An evening with Lyse Doucet

We are delighted to welcome the BBC's Chief International Correspondent, Lyse Doucet to West Kirby, to celebrate the publication of her first book, The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People's History of Afghanistan.

Join us on Sunday 21st September at 6:30pm, when Lyse will be in conversation, before answering questions from the audience and signing copies of The Finest Hotel in Kabul.

Tickets are £10 standard admission, or £28 including a copy of the book. Tickets are non-refundable and if you can't make the event and would like to reserve a signed copy, please email hello@thewestkirbybookshop.com and we'll be able to help.

This event is being held at West Kirby Grammar School, Graham Road, CH48 5DP, a short walk from the bookshop. Doors will open at 6pm.

We look forward to seeing you there!

About The Finest Hotel in Kabul:

When the Inter-Continental Kabul opened in 1969, Afghanistan’s first luxury hotel symbolised a dream of a modernising country connected to the world. More than fifty years on, the Inter-Continental is still standing. It has endured Soviet occupation, multiple coups, a grievous civil war, a US invasion and the rise, fall and rise of the Taliban. History lives within its scarred windows and walls.

Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent, has been checking into the Inter- Continental since 1988. And here, she uses its story to craft a richly immersive history of modern Afghanistan.

It is the story of Hazrat, the septuagenarian housekeeper who still holds fast to his Inter- Continental training from the hotel’s 1970s glory days – an era of haute cuisine and high fashion, when Afghanistan was a kingdom and Kabul was the ‘Paris of Asia’. It is the story of Abida, who became the first female chef to cook in the Inter-Con’s famous kitchen after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. And it is the lives of Malalai and Sadeq, the twenty- something staff who seized every opportunity offered by two decades of fragile democracy – only to witness the Taliban roaring back in 2021.

The result is a remarkably vivid history of how Afghans have survived a half century of destruction and disruption. It is the story of a hotel but also the story of a people.

About Lyse Doucet:

Lyse Doucet first arrived at the Kabul Inter-Continental Hotel on Christmas Day 1988, the day after her 30th birthday. A junior BBC reporter, she was there to cover the withdrawal of Soviet troops following their decade-long occupation of Afghanistan.

Today, Lyse is the BBC's Chief International Correspondent and has led BBC coverage of events ranging from the Arab Spring to the Sudanese Civil War. But she still visits the Inter-Continental Hotel whenever she is in Afghanistan. She counts many of its staff and fellow guests her close friends and here, for the first time, she tells their stories.