Brian Hanrahan

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Brian Hanrahan (born 22 March 1949, Middlesex) was the Diplomatic Editor for BBC News and a well known correspondent. Recently, he has presented The World at One on BBC Radio Four and previously appeared on regular cover shifts on the rolling news channel BBC News 24.

Hanrahan was educated at the St Ignatius' College (grammar school) in Stamford Hill, Tottenham. He studied politics at the University of Essex. He joined the BBC in 1970 as a photographic stills clerk, then became a scriptwriter, then duty editor in the TV newsroom. He became the BBC's Northern Ireland correspondent. He was a member of an amateur dramatic society.

When on HMS Hermes, he was responsible for one of the most memorable journalistic moments of the Falklands War, with the line I'm not allowed to say how many planes joined the raid, but I counted them all out and I counted them all back. This got him around the reporting restrictions placed by military intelligence, so that he could say that all the British Harrier jets had returned safely without saying how many there were. It has become a prime example of good reporting under pressure.

In the 1980s, he was based in Hong Kong, then in Moscow in the 1980s and 1990s.