Strange Places, Questionable People - Hardcover

Simpson, John

4.08

481 ratings by Goodreads

9780333724194: Strange Places, Questionable People

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0333724194 ISBN 13: 9780333724194

Publisher: Macmillan, 1998

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In this autobiography, BBC foreign news editor, John Simpson reflects on his career. His experiences range from being punched in the stomach by Harold Wilson, posing as a mercenary in Zaire, escaping summary execution in Beirut, to tangling with the cocaine barons of Colombia.;Wilson was the first British journalist on the scene as the Berlin Wall came down, and also followed the revolution sweeping Eastern Europe from Berlin to Prague to Bucharest. Weeks later, he was in South Africa to witness the release of Nelson Mandela. He has met and interviewed: Colonel Ghaddafi, Ayatollah Khomeini, Indira Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev, Radovan Karadzic, and Fidel Castro. Wilson's association with the BBC also enables him to give an insider's view of the change which has overtaken the corporation since he joined it in 1966.

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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

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