© Chloe Hadjimatheou
Radio
Lucy is an award winning radio presenter with over 30 years of experience. Over the years, her documentaries have received prizes from Amnesty International, The Foreign Press Association, The Sony Radio Awards, New York Festivals Radio Awards and The ECHO European TV and Radio Awards.
Last Supper
A renowned restaurant in Berlin which cast itself as a symbol of breaking bread across religious and political divides has just gone out of business. Is it just another victim of rising rents and economic instability? Lucy Ash pulled up a chair as one of its last diners.
Lesia Khomenko: Art and war
Lucy Ash has been to Kyiv to witness the creation of Khomenko’s largest works to date, including one which mirrors Kyiv railway station’s staircase, where it will be hung, crowded with figures, symbolising the nation defending its land, culture and democracy.
The Man Who Played The Kremlin's Tune
Tikhon Khrennikov was the most powerful - and controversial - figure of 20th century Soviet music. Lucy Ash uncovers the contradictions of a man who thrived under a system that crushed others.
Faith on the Russia-Ukraine frontline
Lucy Ash hears from two military chaplains who live alongside troops on the Ukrainian side of the trenches.
Troubadour of the Caucasus
Lucy Ash explores the life and legacy of Armenian filmmaker Sergei Parajanov, a giant of world cinema. Soviet officials tried to ban him but he continues to inspire global artists.
Assignment: Russia's Church in Texas
Increasing numbers of US Catholics and Protestants are embracing Eastern Orthodoxy.
Lucy Ash has been to Texas – one of the most religious states in the US – to meet some new converts.
Start the Week: On Freedom
Timothy Snyder, Oksana Maksymchuk and Lucy Ash discuss tyranny and freedom in the US, Russia and Ukraine, with Tom Sutcliffe.
Is Russia waging a “holy war”?
What role does religion play in the Ukraine war?
Producers: Arsenii Sokolov, Elliot Ryder and Ivana Davidovic.
Heart and Soul: Russia’s Africa crusade
How Moscow is using divisions within Orthodox Christianity to extend its power in Africa.
Film-maker Iryna Tsilyk: Animating Ukraine’s war
Iryna Tsilyk has won awards for her documentaries in east Ukraine. However after Russia’s full-scale invasion she’s decided to tell her own story in a new way - through animation.
Shostakovich and the Battle for Babi Yar
How a holocaust massacre in Ukraine and an unflinching poem inspired one of the greatest choral works of the 20th century – Shostakovich’s 'Babi Yar' Symphony.
Producer: Tatyana Movshevich
War Photography in Ukraine
Mykhaylo Palinchak was the official photographer of Ukraine’s former president and now captures the horrors of the Russian invasion. Olexiy Sai, a graphic designer and artist talks about the new work he created from 6500 images taken by Ukraine’s army of war photographers.
Producer: Andrea Kidd
Love-bombing Estonia’s Russian Speakers
For the first time Estonia’s annual Tallinn Music Week is held in Narva, a city on the Russian border. Against the backdrop of war in Ukraine, can this festival do anything to unite Estonia’s Russian speakers?
Producer: Phoebe Keane
Dying to hunt in France
A string of fatal hunting accidents has led for calls for tighter control over one of the most popular pastimes in France.
Public opinion, concerned about safety and animal rights, is hardening and the battle for la France Profonde is on.
Producer: Phoebe Keane
Poland’s Fractured Borderlands
A battle of wills between Belarus and the EU leaves a border community divided about how to deal with an unfolding humanitarian disaster.
Producers: Eva Krysiak and Grzegorz Sokol
Tchaikovsky's Island of Inspiration
For this Sunday Feature on Radio 3, Lucy Ash recreates Tchaikovsky's voyage 155 years ago to an island monastery and meets some singing monks to discover the remarkable story behind his First Symphony in G minor.
Producer: Tatyana Movshevich
Editor: Penny Murphy
Northern Ireland’s Ceasefire Babies
In the UK’s most disputed region, a new generation now seem less interested in the sectarian politics of their parents and grandparents. For Assignment, Lucy Ash travels to Northern Ireland to find out if Unionism’s Ceasefire Babies can really escape the past.
Producer: Mike Gallagher
Missing from Manhattan
How has the pandemic affected life in the most densely populated part of America’s biggest city? Lucy Ash meets those who live and work in Manhattan’s Midtown.
Editor: Bridget Harney
Scotland's contested identity
As the Scottish National Party calls for another referendum on leaving the UK, Lucy Ash travels from Dundee to Orkney hearing both sides. What's changed since the poll in 2014?
