BBC diplomatic correspondent
Bridget Kendall was appointed as BBC diplomatic correspondent in November 1998.
Based in London she covers top foreign stories for radio and television news, reporting on foreign policy issues and their impact on Britain.
Bridget joined the BBC in 1983 as a radio production trainee for BBC World Service.
The following year she spent six months in television as a producer and presenter with BBC Two's Newsnight programme.
Returning to BBC World Service she worked as a producer and then editor and presenter on current affairs programmes 24 Hours, File On 4 and Newshour before moving to Moscow in 1989.
She has a particular interest in Russia and its relations with the West and spent a decade following political developments.
Bridget was Moscow correspondent from 1989 to 1995 and then as Washington correspondent from 1994 to 1998.
She was in Moscow to witness the power struggles in the Soviet Communist party as Mikhail Gorbachev tried to introduce reform, reported on the break-up of the Soviet Union and the subsequent internal conflicts in Chechnya, Georgia and Tadjikistan.
She sent eyewitness reports of the dramatic coup in August 1991 and later covered Boris Yeltsin's rise to power.
During the Nato campaign against Yugoslavia and the American led campaign in Afghanistan, she followed diplomatic and military developments on a daily basis for BBC News.
Bridget has interviewed several world leaders including President Putin live in Russia from the Kremlin as part of a worldwide internet webcast in March 2001.
Later that year she interviewed King Abdullah of Jordan for a tri-media event for the BBC and hosted a similar event in Moscow with former soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev in 2002.
Bridget was the first woman to win the coveted James Cameron Award for distinguished journalism in 1992 for her reports on events in the former Soviet Union.
Later that year, she won a Bronze Sony Radio Award for Reporter of the Year and was made an MBE in the 1994 New Year's Honours list.
Bridget was educated at the Perse School for Girls, Cambridge.
She read modern languages at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, spending two years in Russia on British Council Scholarships in 1977 and 1982.
Her postgraduate Soviet Studies took her from St Antony's College, Oxford, to Harvard, in the USA, where she spent two years as a Harkness Fellow in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.