Heidi Kingstone

Bearing Witness: On war, humanity and coming home to Maida Vale

By Alice Sinclair, Maida Unveiled

With so much of the world currently bellowing with a kind of distorted masculine rage, it fet like a good moment to focus instead on the women who go into that chaos and report on it with clarity and care. This series begins close to home, with two women who have spent their lives moving between the calm of our local area and the chaos of conflict zones. The contrast is almost impossible to reconcile - and yet, for them, it’s simply life. It is a privilege to start with Heidi Kingstone, a Canadian-born journalist, foreign correspondent, and author who has lived in Maida Vale for over twenty years. Her career has taken her from London to some of the most volatile corners of the world - Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Gaza, and across Africa and the Middle East. She has reported with an unflinching eye, bringing back stories of human rights, survival, and resilience that might otherwise have remained untold.

Her memoir, Dispatches from the Kabul Café, presents life in Afghanistan in all its complexity - unvarnished, human, and occasionally, unexpectedly humorous. Her more recent book, Genocide: Personal Stories, Big Questions, explores atrocities of the 20 and 21 centuries through the voices of those who lived through them, weaving history and memory into something profoundly intimate. Alongside contributions to the Financial Times and the Mail on Sunday, Heidi continues to approach storytelling as a bridge between cultures - a way of helping the wider world to feel the lives behind the headlines. th st Roots in History Heidi’ s fascination with human history, and with its darkest moments, stretches back to her childhood. She recalls visiting Dachau at the age of twelve with her parents: “Nothing has ever shocked me quite as profoundly as that, ” she says. History, distant and abstract in books or films, became immediate, haunting, and impossible to ignore.

Years later, just before the pandemic, another encounter deepened that connection. While visiting Toronto, she met the late Paulette Volgyesi, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, whose parents ’ experiences shaped her deep sense of empathy.

Paulette worked with Yazidi survivors of ISIS. This sparked an article, which led to another, and another, until her reporting grew “like an octopus, ” each story branching into new histories and human experiences - Armenia, Rwanda, Cambodia. “One history of trauma meeting another ” she reflects, “just stayed with me. ” Paulette introduced Heidi to Menachem Rosensaft, a scholar of genocide, with whom she immediately formed a bond. “Menachem and I went to Bergen Belsen together ” she recounts, visiting the infamous Nazi concentration camp in Germany where thousands suffered and died, and where both Rosensaft and Volgyesi were born in 1948.

Witnessing its history and resilience up close, she felt the arc of human endurance become profoundly personal. The Human Lens For all the scale of the events she covers, Heidi’s preference is always for the individual. “You can write about geopolitics”, she says, “but it’ s one person telling the story that stays with you”. That focus shapes her entire approach: a refusal to overwhelm, a dedication to connecting readers to the lived experiences behind the headlines. Her first real taste of foreign reporting came in Iraq. Sitting at the end of the day in the newsroom of TODAY, with her legs crossed, she read foreign dispatches while waiting for the edits to come back. “It was inevitable then that the editor would come by, stand by my desk, and look down at me. I would look up, feeling I should have been doing something else! I ended up marrying him. I always loved foreign reporting, and after we got divorced, I realised this was the path I finally felt I had to pursue. ” Being there brought clarity, not just about conflict but about home. “You realise how lucky we are”, she says, reflecting on everyday safety, healthcare, and choice- privileges so easily taken for granted, “but equally how wonderful other cultures are. I’m never happier than in a foreign place. ” The weight of stories, and the people she meets, never quite leaves.

She remembers Ra ’ ad in Iraq, who, years later, was killed with a family member at a checkpoint. “It’ s the kind of thing we just don’t have to worry about”, she says softly. Her reporting carries no sensationalism - only awareness, empathy, and the persistent question: how can this keep happening?

Home in Maida Vale After decades in conflict zones, London - and Maida Vale in particular - has become a sanctuary. Heidi treasures the canal, the gardens, the eclectic community of neighbours from all over the world. She laughs as she reflects on the everyday pleasures of home: the view from her window, the vitality of local streets, the small joys of restaurants and cafes. Here, she finds balance: a place where she can process, rest, and still feel the pulse of a world she has reported on so intensely. Even in the calm of Maida Vale, the echoes of her work remain, alongside a quiet hope. Along the way, Heidi has interviewed some remarkable people, including Ben Ferencz, the youngest prosecutor at Nuremberg, who left an indelible mark: a man who witnessed humanity's worst yet never lost faith in it. For Heidi, that embodies the core of her work - to keep listening, keep questioning, keep telling the stories that matter….and as Ferencz said, “ never give up ”.

See: MAIDA UNVEILED