Producer: Mike Gallagher
Kenya's Unhappy Doctors and Nurses
All over the world, frontline workers have paid the ultimate price during the pandemic. But in Kenya the story of one young doctor’s heroism has made headlines for all the wrong reasons. 28-year old Stephen Mogusu died from Covid 19 in December after working on an isolation ward and complaining he lacked adequate protective clothing. Despite his vital service, he hadn’t been paid for five months.
Producer: Mike Gallagher
Belarusian Police – Behind the Balaclavas
Minsk, early December. A wall of masked men in black body armour, beating their truncheons on steel shields. In front of them stand women bundled in winter coats and teenagers wrapped in red and white flags. For Crossing Continents Lucy Ash explores the world of the security forces that keep Lukashenko in power, peeling back the ubiquitous balaclavas to find the men and women beneath.
Producer, Monica Whitlock
Editor, Bridget Harney
The British and their Fish
Lucy Ash travels to Grimsby to explore the huge place fishing plays in the British psyche and to ask if the cold, stormy seas around Britain really can make coastal communities rich once again.
Producer Mike Gallagher
BBC Radio 4- Poland's Gay Pride and Prejudice
How some of Poland’s smallest towns are trying to defend traditional family values by rejecting so-called LGBT ideology – and how the reaction threatens to unleash a culture war.
BBC World Service - Temples of discord: Church building in Putin’s Russia
The Russian Orthodox Church say three new churches are built in Russia every day. The building programme has sparked protests across the country.
Producer: Tatyana Movshevich
BBC Radio 4 - Russian Women Fight Back
Hundreds of Russian women are killed by their partners every year. Lucy Ash talks to the activists who are pushing for legal reforms and fighting back against domestic abuse.
BBC World Service - The Dyatlov Pass Mystery
In 1959, a group of nine Russian students met a mysterious death in the Ural mountains. Experienced cross-country skiers, their bodies were found scattered around a campsite, their tent cut from the inside, as they seemingly panicked to escape from someone – or something. Sixty years on, Lucy Ash traces their footsteps to try to find out what happened.
Producer: Richard Fenton Smith
BBC World Service - The Zogos of Liberia
Miatta is what many Liberians would call a Zogo. The Zogos are Liberia’s underclass: jobless, homeless and addicted to drugs. They’re a menace on the streets of the capital, Monrovia, where many make their living by snatching purses and phones from passers-by. Lucy Ash follows a projects aiming to rehabilitate hundreds of Liberia’s Zogos – including Miatta.
Producer: Josephine Casserly
BBC Radio 4 - From College To Clink
What happens when top graduates work behind bars as prison officers? Lucy Ash meets young people who have forsaken lucrative careers in the City or elsewhere, for what many see as one of the world’s worst jobs. They’re part of Graduates Unlocked, a scheme which, which is trying to replicate in the prison service the success of Teach First, the programme that sends high-flyers into inner-city schools.
Producer: Arlene Gregorius
BBC Radio 4 - DNA, Me And The Family Tree
Where do you come from? Tracing your ancestry in the USA is one of the most popular hobbies along with gardening and golf. TV is awash with advertising for the do-it-yourself genetic testing kits which have become much sought after gifts, especially at Christmas time.
Producer: Charlotte McDonald
Nevada's Brothels Face the Axe
As Nevada's legal brothels face a campaign for reform, Lucy Ash asks why their biggest stakeholder - and the women who work for him - are so passionate about their trade.
Producer: Mike Gallagher
BBC Radio 4 - Seaweed, Sex And Liberation In Zanzibar
Seaweed is liberating women in a conservative corner of east Africa. Thousands of women have gained more control over their lives thanks to Zanzibar's seaweed farms.
Producer: Chloe Hadjimatheou
BBC Radio 4 - Russia’s Exit Dilemma
As the first generation born under Putin approaches voting age, many of Russia's brightest and best are voting with their feet. Lucy Ash meets émigrés, exiles and staunch remainers in London and Berlin, Moscow and Saint Petersburg to weigh up the prospects for the young and ambitious in Putin's Russia.
Producer: Dorothy Feaver
BBC Radio 4 - When Britain Invaded Russia
Lucy Ash tells the story of a little-known brutal war that took place a century ago along the frozen rivers of the Russian Arctic, transforming Russia's relations with the West for decades to come. After the October Revolution, thousands of foreign troops under British command fought Russians on Russian soil for over 18 months.
Producer: Natalia Golysheva
BBC Radio 4 - Russia's Extreme Selfie Daredevils
Young Russians have gained a reputation on social media for taking the most extreme selfies, often involving death-defying stunts on top of skyscrapers, all for the sake of internet fame.
