Syria to join US-led coalition fighting IS group

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Speaker 7 This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service.

Speaker 7 I'm Uncle Desai, and in the early hours of Tuesday, the 11th of November, these are our top stories.

Speaker 7 The US says Syria is joining the international coalition to defeat Islamic State Jihadis and is resuming diplomatic relations with Washington.

Speaker 7 It follows talks at the White House between Donald Trump and the Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharam.

Speaker 7 The US Senate has voted in favor of a compromise funding package to try to end the government shutdown.

Speaker 7 And also coming up in this podcast, the UK's Top Literary Award is handed out.

Speaker 8 Once it got some momentum and I felt the awards are going to be good, then it became a pleasurable process to write it, but the beginning was tough.

Speaker 7 We hear from the British-Hungarian author David Soloy who won the Booker Prize.

Speaker 7 The US has recruited a new member to its alliance of countries fighting the Islamic State group in the Middle East.

Speaker 7 Officials in Washington say Syria has joined the coalition after its president Ahmed Al-Shara met Donald Trump at the White House. The two countries have also resumed diplomatic relations.
Mr.

Speaker 7 Al-Shara is himself a former Islamist extremist with ties to al-Qaeda. But last year, he led the overthrow of the Syrian dictator Basha al-Assad and became the head of the new government.

Speaker 7 Since then, he's been trying to build bridges with the West, promising to bring stability to Syria. On Monday, Mr.
Al-Shara arrived at the White House without fanfare, entering through a side door.

Speaker 7 Afterwards, Mr. Trump said he liked and got along with him.

Speaker 9 We want to see Syria become

Speaker 9 a country that's very successful, and I think this leader can do it. I really do.
I think this leader can do it. And people said he's had a rough past.
We've all had rough pasts.

Speaker 9 But But he has had a rough past. And I think, frankly, if you didn't have a rough past, you wouldn't have a chance.

Speaker 7 Later in an interview with Fox News, President Al-Shara was asked whether his past as an extremist had come up during the meeting with President Trump.

Speaker 10 I think this is a matter of the past. Now, we did not discuss this actively.
We talked about the investment opportunities in the future in Syria.

Speaker 10 And so that Syria is no longer looked at as a security threat.

Speaker 10 It is now looked at as a geopolitical ally. It's a place where the United States can have great investments, especially extracting gas.

Speaker 7 Our State Department correspondent Tom Bateman told me more about the White House meeting.

Speaker 11 I think my sense was that the White House really wanted to work through these two kind of critical issues for either side.

Speaker 11 One for the Syrians is about getting more sanctions relief because Syria still has a devastated, basically cash-based economy and they need the U.S.

Speaker 11 Congress to lift the sanctions that were imposed on the Assad regime for its human rights abuses.

Speaker 11 And for the Americans, they wanted an agreement from the new leaders in Damascus that they will join the American-led military coalition, which is still fighting the Islamic State Group in parts of the country.

Speaker 7 It seems as though Miss al-Shara has been spending quite a large part of this year trying to build bridges with the West. So President Trump, did he seem receptive to this?

Speaker 7 And I guess there are still a lot of concerns about the ongoing violence in Syria, especially against ethnic minorities.

Speaker 11 Yeah, you know, President Trump has embraced Mr. Al-Shara.

Speaker 11 I mean, he sort of repeated this phrase he used before after the meeting, where he described him as a strong leader from a tough place who had a rough past. We've all had rough pasts, though.

Speaker 11 He said, He previously described him as an attractive guy. He sort of tends to admire what he calls toughness in leaders, and I think he sees that in Ahmed al-Sharra.

Speaker 11 This was a man who led an al-Qaeda affiliate that has now been accepted by the West as the best hope for a stable transition for Syria, but a man who had a $10 million U.S.

Speaker 11 bounty on his head, who was a designated global terrorist by Washington just until last Friday.

Speaker 11 So there is this move by the Americans, by the West and key Arab countries to try to give this new transitional administration the best possible run at trying to stabilize and secure Syria.

Speaker 11 But huge challenges, you know, not least of which are the risks of another slide into sectarian bloodshed.

Speaker 11 We've seen two very severe moments, really, of attacks on the Alawite minority, also the Druze minority over the last year.

Speaker 11 And the issue of integrating the Kurds and the Kurdish security forces into the central Damascus government still hasn't been solved.

