Jenni talks to Melanie Challenger about why she was inspired to create an oratorio based on the Diary of Anne Frank by the children of war torn Bosnia. She also explains the similarities she has discovered between war diaries written by children from the American civil war to modern day Iraq.
Extracts of Melanie Challenger's Annelies, based on the Diary of Anne Frank, will be broadcast on BBC Two on 27 January at 7pm as part of the National Holocaust Memorial, and performed in full on 5 April by the RPO at Cadogan Hall, London, to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp by British forces.
Melanie is co-editor of Stolen Voices,a collection of young people's war diaries to be published in April.
