Strange Places, Questionable People - Softcover

Simpson, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 033035566X ISBN 13: 9780330355667

Publisher: Pan, 1999

Synopsis

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

About this title

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

Review:

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

'An entertaining and absorbing read...crafted with the care and lucidity of his reporting style' -- Sunday Times

'Great stories, sometimes harrowing, sometimes hilarious' -- Carmen Callil, Daily Telegraph

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

About this edition

• Publisher: Pan
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 033035566X
• ISBN 13: 9780330355667
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 592