Lyse Doucet first arrived at the Kabul Inter-Continental Hotel on Christmas Day 1988, the day after her 30th birthday. A junior BBC reporter, she was there to cover the withdrawal of Soviet troops following their decade-long occupation of Afghanistan.

Today, Lyse is the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent and has led BBC coverage of events ranging from the Arab Spring to the Sudanese Civil War. She still visits the Inter-Continental Hotel whenever she is in Afghanistan. She counts many of its staff and fellow guests her close friends and in The Finest Hotel in Kabul, for the first time, she tells their stories.