Mishal Husain

Mishal Husain (born 12 March 1973) is a British journalist, broadcaster and author. She was the BBC's Washington correspondent during the buildup to the Iraq War, presented BBC Radio 4's Today programme for eleven years from 2013, and in 2025 began presenting The Mishal Husain Show for Bloomberg. Her books are The Skills (2018) and the family memoir Broken Threads (2024). ¹

Husain was born in Northampton, England, to Pakistani parents: her father Imtiaz, from Lahore, was a urologist, and her mother Shama was a teacher and former Pakistan Television producer, and a daughter of Syed Shahid Hamid, the first Director-General of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence. The English article and Wikidata date her birth to 12 March 1973, while the Urdu article gives 11 February 1973 on the same underlying citations, so the day is recorded as debated. ^{1 2 3} She was educated at the British School in Abu Dhabi, where the family also spent a period in Saudi Arabia, returned to England at twelve for Cobham Hall School, read law at New Hall, Cambridge, and took a master's in international and comparative law at the European University Institute in Florence. ¹ She was the first Muslim presenter of the Today programme, and in a 2014 Radio Times interview she urged Muslim scholars to use social media against extremist propaganda, saying she would "really like to see much more of the counterpoint from a theological perspective". ¹ In July 2003 she married Meekal Hashmi; they have three sons and live in Camden, north London. ¹

Husain's first journalism job was at Bloomberg Television in London in 1996; she joined the BBC in 1998 and moved in front of the camera within months, working on Breakfast, Asia Business Report and the BBC's business news. ¹ From September 2002 she was the corporation's Washington correspondent through the buildup to the invasion of Iraq and the war itself, and in 2004 she became a main presenter of BBC Breakfast. ¹ She went on to present BBC World News, the Weekend News, Impact, HARDtalk and The Andrew Marr Show, and on 27 November 2017 she recorded the engagement interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. ¹ She presented her first edition of Today on 7 October 2013 and remained a presenter for eleven years, winning Broadcaster of the Year at the London Press Club Awards in 2015 and chairing the BBC's televised leaders' debates in the 2024 general election. ¹ Her final Today shift was on 17 December 2024; she left the BBC to become editor-at-large at Bloomberg, where The Mishal Husain Show, a weekly interview podcast, began in October 2025. ¹ Her memoir Broken Threads: My Family From Empire to Independence (2024) traces her four grandparents through empire, the Second World War and the partition of India, and became a Sunday Times bestseller. ¹

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