Hella Pick Pioneering British-Austrian Journalist

Hella Pick was born in Vienna, came to the UK on a Kindertransport and has lived in UK since 1939. She is a Graduate of the London School of Economics, was awarded a CBE in 2000, and received an honorary doctorate from Sussex University in 2018. She is a British-Austrian journalist who spent 35 years reporting for the Guardian in Washington, at the UN and all over Europe. Her memoir Invisible Walls was published in 2021

She was on the staff of the Guardian newspaper from 1961- 1997, working first as UN correspondent, later Washington correspondent, East-West affairs correspondent, Diplomatic Editor, and Associate Foreign Affairs Editor. She has been a frequent contributor to BBC news programs and appearances on German and Austrian TV.

Since 1998 she has worked a Senior consultant first for Lord Weidenfeld’s Club of Three and after its  foundation for his Institute of Strategic Dialogue, where she became Director of the Arts and Culture Programme organising international meetings on political/strategic, economic and arts issues, and also for five years an annual Europe-China Media exchange project. 

Hella has served on the Advisory Board of the German-Jewish Studies Centre at Sussex University for more than 10 years, and on behalf of Lord Weidenfeld was closely involved in the establishment of the Chair of Israel Studies at Sussex University.  She is currently acting in an advisory capacity for the establishment of the Sussex University Weidenfeld Institute of Jewish Studies 

She is the author of Simon Wiesenthal - A Life in Search of Justice published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (1996). Her latest book , her memoir is Invisible Walls – a Journalist in search of her Life’  was published by Weidenfeld&Nicolson (2021).