Speaker 7 Aaron Powell, this goes to show that President Trump is willing to meet absolutely anyone. As you mentioned, this was a leader who had a bounty on his head a matter of days ago.

Speaker 7 There doesn't seem to be any boundaries as to who he'll meet and try to make deals with.

Speaker 11 You know, this isn't exclusive to the Trump administration.

Speaker 11 I mean, the Biden administration were really on the front foot with trying to build relations when Hayat Tiril al-Sham, the group that he led, basically, you know, toppled the Assab regime and then took Damascus.

Speaker 11 So, you know, this was across U.S. administrations, although I think stylistically, Mr.
Trump is, you know, he tends to embrace it.

Speaker 11 But so have European countries and key Arab allies of the Europeans and the Americans on this particular front.

Speaker 11 But I think the question then becomes how long that can be kept going, particularly among the Europeans, where they've talked about the fundamental need for inclusive representative government from Damascus.

Speaker 11 And there are signs that that is not really happening, or not in the way I think that many would have hoped.

Speaker 11 You know, stability may always come at a cost in these situations in transitioning out of a devastating 14-year civil war.

Speaker 11 So I think there's a recognition of that by Washington and particularly by the Trump administration that perhaps some of the more ambitious stuff around solving sectarian divisions and tensions in Syria might be harder to achieve.

Speaker 11 Mr. Trump tends to admire a strong man and the White House might think that's what's needed at the moment.
The risks of a slide back into despotism, into sectarian bloodshed remain very high in Syria.

Speaker 11 And how you prevent that, of course, will be an acute question going forward.

Speaker 7 Tom Bateman reporting.

Speaker 7 Politicians in Washington are a step closer to ending the longest U.S. government shutdown in the history of the United States after senators voted in favor of a compromise.

Speaker 7 Republicans got the 60 votes they needed to pass a measure to reopen the government after several Democrats voted with them.

Speaker 7 Now it will go to the House of Representatives, possibly on Wednesday, to adopt this deal. It will then be sent to President Trump to be signed.
John Thune, a Republican, is the U.S.

Speaker 7 Senate majority leader.

Speaker 13 I want to take the time to say thank you to my staff who have worked around the clock tirelessly now

Speaker 13 for the past six weeks. I know that the strain of these weeks has been immense,

Speaker 13 that you all have families, rent to meet, bills to pay, car and mortgage payments.

Speaker 13 And I'm grateful for all you have done to keep the Senate running and for all that you do every day,

Speaker 13 shutdown or no shutdown, to serve the Senate and to serve our country.

Speaker 7 The shutdown, which lasted 41 days, left government services suspended. Several Democrats broke ranks, angering many of their colleagues who labeled the move a betrayal.

Speaker 7 Some Democrats have called for the removal of the party's leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer. Our U.S.
correspondent David Willis joined us.

Speaker 17 Democrats, of course, had been holding out for an extension of health care subsidies for low-income Americans. Those subsidies are due to come to an end at the end of this year.

Speaker 17 But Republicans had insisted that they were not going to engage on that issue until the shutdown was over. And all the Democrats ended up with

Speaker 17 out of this, really, anchor, was a commitment from the Senate majority leader John Thune to hold a vote on that matter about a possible extension to the health care subsidies I mentioned by mid-December.

Speaker 17 There's no guarantee that the House would vote on any such measure.

Speaker 17 And that's infuriated members of the Democratic Party who did not want to see an end to this shutdown just yet and were making that a condition.

Speaker 17 And they've accused their colleagues, the eight Democrats, who voted in favour of betrayal, of surrender.

Speaker 17 And it's prompted calls once again, as you mentioned, for the removal of the party's leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, for failing to keep his caucus together.

Speaker 17 Even though it's worth pointing out that Mr.

Speaker 17 Schumer voted against the shutdown-ending deal that was voted on successfully tonight, and many Democrats saw last week's election victories, I think, as a validation of their shutdown strategy and did not want to capitulate.

Speaker 7 Is there anything that could get in the way, David, of finally ending this shutdown then?

Speaker 17 Well, we've seen during these 41 days cutbacks in food aid programs, more than a million government employees working without pay, and thousands of flight delays or cancellations.

Speaker 17 And that's one thing that could get in the way of this move now going before the House of Representatives.

Speaker 17 Flight delays that have resulted from thousands of air traffic controllers staying at home because they are not being paid could impede some lawmakers from returning to the capital, to Washington, D.C.,

Speaker 17 from their districts.

