Reeta Chakrabarti is a British journalist, newsreader, and correspondent for BBC News. She has been a news presenter for One, Six, and Ten, as well as for BBC Weekend News. More recently she has appeared frequently on the BBC News Channel and also sometimes on BBC World News. She has filed from throughout the UK and also reported extensively for the BBC around the world.

Who is Reeta Chakrabarti?

Reeta Chakrabarti is one of Britain’s most established journalists and news presenters. She is perhaps best known for her work at the BBC. Born on December 12, 1964, in Ealing, London, she always had a great interest in current affairs and storytelling. Reeta read English and French at Exeter College, Oxford, showcasing her passion for languages and culture.

She began as a radio journalist and quickly moved to television, where she rapidly rose the ranks. She has reported on many of the world’s biggest stories throughout her career—wars, political milestones, and social issues, among others.

Her authoritative yet empathetic delivery of news for flagship BBC programs, including the News at Ten and BBC News Channel, has given her much admiration. In addition to being a journalist, she is a fierce advocate for diversity and education and is now a chancellor at the University of York. She is a very good example of modern journalism by being committed to integrity.

Where is Reeta Chakrabarti from?

Reeta Chakrabarti was born on 12 December 1964 in Ealing, London, to an Indian Bengali family and grew up in Birmingham. As a teenager, she spent several years living in India, at the Calcutta International School in Calcutta and King Edward VI High School for Girls.

Chakrabarti studied English and French at Exeter College, Oxford, from 1984 to 1988, including a year in France. Of her time at Oxford, Chakrabarti said, “I loved my time there. There weren’t many people from my background at university then. But that didn’t stop my experience from being overwhelmingly good.

Career Highlights

BBC Radio 4

She started out as a producer on BBC Radio 4, working on the Today program, The World at One, and PM before becoming a reporter on 5 Live Breakfast, in which she covered the French presidential elections and the Dunblane massacre.

BBC Radio 1

She moved to BBC Radio 1 in 1992, where she worked on the news feature Newsbeat; she wrote and delivered news bulletins for Steve Wright In The Afternoon and News 92.

BBC News

She began working with the BBC in 1997, acting as a community affairs correspondent on the Stephen Lawrence inquest and subsequent public inquiry. Other domestic affairs stories have included coverage of the Damilola Taylor murder trial and health.

A Career Highlighted by Political and Educational Reporting

Since 1999, Chakrabarti has been a political correspondent at Westminster. She frequently appeared on both television and radio and reported from the BBC for BBC1, BBC2, the BBC News Channel, BBC Radio 4, and BBC Radio 5 Live on political stories. She has covered three UK general elections as well as many changes of party leaders, plus some of the most notable other stories, including Cash for Honours and MPs’ expenses. Periodically she covered live audience reactions to debates.

In 2010, she reported on education topics, including the tuition fees issue at universities, the introduction of free schools, the expansion of academies, and reforms in exams and curriculums. In 2013, reporting from South Korea, she exposed how students from East Asia outperformed those in Britain in several international league tables.

Reporting on Global Crises and Historic Events

She also reports on social issues and has stories on adoption, poverty, and social mobility in the UK. In 2016 and 2017, she broadcast live from a ship in the Mediterranean during the European migrant crisis. In 2017 and 2018, she presented live three times from Bangladesh and Myanmar on the Rohingya crisis.

She also anchored the BBC’s coverage of the 70th anniversary of the partition between India and Pakistan in 2017 and was among the main anchors for both the 2019 UK general election and the 2020 US presidential election transmitted directly from the newsroom. She also presented the BBC’s news coverage of COVID-19 during the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021.

In March 2022, Chakrabarti was the main BBC presenter in Lviv in western Ukraine, anchoring the news bulletins 10 days after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. In April 2022, she anchored the BBC’s coverage of the French presidential election from Paris. She has also appeared on BBC World and Radio 4’s The World Tonight.

Awards and Honours

In 2018, she was made an honorary fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. She was invested as an honorary doctor of letters by York St John University in 2018 and became chancellor of York St John University in 2019 and an honorary fellow of University College, London, in 2019. She is also an honorary fellow of the University of East London. In December 2022, Chakrabarti was among the teams of Exeter College, Oxford, who reached the semi-final for the BBC Two Christmas University Challenge.

What Does Reeta Chakrabarti’s Husband Do?

She is married to Paul Hamilton, a professor of English at Queen Mary University of London.

Who are Reeta Chakrabarti’s children?

Reeta and Paul have three children, and the family lives in north London. She has a daughter named Roxy, and two of her children are twins.

Personal Life and Hobbies

Her younger sister, Lolita Chakrabarti, is a British actress and writer, and her brother-in-law, Adrian Lester, is an actor. She is a great admirer of the poet John Keats and selected him as her specialist subject on the BBC television quiz Celebrity Mastermind, which was broadcast on 22 December 2016.

Chakrabarti is a patron of Pan Intercultural Arts, a UK charity that uses the arts to empower marginalized young people and unlock their potential. She is also a patron of the Oxford University Media Society and became a trustee for the Keats Shelley Memorial Association in 2021.

She was a judge for the David Cohen Prize for Literature 2021, which was won by the writer Colm Tóibín. In December 2021, Chakrabarti was named chair of the judging panel that will choose the Costa Book of the Year 2021.