When Caroline Baum walked through the doors of British Vogue as a young editorial assistant in the mid-1970s, London was at the centre of the fashion, literary and cultural worlds. It was there she encountered some of the era's biggest names—from photographer Helmut Newton to Antony Armstrong-Jones, the Earl of Snowdon—while discovering both the craft of storytelling that would define her career and the feminism she says underpinned it.

From there, Baum found herself working behind the scenes on the television programs of Michael Parkinson and Melvyn Bragg, two of Britain's most celebrated interviewers—and two famously mercurial personalities—witnessing firsthand the pressures, egos and power dynamics of British television.

Her career would eventually bring her to Australia, where she became one of the country's finest arts and literary interviewers. Across television, radio and print, Baum sat down with some of the world's greatest writers and thinkers, earning a reputation for conversations that were thoughtful, searching and deeply human.

As part of our ongoing profile series, Caroline Baum joins Tina Quinn to reflect on those formative years, the lessons that shaped her approach to interviewing, and the experiences that laid the foundations for a remarkable career in journalism.

She also shares, for the first time publicly, the deeply personal story behind her departure from the ABC's Between the Lines in 1997.

This is part one of a special multi-part conversation.

To learn more about Caroline's remarkable life, pick up a copy of her memoir, ⁠Only⁠.

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