Broken Threads: Partition Stories | Mishal Husain in conversation with Anita Anand

The lives of celebrated journalist Mishal Husain’s grandparents were forever changed in 1947, when the new nation-states of India and Pakistan were established. For years, she had a partial story, a patchwork of memories and anecdotes: hurried departures, lucky escapes from violence, and homes never seen again. Decades later, a fragment of an old sari led Husain on a journey through time, using letters, diaries, memoirs, and audio tapes to trace four lives shaped by the Raj, a world war, Independence, and Partition. Together with podcaster and writer Anita Anand, they discuss the remnants of empire, lost families, traditions, and shared histories.
Mishal Husain presents BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme and Today Debates as well as the news on BBC One. She was previously an international news anchor for the BBC, based in Singapore and Washington as well as London. She was the first reporter to have access to the school attacked by the Taliban in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 2014. Her first book was The Skills: How to Win at Work.
Anita Anand is an award-winning radio and television journalist. She is the author of Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary; Kohinoor, The History of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond - with William Dalrymple; and The Patient Assassin, for which she won the Penn Hessell Tiltman Award for History Book of The Year. Anand was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of London in 2024. She presents the internationally acclaimed Empire podcast with Dalrymple which has over 30 million downloads to date.
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