My mother, Kathryn Davies, who has died aged 79, was a presenter for the BBC World Service of flagship programmes including Newshour, Twenty-Four Hours and East Asia Today, as well as a correspondent for the Guardian and the Financial Times in south-east Asia and the Middle East. Journalism ran in the family: she was married to the BBC World Service correspondent Jack Thompson for 52 years, while I worked for the Times and the FT.
She was born in Caterham, Surrey, and grew up in Kent, the daughter of Mary (nee Ferguson), a carer and housewife, and David Davies, a teacher; she and her Scottish mother shared the middle name Burns, which Mary maintained was because the family were distant cousins of the poet (though she was elusive when pressed for details).