Speaker 17 They've been out of session for more than 50 days, the House having been closed throughout the shutdown, but they need to get back to Washington DC in order, it's thought, to vote in favour of this measure, which would then go to the desk of President Trump ahead of paving the way for the shutdown to end next weekend.

Speaker 7 And before you go, David, this shutdown has lasted up to 41 days now. How has this affected the lives of American citizens day to day?

Speaker 17 Oh, it's had a tremendous effect. I mentioned there are cutbacks in food aid programs, what are known as food stamps here, for about 42 million or so low-income Americans who rely on those handouts.

Speaker 17 I mentioned the thousands of flight delays and cancellations, and we've had more than a million government employees working without pay throughout this long 41-day stoppage.

Speaker 17 And it's been very, very harmful to certain sectors of the economy. And much relief will be expressed, I think, when this shutdown does finally come to an end.

Speaker 7 Our U.S. correspondent David Willis.

Speaker 7 The Indian capital Delhi has been put on high alert following Monday's huge blast in a car near the historic Red Fort.

Speaker 7 At least eight people were killed and 20 others were injured in the blast on a crowded road.

Speaker 7 The Home Minister, who visited the scene, said a meeting involving senior officials would be held later on Tuesday. A correspondent, Archana Shukla, filed this report from the scene.

Speaker 18 Investigation into what caused it is still ongoing. So far, investigative agencies have not said whether it was a deliberate blast or if they have identified a suspect.

Speaker 18 We understand that the senior security officials are going to have a meeting in just some time from now, and more details may emerge post that.

Speaker 18 But you know, this is something that has really shook the city, it shook the country. A blast of this nature has not happened in the capital city in many years, and this is a very, very famous site.

Speaker 18 It's a very crowded street. The Red Fort is the 17th century fortress where Indian prime ministers deliver their independent speech every year.

Speaker 18 And the street is usually very busy with tourists, people, traders, etc. And in the evening, it was the time when people were going back home.

Speaker 18 And the impact was so high that people said they could hear it at least a kilometer or two away. And the remains, the charred remains of the vehicles here show the impact of that blaze.

Speaker 18 The security agencies have said, and even the home Home Minister here in India have said, they're not ruling out any possibilities. They're looking at all angles in the investigation.

Speaker 18 It's the anti-terror team that's also on the ground, security agencies, forensic, and all hands are on the ground.

Speaker 18 Red alert and high alert has been put across the capital city here, also in Mumbai and some of the big tourist places across India.

Speaker 7 Now to the UK's top literary award that is open to novels written in the English language. This year's Book of Prize has gone to David Sloy for his novel Flesh.

Speaker 7 Roddy Doyle, who won the prize in 1993, was the chair of the judges this year. And he was joined on the panel by Sex in the City Sarah Jessica Parker.
So what's Flesh all about?

Speaker 7 I put that question to Charlotte Gallagher.

Speaker 5 David Sloy is a British Hungarian author. So his father is Hungarian and that's why he decided to set some of this book Flesh in Hungary.

Speaker 5 And it's a really interesting story about this character called Ishvan.

Speaker 5 And Ishvan doesn't really say much in the book and things happen to him and he doesn't really ever mention it like huge things so the reader is left guessing what he thinks about things and sometimes you think is this man totally passive does he have opinions on anything and you're left trying to work it out for yourself but I would say it is an absolutely brilliant read and it's a story as well about masculinity what it means to be a man also class and wealth it's absolutely fascinating and it's one of those books.

Speaker 5 I started reading it and I thought, I do not like this character. By the end of it, I was totally absorbed and I wanted him to win.
I was really invested in him winning in this book.

Speaker 5 So I'd say it's definitely a very worthy winner. You know, the short list was brilliant.
There were some fantastic authors in there, but I think Flesh was an incredible book.

Speaker 5 And I spoke to David just after he won, and he was feeling a little bit stunned.

Speaker 8 I wasn't really sure how the book would be received. I guess I didn't really have a very strong expectation for how the book would be received.

Speaker 8 It is quite an oblique book in a way. It doesn't sort of tell the reader how to interpret it.
Ishran himself is not an articulate character who explains himself to the reader.

Speaker 8 So I kind of knew what I was trying to do with the book. But I wasn't at all sure until the book was published and sort of started being read.

