AWARD-WINNING journalist and former BBC chief news correspondent, Kate Adie is helping Bridport Arts Centre with its fundraising campaign.

She will give a talk about her life and career in a fundraiser for Bridport Arts Centre on Saturday 3 June 3 at 7.30pm.

Ms Adie blazed a trail for journalists and for women, reporting live from war zones and hotspots around the world. Since hanging up her flak jacket, she has concentrated on writing about her life and career, and the impact of conflict on women across the world.

She is also the long-serving presenter of Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent and a presenter or contributor to many other radio and television programmes.

She is also patron of Dorset's Read Easy Scheme

This fundraising event will be chaired by BAC's director Laura Cockett. There will be an opportunity for the audience to ask questions at the end of her talk.

Laura said: “It’s an honor to welcome Kate to the arts centre, we’re touched by her great generosity in doing this event as a fundraiser. Come along and hear about her remarkable career.”

Tickets cost £10.

Kate Adie has spent a lot of time in Bridport Local History Centre researching for her book Fighting on the Home Front and has been opening admiring of the fortitude of wartime net-makers in Bridport.

She has revealed that net makers in the First World War were helping with a top secret mission ordered by Winston Churchill to catch enemy submarines.

Ms Adie spent time at the Bridport Local History Centre to research her book, Fighting on the Home Front, which explores the ‘much overlooked’ role of women in the war effort.

German attack on the north east coast in 1914, which killed more than 70 women and children, left towns in the south ‘shivering with fear’, she said.

Ms Adie said: “The really special thing about Bridport is that there are no pictures of women net-making during the war and not very good records of what the Government was ordering.

“That’s because in 1916 Winston Churchill asked Bridport to find a way of making the best nets possible. It was labelled top secret work.”

The nets – made from wire rather than rope – would be used to catch submarines. Workers were perfecting the design when the war ended.

See bridport-arts.com