Product Description

For over thirty years, John Simpson has travelled the world to report on the most significant events of our time. From being punched in the stomach by Harold Wilson on one of his first days as a reporter, to escaping summary execution in Beirut, flying into Teheran with the returning Ayatollah Khomeini, and narrowly avoiding entrapment by a beautiful Czech secret agent, Simpson has had an astonishingly eventful career. In 1989 he witnessed the Tiananmen Square massacre, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Communism throughout Eastern Europe and, only weeks later, in South Africa, the release of Nelson Mandela. With Simpson's uncanny knack of being in the right place at the right time, this autobiography is a ring-side seat at every major event in recent global history.

'So vivid I could feel my heart beating' Jonathan Mirsky, Spectator

'great stories, sometimes harrowing, sometimes hilarious' Daily Telegraph

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20301 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-03
• Format: Unabridged
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 566 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
John Simpson has had an extraordinary professional life: he has been to 101 countries, interviewed 120 rulers of various persuasions, and witnessed 29 wars and uprisings. He had an ill-fated spell reading the Nine O'Clock News, and was also the BBC political correspondent (which he loathed). He emerges fairly unscathed; he can appear arrogant and over-bearing, but he maintains a healthy degree of self-deprecation, and to survive the macho world in which he works one would need the skin of a rhinoceros.

He has become a household name (though he still gets mistaken for presenter John Humphrys), and his stories, some oft-repeated, are fascinating, the tone as dry as his reportage. The disquieting effect they have is to show the fragile arbitrariness of power and the people who crave it, and it is this indigestible feeling of vulnerability that one is left with when the gung-ho spirit has faded.

But what of the man? Curiously he chose to live with his father when his parents' marriage split up. He loves books, as he constantly reminds us, and would love to be known for his writing. He is sensitive about his appearance, referring more than once to his girth, and he is now married for the second time. Beyond this, he reveals little extraneous detail. This is a pity, but should be no surprise. The story is the thing, after all, and his is a journalistic honesty, which makes for compelling, if two-dimensional, reading. --David Vincent

Jonathan Mirsky, Spectator
'So vivid I could feel my heart beating'

John Humphrys, Sunday Telegraph
'A damn good read...He's a first-rate writer and funny with it.'

Customer Reviews

Memoir of a complex life lived at the centre of world events
This gripping volume is a must-read for two sorts of people. Its instant attraction for those who want an adventure story which takes place over thirty years and at the epicentre of world events is obvious - Simpson is a self-confessed adventurer, and in one of his best moments of self-realisation, he admits to being "a bit of a chancer" too. And as an adventure story you couldn't ask for better. Simpson's been shot at in Sarajevo, threatened in Dublin, bombed in Bagdhad and nearly arrested by secret policemen in Kabul. He's got on the nerves of the KGB during the Cold War, gone down the Amazon in trepidation of finding a parasitic fish which makes its home in the most intimate of areas and he stood in Tiananmen Square as the tanks rolled in. According to these pages he's got a short temper and, just for added spice, a bad habit of losing it at risky moments. But the real joy of this book is in the slow revelation of the man's character and the dissipation of the one-dimensional image and set preconceptions we may have of him. Simpson appears to me to be both honest and generous with his life. He is prepared to show himself in a bad light and even admits to using the pages to settle a few old scores along the way. He shows the grimmest aspects of his profession as well as the glamorous side and yes, he does glamorise it a little. But that appears to be because he genuinely regards it as the best job in the world. In the final pages he writes one of the best manifestoes for the work of ournalism and of public-service broadcasters I have read. This saw me through two flights, a holiday, an airport delay and two weeks of commuting to work. Recommended - it'll thrill you but make you think as well. Who could resist that?

Outstanding - a must-read
I confess I used to think of Mr Simpson as a being a little smug, with polished measured reports either in the studio or from various foreign parts. Nothing could be further from the truth, the risks that John Simpson and his colleagues take on a daily basis belie the measured quality of his reports. This book covers a very wide range of the major foreign events of the past few decades, and brings them to life better than any history book. Strongly recommended.

Better than a History book
John Simpson is one of those people I thought I knew a little about but what a revelation this book is. Throughly readable and enjoyable as well as historically informative. You also get the impression that Mr Simpson is one of those rare people that you could not help but like. A Must read.