Speaker 8 that that would be how readers perceived it too. But by and large, I think it is, which is really fantastic.

Speaker 5 And have you thought about what you're going to spend the £50,000 on?

Speaker 5 Last year they sent a bicycle.

Speaker 8 That's a very expensive bicycle.

Speaker 3 Yeah that's what I think. Very expensive bike.

Speaker 8 I probably won't spend it all on one thing.

Speaker 8 I will probably maybe will go on a nice little holiday but mostly I guess it will just be keeping the wolf a little further from the door.

Speaker 5 And you said you started this after you couldn't finish another novel and then you started this novel. So was there that pressure kind of on you thinking I need to finish this?

Speaker 8 Yeah, I mean, there was a real pressure. I think I felt more pressure then than any other time in my career as a writer.
Pressure to write something good and to write something good now.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 8 And that made it quite tough at the beginning working on this book.

Speaker 8 Once it had sort of got going, once it had got some momentum, and I felt that it was going to be good, then it became a pleasurable process to write it. But at the beginning, it's tough.

Speaker 5 I know your Wikipedia has already been updated, so Book of Prize-winning authorities.

Speaker 19 That is fast.

Speaker 5 Yeah, someone was watching and they've updated it already so that's what you now are book a prize winning author I still haven't quite got my head around it but it's it's great

Speaker 7 lovely to hear from David Soloy the winner also personally I really need to know from you SJP Sarah Jessica Parker aka Carrie Bradshaw was also there bringing a touch of glamour tell me more She was.

Speaker 5 So she was one of the judges this year and we spoke to her on the red carpet and she said she was just thrilled to be asked. She said it's this prestigious literary award.

Speaker 5 She's known about it her whole life. She loves reading.
She says she can't stop reading. So she was so excited to be one of the judges.

Speaker 5 And of course, as you said, Anca, she did just bring this Hollywood sparkle to the Booker Prize. I mean, she looked amazing.
She looked fantastic.

Speaker 5 She had this gorgeous handbag that seemingly was covered in diamonds. But you could really tell as well that she was invested in the prize.
and who won.

Speaker 5 And I said, you know, when you read these books, do you think, oh, I want to make this into a film? I want to make this into a TV series, a play.

Speaker 5 And And she said, no, I just read for the absolute love of reading. And you could tell that she was just really genuinely happy to be here.

Speaker 7 And just like that, she was off our very own girl about town, Charlie Gallagher, at the Booker Prize event in London.

Speaker 7 Coming up, a Chinese woman will be sentenced for her role in a Bitcoin scam worth billions of dollars.

Speaker 20 Many families have been broken up. People have been left without money to pay for medical treatments.
All this has really happened.

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Speaker 7 The body which represents international media in Israel and the Palestinian territories has urged Israeli officials to take immediate action to halt attacks on reporters by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank.

Speaker 7 The Foreign Press Association cited two incidents involving journalists during this year's olive harvest.

Speaker 7 There's been an escalation in attacks by settlers on Palestinians harvesting olive trees this year. Our Middle East analyst Sebastian Usher is in Jerusalem and sent this report.

Speaker 16 On Saturday, a group of Palestinian villagers, activists and journalists came under attack from settlers in an area close to the Palestinian village of Beta, which has been a flashpoint for several years.

Speaker 16 And Israeli human rights activist Jonathan Pollock says that one of the journalists, Ranin Sawafta of Reuters, was the focus of the settlers' attack.

Speaker 8 We beat her up without mercy, continuing to stone her while she was on the ground, and then continuing to attack everyone who tried to come to her help and everyone who was running away from several sites.

Speaker 16 Both Raneen Sawafta and a Reuters security adviser were wearing protective gear, clearly marked with the word press. Several other people were also injured in the incident.

Speaker 16 The Foreign Press Association says that journalists, both local and foreign, have clearly been targeted as they document what the organisation calls an unprecedented level of unchecked violence against Palestinians during this year's olive harvest, which has seen olive groves set on fire.

Speaker 16 The Israeli army, which dispatched soldiers to the scene, has said that it condemns any act of violence and will continue to operate to maintain security and order in the area.

Speaker 16 But activists working to document the attack say that violent settlers are rarely held to account.

Speaker 16 One suspect has, however, been arrested over an incident last month in which a Palestinian grandmother was injured as she was harvesting olives near Ramallah.

