A biography for Emily Maitlishasn’t been written yet.
“I love a daily deadline.”
“I suddenly realize why David Attenborough is the giant he is. It is not just his geographic curiosity, not just his anthropological understanding, not just his gift for narration that simultaneously calms the soul and inspires the mind. It is that behind it all there is such a deep thinker.”
“My second TV assignment ever was to go to Cambodia to look at the state of the country in the dying days of the Khmer Rouge. I was naive, awkward, and not very good at writing to pictures.”
“Fanny and Alexander' blew me away. I was visiting my sister in her first year at university. It was my first foray into something dark.”
“As in life, so with television: timing is everything.”
“I find I process the news by listening to someone else's report.”
“I certainly don't want to be part of a media that forces confessions from people who are not going to behave any differently the next time round.”
“I have facial blindness. It's hugely embarrassing as it makes me seem supercilious or snobbish.”
“What I notice now is that a lot of the things that are said to us on camera, on air, are not particularly believed and quite often not true. It is an extraordinary position to be in. It is a really weird position to be in as a journalist.”
“I remember the Silver Jubilee clearly because we had a fancy dress street party in Sheffield. I dressed up as a Japanese girl with a too-big red kimono - cultural appropriation hadn't been invented in 1977. I was six.”
“Women often seem to have a fear of being 'found out'. Of thinking they've pulled the wool over their boss's eyes to get a job they don't deserve. I thought like that for years - but I'm massively over it now.”
“The people I enjoy most are the ones who don't stick to script.”
“There's no point meeting somebody with a meat cleaver the moment they open their mouth - because they're going to clam up, you're going to have lost your impact and the audience is going to hate you for not allowing anyone to say anything.”
“I think what I notice now is that a lot of the things that are said to us on camera on air are not particularly believed and quite often not true and its an extraordinary position to be in when you've had WhatsApp messages, text messages off record.”
“The hour or so I spent with the ninety-year-old David Attenborough was one of the most beatific of my life. An oddly religious term, I know, for a man who doesn't have much truck with religion, but it was the serenity of that time that will stay with me most.”
“I don't think I would move into politics, but our job is often about pulling things down. It's about why something won't work, which I think is valuable, but it's not always constructive.”