Mishal Husain

Early life

Mishal Husain was born on 12 March 1973 in Northampton, England, to Pakistani parents. Her father, Imtiaz Husain (1943–2016), from Lahore, was a physician who ended his career as a consultant urologist at Bedford Hospital. His parents were a doctor from Multan and Mary, an Anglo-Indian nurse. Mishal's mother, Shama, was a teacher and former producer for Pakistan Television Corporation, who was the daughter of Syed Shahid Hamid, the first Director-General of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence.

Husain has a younger brother

and began her private education at the British School in Abu Dhabi; the family were also based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for a period. She returned to England at the age of twelve to continue her education at Cobham Hall School, an independent school in Cobham, Kent. She read law at the women-only New Hall, Cambridge (now Murray Edwards College, Cambridge), followed by a master's degree in International and Comparative Law at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.

Journalism career

Husain gained her first experience in journalism at the age of 18, spending three months as a city reporter in Islamabad, Pakistan, at the English-language newspaper The News. Then, while at university, she did several stints at the BBC as work experience.

Her first job was at Bloomberg Television in London in 1996, where she was a producer and sometime presenter. Two years later, in 1998, she joined the BBC as a junior producer in the newsroom and for the News 24 channel, and then in the Economics and Business Unit. Within a few months, she moved in front of the camera and has since worked in a variety of roles: on the daily Breakfast programme, on Asia Business Report (based in Singapore), and as a presenter of business news on both BBC World News and the BBC News Channel. From September 2002 she was the corporation's Washington correspondent, serving as the main news anchor through the buildup to the invasion of Iraq and during the war. In May 2004, she joined BBC Breakfast as a main presenter on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, presenting with Bill Turnbull. She held this role until she went on maternity leave in May 2006. She didn't return to the programme, instead moving to BBC World and the BBC Weekend News. She has interviewed many high-profile figures including Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage, Richard Perle, Paul Kagame and Emmerson Mnangagwa.

On 8 May 2010, she published an autobiographical essay in The Independent based on a nostalgia trip to the UAE. In 2011, Husain hosted Impact on BBC World News, but in the spring and summer of 2011 she was engaged in making a documentary on the Arab Spring, for airing in the autumn of 2011. She has presented the Sunday evening editions of the BBC Weekend News on BBC One.

On 17 March 2013, she presented the last News at Ten to be broadcast from BBC Television Centre. On 16 July 2013, the BBC's Director-General Lord Hall announced that Husain was to become a presenter of BBC Radio 4's Today programme in the autumn. Husain presented her first edition of Today on 7 October 2013, when her co-presenter was John Humphrys. On 7 November 2013, it was announced that Husain would be part of the BBC's Commonwealth Games Presenting team. Husain was also an occasional relief presenter of the BBC News at Six and the weekday edition of the BBC News at Ten, as well as on the BBC News Channel during major breaking news stories. She has occasionally presented Newsnight on BBC Two.

Other work and awards

When the first series of Star Spell – a spin-off from Hard Spell that had only appeared before as a one-off episode – aired, Husain appeared as word pronouncer, replacing Nina Hossain. She continued in this role throughout the second series of Hard Spell. Husain appeared in a round of the BBC's Celebrity Mastermind in 2010, coming third out of four. Her specialised subject was the Narnia books of C. S. Lewis.

She is also one of the judges for the Amnesty International Media Awards. She featured on a show entitled Gandhi that was broadcast by the BBC in March 2012. She also featured as the morning anchor presenter on BBC One during the 2012 Summer Olympics in London and the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

Husain is an ambassador for the charity Mosaic, which helps young people from deprived communities to realise their talents and potential.

In January 2014, Husain was awarded the Services to Media award at the British Muslim Awards.

Husain has written a book, The Skills, a guide for women on how to achieve their career goals. It was published in 2018, and was described as "the ultimate handbook for women".

In 2024, Husain published a memoir, Broken Threads: My Family From Empire to Independence. It hit the Sunday Times Bestsellers Chart under General Hardbacks.

In January 2025, Husain was elected as a Fellow of Kellogg College, University of Oxford.

Personal life

In July 2003, Husain married Meekal Hashmi, a chief operating officer at an investment management firm. The couple have three sons, the eldest born in 2004, and twin boys born on 19 June 2006. They live in Camden, north London.

Amid widespread condemnation of the killing of Islamic State hostages in 2014, Husain voiced support for the use of social media to denounce its extremism. In an interview with the Radio Times, she urged Muslim scholars to use social media to condemn the Islamic State's attempt to draw support in the West or from British Islamic organisations through using videos of "horrific" brutality. Husain, who was the first Muslim presenter of BBC Radio 4's Today programme, said:

I think the Not in My Name campaign is a very positive development because outrage is shared by all right-thinking people. I would really like to see much more of the counterpoint from a theological perspective, with scholars taking to social media to refute the awful arguments we see put forward in those videos.