Speaker 7 Sebastian Usher in Jerusalem. A massive clean-up operation is underway in the Philippines after Typhoon Fung Wong left entire villages completely submerged in flood water.

Speaker 7 The Philippines is no stranger to typhoons, and good preparations and well-timed evacuations probably saved many lives.

Speaker 7 Our Southeast Asia correspondent Jonathan Head filed this update from eastern Luzon.

Speaker 4 pets, furniture, possessions, really worried about how high the water levels were going to go simply because of the enormous quantities of of rainfall that were dumped by typhoon phenwang.

Speaker 4 The winds were not as powerful as some of the strongest typhoons the Philippines experienced but the amounts of rain were really hard to deal with. The water levels have actually gone down a lot.

Speaker 4 So that's a sign that for all of that water now there'll be some relief as those water levels go down. People will be able to go back into communities.
Cleaning up is going to take a long time.

Speaker 4 I mean, it's an awful thing to say. Filipinos are used to this.
They're very good at it.

Speaker 4 People who live in these kind of poor communities really improvise, but they probably do need quite a bit of help to get themselves back on their feet.

Speaker 4 Then there are communities that are still cut off, where roads have been either washed away or bridges have been flooded, and where in particular there have been quite a number of landslides reported.

Speaker 4 That's always expected during very heavy rainfall. And we are hearing of a number of landslides.
There's one about 150 kilometers north of here where four people and a family were killed.

Speaker 4 But nothing bigger than that so far. So if in the end the death toll stays as it is, it's in single figures at the moment.

Speaker 4 I think most Filipinos will feel that they got off relatively lightly, albeit this is just one typhoon after a series of natural disasters.

Speaker 7 Jonathan Head in eastern Luzon.

Speaker 7 A Chinese woman at the heart of the UK's largest seizure of cryptocurrency is due to be sentenced on Tuesday in London for the role she played in a multi-billion dollar fraud.

Speaker 7 Following an investigation by London's Metropolitan Police, Chian Ji Minh was convicted of trying to launch a 61,000 Bitcoin assets now worth around $6.5 billion

Speaker 7 taken from investors in her native China. Tony Han from the BBC's Global China unit has the story.

Speaker 15 In this promotional video, Lan Tian Gure makes big promises.

Speaker 15 Invest in its cryptocurrency and you'll get massive returns. The mastermind of the scheme was a middle-aged woman called Tianjimian.

Speaker 15 More than a hundred thousand people across China invested. A man we are calling Yu, who spoke to us on condition of anonymity, took out loans and invested everything into the company.

Speaker 20 I suppose we were just too weak to resist.

Speaker 20 They just pumped up our dreams until we lost all self-control, all critical judgment.

Speaker 15 For a while, he was getting daily returns. But then, in 2017, it all came crashing down.
Law enforcement now say the whole thing was a massive scam.

Speaker 15 Yu's marriage collapsed, and he found himself mired in debt.

Speaker 20 Many families have been broken up. People have been left without money to pay for medical treatments.

Speaker 20 All this has really happened.

Speaker 15 When Chinese police started investigating Tian Jimian, she fled China for the UK, taking with her a laptop loaded with Bitcoin bought with investors' money.

Speaker 15 Posing as a jewelry dealer, she started trying to turn her cryptocurrency into hard cash and real estate.

Speaker 15 When she tried to buy a lavish home in North London, she came to the attention of the UK police. The moment they raided her house is captured in this body cam footage.

Speaker 15 An officer found Tian in her bedroom.

Speaker 23 Hello, madam. I'm pretty sure you're in bed.
I've just got to record down your name, if that is alright. So, what's your first name, please?

Speaker 15 Detective Constable Joe Ryan was on the raid.

Speaker 1 The whole house, a very large house, fairly messy, and there was cash almost everywhere. Thousands of pounds, bundles of £20,000 here.

Speaker 15 As well as cash, D.C. Ryan and his team found laptops full of cryptocurrency that amounted to 61,000 Bitcoin, today worth several billion dollars, the largest cryptocurrency seizure in UK history.

Speaker 15 A UK court is now deciding who will get that money. But only a small fraction of the victims have stepped forward to make a claim.

Speaker 15 A Chinese lawyer representing victims told us that many have struggled to gather evidence sufficient to meet the legal standard in the UK.

Speaker 15 The Crown Prosecution Service is in the process of setting up a separate compensation mechanism, but the details are still unclear. You and the other former investors are watching closely.

