Product Description

There are only a handful of places left on this earth where you can't buy a McDonald's hamburger or stay in a Holiday Inn - and John Simpson has been to them all. This hugely successful volume of writing is a celebration of some of the world's wilder places. His extraordinary experiences include stories about a television camera that killed people, about how Colonel Gadhaffi farted his way through an interview and how he - Simpson - mooned the Queen. "Highly entertaining" - "The Times". "What amazing tales he has to tell, and with what enthralling vividness ...Riveting" - "Daily Mail". "The range of his travels is staggering ...Never less than entertaining, sometimes moving and often funny" - "Sunday Telegraph".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #71663 in Books
• Published on: 2001-09-07
• Format: Unabridged
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 464 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Some people just aren't cut out for the suburbs. As one of the BBC's top foreign correspondents, John Simpson has been at the epicentre of many of the world's flashpoints for more than 30 years. Afghanistan, Belgrade, Hong Kong, Baghdad; you name it, he's been there. And what's more, he hasn't just met the great and the good, such as Clinton and Blair, he's met the top bogey men, too. He's had Osama Bin Laden pleading with some Afghani guerrillas to kill him and his crew, he's interviewed Emperor Bokassa, Colonel Gadhafi and Arkan and had close up dealings with Saddam Hussein. And it goes without saying he was one of the first people in the entire world to see in the new millennium on the specially named Millennium Island, which the Kiribati government claimed just squeezed inside the international date line.

Small wonder, then, that Simpson is a source of dozens of good stories. Many of these have been written up elsewhere in his autobiographical Strange Places, Questionable People, but there are plenty left over for this latest book in which Simpson eschews chronology and just sticks to some plain old-fashioned story telling, with sections on villains, spies, icons etc. Unsurprisingly, Simpson has a journalistic eye for detail and nuance and never holds back from telling you the things you want to know; so when he went to interview Bokassa, he managed to sneak a look inside his giant deep freeze to see if there were any human body parts. It sounds trivial but it isn't; in a strange sort of way the examination of the contents of a deep freeze can be every bit as revealing as an hour on a shrink's couch.

Simpson is a genial companion, not much given to introspection, and the book races seamlessly from anecdote to anecdote. And yet underpinning the narrative is Simpson's global malaise, a feeling that everywhere in the world is becoming more and more similar and that it's increasingly hard to find anywhere genuinely wild and remote. Simpson has been to many of those places, but the way he describes them makes them seem fairly similar in their own kind of way. McDonalds and the Gap may be thin on the ground, but there are bullets and danger aplenty. To have been to so many of these places is an achievement in itself; to have returned unscathed is a minor miracle; John Simpson has led a charmed life in more ways than one. --John Crace

Review
'Highly entertaining' The Times; 'What amazing tales he has to tell, and with what enthralling vividness...Riveting' Daily Mail; 'The range of his travels is staggering...Never less than entertaining, sometimes moving and often funny' Sunday Telegraph

The BBC's world affairs editor tells us what it's like in some of the hot spots and hell holes of the world in this second volume of autobiography. His eventful career to date includes being hunted by the agents of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi Islamic fundamentalist and financier of international terrorism; having to undergo a painful tendon operation in a Belgrade hospital during a NATO air raid; and sheltering from being sprayed with sewage by the Chilean police. He interviews Colonel Gaddafi and the late Serbian warlord Arkan and undertakes horrific journeys to get interviews with Columbian drug dealers or Mujahideen guerillas. Not all of it finds him between rocks and hard places however, he was one of the first journalists to report the opening moments of the new millennium - from an island in the South Pacific, he smooches with the royals at Windsor and had the good fortune to know the late Martha Gellhorn. Throughout all this shines forth his zest for adventure, his breezy style, his insatiable love of telling stories and his sheer professionalism, making this a compelling book. (Kirkus UK)

About the Author
John Simpson is the BBC's World Affairs Editor. He has twice been the Royal Television Society's Journalist of the Year and won countless other major television awards. He has written several books, including five volumes of autobiography, Strange Places, Questionable People , A Mad World, My Masters, News from No Man's Land and Not Quite World's End and a childhood memoir, Days from a Different World. The Wars Against Saddam, his account of the West's relationship with Iraq and his two decades reporting on that relationship encompassing two Gulf Wars and the fall of Saddam Hussein, is also published by Pan Macmillan. He lives in London with his South African wife, Dee, and their son, Rafe.

Customer Reviews

A thoroughly enjoyable and interesting book.
John Simpson's 'Mad World, My Masters' is a superb collection of tales from his travels across the world as a foreign correspondent. The events he has seen and the activities he has participated in are both exciting and very readable. This is an easy going book that nevertheless manages to tackle some complicated issues in a way that all readers can understand, this book is recommended to anyone interested in world affairs or really anyone up for hearing a good story.

Interesting stories, but a little too much self-satisfaction
There are lots of interesting stories in this book, although not a huge amount to take away from it. Overall, it's a good read that will help pass the time on a long flight. What rather detracts from it all is John Simpson himself. He has every right to feel satisfied with a successful and varied career, but his self-satisfaction comes across with a little too much force nevertheless. Having said that, this is the age of the media personality, and John Simpson has deftly positioned himself as "popular high-brow" on international issues. All credit to him. My fault for buying the book.

An enlightening account of life and the atrocities of war!
Apart from the fact that John Simpson has been a long time and well regarded journalist for the BBC (mostly political and war correspondence), he has achieved a level of intrigue and pure brilliance in his style of writing for 'A Mad World, My Masters'.

He manages to encapsulate life's realities, the highs, the lows and the grey in-between of everywhere and everyone he has connected with. Although what this book delivers is presented purely from his own individual experiences and through the eyes of a distinguished journalist - I think it's fair to say that his usual diplomatic and charismatic approach to life is portrayed at every opportunity and stops this becoming one mans crusade to save the world.

John's ability to provide real life accounts of a society built around political incompetencies and dictatorships, coupled with his underlying British humour and determination in the face of terrifying adversity, shows us the side of life that most people if they're honest pretend doesn't exist.

A truly recommended read, that will only leave you queuing up for his next title.