in colours that I could not have imagined – and in the evening you play darts over the radio with people from the other international bases. The friends I made have become my friends for life.”
People soon become immersed in the world of the base and divorced from life back home. “They miss trees and grass, but they tell me they don’t miss mobile phones, cars or politics,” said Thompson. “How Gordon Brown is doing in the opinion polls becomes somewhat irrelevant.”
The starting salary for technical staff joining an Antarctic base is £23,000 and may be tax free under certain circumstances. Food, transport and accommodation are provided, and contracts can be for anything between 4 and 32 months.
While recession-hit Britain shivers in a wintry economic climate, Thompson said the British Antarctic Survey offered the chance to Go South. “It is an intense opportunity. We think it offers good terms and conditions, but nobody goes to the Antarctic for the money. It’s an experience, rather than a job.”
Welcome to my website. I hope these pages give you a flavour of some of my work in books, print, onl…
Last week I was in Istanbul attending a Youth Forum for teenagers from around the world. But not eve…
When Nelson Mandela retired after serving one five-year term as President of South Africa in 1999 he…
I’ve just returned from China, after a gap of about 16 years, and I met these undergraduates – comin…
Eradicating the Last 1% of Polio Is Deadly But Essential
When 40-year-old Liberian civil servan…
When Yolanda “Lonnie” Williams was six years old she looked out of her front door in Louisville,…
She learnt her stagecraft from Marlene Dietrich; 50 years on, she’s mentor to Whitney Houston and …
What would it be like if women ran the world? In some parts of India, it’s already happening
If…
*Life is hell for women caught up in the conflict in the Congo. But one remarkable doctor helps surv…
All I want is to die under this mountain.” Noor Ebrahim, a slightly-built former messenger for Rea…
Hit crime drama The Killing is back for a second series, and Karen Bartlett talks mobile phone foren…
It’s no surprise that in a world full of rules most kids want to do something with no organisation…
Fifty years after he was killed, the daughter of Malcolm X wants to make sure her father isn’t writt…
Like many people in their seventies and eighties, Buddy Elias and his wife Gertie are downsizing –…
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