Speaker 20 We all read Sherlock Holmes' books when we were younger. And in our minds, that's still the image of the real detective.
To find all this Bitcoin, of course, we're very grateful.

Speaker 20 Here in China, we hope that we can get the capital returned to us. That's our great hope.
To be able to save the victims of Lantian Guri, who are struggling and suffering, even to save their lives.

Speaker 20 What a noble act that would be.

Speaker 7 And if you'd like to hear more, please search for the Chinese crypto queen. You can find that on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your BBC podcasts from.

Speaker 7 It's 100 years since the birth of Richard Burton, the son of a Welsh miner who rose to become acting royalty.

Speaker 7 He starred in many films, including The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and of course Cleopatra, which is where he met Elizabeth Taylor, who he married twice.

Speaker 7 Here he is reading the opening line of Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood for the BBC in January 1954.

Speaker 24 To begin at the beginning.

Speaker 24 It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and Bible-black, the cobbled streets silent and the hunched, quarters and rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the slow black, slow,

Speaker 24 black, crow-black fishing boat bobbing sea.

Speaker 7 To mark a hundred years since his birth, a new documentary is being released about his life and career. Adrian Sibley is the director of the BBC documentary, Richard Burton, Wild Genius.

Speaker 1 I think a lot of a certain generation know about Richard Burton, but it's remarkable about my daughter, who's 18, had no idea who he was at all.

Speaker 1 You know, she thought I was talking about Tim Burton, the director of Wednesday.

Speaker 1 So for me, it was really important, and I felt that to celebrate his centenary, to get across the most remarkable story. I mean, very few actors have got a story like him.

Speaker 1 He comes from a mining background in Wales where acting was non-existent. That said, you know, he picked it up and had this remarkable rise.

Speaker 1 So I really wanted to get across the impact of how he'd come from where he did and achieved what he did.

Speaker 25 How do you approach a character like that and reflect all of the different facets of their personality?

Speaker 1 The contradictions within Burton are part of what makes him great in many ways.

Speaker 1 I mean, if you take a film like The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, John Le Carrier, a novel that translated a few years after it was a bestseller into a movie with Burton, he's amazing in it because he really shows that there's something else going on inside him.

Speaker 1 You know, those contradictions are what make him fascinating. You know, once he rode to conquer Hollywood and become a very successful actor, he had to deal with the fact that he'd left behind.

Speaker 1 who he was in a way, you know, his Welsh roots. And I think he was never at ease with that.
You know, he was never at ease with the role of being an actor.

Speaker 1 I think he would have preferred to be a writer. He wrote some amazing diaries that were published after he passed away.

Speaker 25 I find it sort of particularly interesting. There are some actors, you know, where they're from, their roots, it's not necessarily an important part of who they are.

Speaker 25 And we don't necessarily know that much about it. But with him, as you say, it really had an impact on everything he was and everything he did.
And it's notable that you mentioned other Welsh actors.

Speaker 25 There are certain countries, certain parts of certain countries where that becomes such a part, a vital part of a person's character.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, he's a cultural icon in Wales.

Speaker 1 And he never left Wales in some ways. You know, he enjoyed the rugby.
You know, he was always the one to back the Welsh side. He was a rugby player himself.
He sort of was imbued with Welshness.

Speaker 1 But at the same time, ironically, his voice was English.

Speaker 1 In order to succeed, he used this voice. I think there was a line of somebody saying that, you know, Richard Burton conquered the world and it wasn't even in his own language.

Speaker 1 And in some ways, that's true. His voice is just so powerful.
You know, I wanted to make sure in the documentary I didn't do loads of Welsh choirs singing along, you know, because it becomes a cliche.

Speaker 1 Because Burton was something else. He really sort of, you know, managed to achieve great things, even with the issues of his drinking and his early death, really.

Speaker 1 You know, he's an Icarus figure, Burton. So brilliant.
Came from Wales and suddenly was on the West End stage selling out the old Vic as Hamlet and was remarkable.

Speaker 1 So I was fascinated with what happened to him and finding out, and it was a privilege to make a film about him.

Speaker 7 Anna Foster, who is speaking to Adrian Sibley.

Speaker 7 And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this episode or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email.

Speaker 7 The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.

Speaker 7 and you can also find us on x at bbc world service use the hashtag global newspod this edition was mixed by kai perry and the producer was ed horton the editor is karen martin and i'm uncy until next time goodbye

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