Profiles & Interviews
I began working in Radio on my return from England from City University where I studied international journalism after doing a liberal arts degree at Trent in Canada. Working in a small island state for quarter of a century has been a journalist’s dream as it has given me access to public figures, including our writers and journalists who shape our nascent society’s views and have contributed to governance, from Prime Ministers, Presidents, and MP’s to economists, journalists, and diplomats. What emerges over the years is a long view of a post-colonial society finding its feet, pushing past missteps – gradually leaving the dregs of colonialism behind, doing things its own way.
If it weren't for my father Col Mahendra Nath Mathur, who forcibly took me to London after I completed a liberal arts degree in Canada to study journalism, at City University in London I would not have been a journalist. A former Indian army officer, Indian war veteran, engineer, and military historian he has always been a feminist, and way ahead of his time, and a perpetual guiding light in my career and life.
Receiving an award for Best Documentary (Domestic Violence - in the Videos section) from the Hon. Basdeo Panday (born 25 May 1933) Trinidadian lawyer, politician, trade unionist, economist, actor, and civil servant who served as the fifth Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago from 1995 to 2001. He was the first person of Indian descent along with being the first Hindu to hold the office of Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago.
At White Hall in 2020, the office of the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago after conducting an exclusive interview with the Hon Keith Christopher Rowley MP. (Born 24 October 1949) a Trinidadian and Tobagonian politician and the eighth and current Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, first elected into office on 9 September 2015 and again following the 2020 National General Elections of the Republic.
In 2009 India's Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh's visit to Trinidad and Tobago for the 21st Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) Members of the ex-pat community was invited by the Indian High Commission to meet the former Prime Minister. As a journalist with a keen interest in India, this was a highlight of my career.
With Derek Walcott at a signing for his books. Born in Saint Lucia, a former British colony in the West Indies, Walcott was a poet and playwright. In 1992, Walcott won the Nobel Prize in Literature for Omeros, an epic poem divided into seven "books" containing a total of sixty-four chapters.
Police Commissioner Gary Griffith during an exclusive wide-ranging interview with Ira Mathur for the Sunday Guardian.