Producer: Richard Fenton Smith
BBC World Service - Prisons for Rent in the Netherlands
Lucy visits a Dutch prison that has been rented out to Norway and now houses offenders convicted there. She talks to everyone from prison guards and governors to the police and the head of the Dutch prisons service to find out what’s happening with Dutch prisons.
Producer: Arlene Gregorius
BBC Radio 4 - Trusting Inmates
Should we place more trust in prisoners to help them change their lives? And if so, how can we encourage trust in dangerously understaffed prisons, asks Lucy Ash.
Producer: Arlene Gregorius
BBC Radio 4 - Colombia’s Forgotten Exodus
In the Colombian capital of Bogota, Lucy Ash meets two people who fear they will never be able to return to their homes. They both come from Choco, which is one of the poorest provinces and most violent parts of the country.
Producer: Eugenia Rodriguez Peria
BBC World Service - The Woman Who Exposed Russian Doping
Yuliya Stepanova and her family fear for their lives, after exposing the systemic Russian state sponsored doping programme, one of the greatest sporting scandals of all time.
Producer: Mike Gallagher
BBC Radio 4 Romania: The Shepherds Revolt
Lucy Ash meets the Romanian sheep farmers who stormed parliament over plans to limit numbers of sheepdogs and restrict grazing rights. Why are hunters now their arch enemies?
Producer: Mark Savage
BBC World Service -Macedonia’s Colourful Revolution
Lucy Ash meets Macedonia’s Special Prosecutors -three women who have become the scourge of the political elite and heroines of the street protests now rocking the tiny Balkan nation. Their job is to investigate claims of wrongdoing and corruption revealed in a huge wiretapping scandal.
Producer: John Murphy
BBC Radio 4 - Who's Afraid of Teatr Doc?
Teatr Doc is widely praised for its hard-hitting plays about contemporary Russia. Lucy Ash finds that for the country's most controversial theatre company, the show must go on.
BBC Radio 4 The Rape of Berlin
The mass rapes committed by Soviet troops in Germany at the end of WW2 - in part as revenge for Nazi atrocities in the Soviet Union. Lucy Ash investigates.
Producer: Dorothy Feaver
BBC Radio 4 -
Maskirovka: Deception Russian-Style
Lucy Ash explores the Russian military strategy of deception - maskirovka - from its use against invading Mongols in the 14th century to the current crisis in Ukraine.
BBC Radio 4 - The Harragas of Algeria
Lucy Ash meets the Harragas of Algeria, the young people who burn their identity papers and head north across the Mediterranean leaving family, friends and stability behind.
Producer: John Murphy
BBC Radio 4 - Ukraine: The Paper Trail to Corruption
Lucy Ash talks to the Ukrainian volunteers and activists who are painstakingly restoring a stash of documents dumped in a lake on the abandoned estate of ex-president Yanukovich.
Producer: Rebecca Kesby
Hungary’s Crusading Conductor
Hungarian conductor Ivan Fischer is holding up a mirror to Hungarian society and has written an opera to expose growing racial intolerance.
Producer: Mark Savage
BBC Maiden Voyage: The First Woman In Space
In 1963, Valentina Tereshkova, a simple factory worker, was sent on a solo mission to space and became a hero in her country, a legend around the world and an icon of gender equality.
Producer: Dorothy Feaver
Russia: Digging up the Dead
The story of Russia's volunteer diggers, armed with spades and metal detectors, who search forests and swamps for the remains of Red Army soldiers 70 years after World War Two.
Putin, the Patriarch and Pussy Riot
The prison sentences given to three members of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot have been widely criticized in the West. But why did the three young women stage their anti-Putin protest in a cathedral? And why did their'punk prayer arouse such fierce reactions?
Producer: Nick Sturdee
Poland's Underground Economy
Lucy Ash is in south east Poland, where high unemployment is encouraging young people to go down the area's reopened coal mines, and where young entrepreneurs try to avoid taxes.
Producer: Anna Meisel
Hungary's Graduates - Trapped by the State
As the economic crisis deepens and schisms emerge, Lucy Ash travels across Europe to meet the continent's next generation, who face an uncertain future. She explores the challenges they face and the ways in which they are meeting them.
Producer: Anna Meisel
Italy's Five Star Idealist
Lucy Ash is in Milan and meets the heavy rock loving 22-year-old who has become the city's youngest councillor and who says this is the last chance to clean up Italian politics.
Producer: Mark Savage
Germany's Eldorado
Lucy Ash travels to southern Germany, to the town of Schwabisch Hall which has been swamped with young job applicants from the crisis hit countries of southern Europe.
Producer: John Murphy
The Primorsky Partisans
Lucy Ash asks why a group of young men near Vladivostok started killing policemen, and why so many ordinary Russians supported them.
Producer: Ibrat Jumaboyev