Simpson's World: Dispatches from the Front Lines - Hardcover

Simpson, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1401300413 ISBN 13: 9781401300418

Publisher: Miramax, 2003

Synopsis

"I am a traveler by profession, and commute to work; but my job tends to be carried out in outlandish and difficult placesAfghanistan, the Middle East, the darker parts of Africa, and Latin America. As a result I have had a rather larger acquaintance with deranged dictators, ethnic cleansers, bandits, and terrorists than seems altogether reasonable. Quite a number of them will make an appearance in these pages: Ayatollah Khomeini refusing to shake my hand, Osama bin Laden offering a disturbingly small amount of money to have me killed, and Fidel Castro assuring me he would abdicate soon."

In his role as "professional traveler," BBC correspondent John Simpson has not only made the acquaintance of dictators and terrorists, but also witnessed the pivotal events of the past decades: the riots in Tiananmen Square, the Gulf War bombing of Baghdad, the reopening of Kabul after the fall of the Taliban regime. Occasionally, he becomes part of the story. He and his crew intervened during the Tiananmen Square riots to save a soldier from being killed. His on-the-scene coverage from Belgrade during the 1999 NATO action against Serbia created intense controversy in England. He was among the first journalists to enter Kabul after the Taliban were deposed; his offhand joke that "The BBC liberated Kabul" again stirred up controversy.

In Simpson's World, Simpson tells the stories behind the news clips. With characteristic wit and inexhaustible curiosity, and an uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time, this collection of episodes from his remarkable life offers a ringside seat at every major event in recent global history.

About this title

About the Author:

John Simpson joined the BBC in 1966, after graduating from Cambridge. In 1972, he became the BBC’s first correspondent in Dublin, covering the escalating violence in Northern Ireland. Other foreign postings followed: Brussels, South Africa, Angola, the Soviet Union. In 1978, he was named the BBC’s diplomatic correspondent for television news and eventually became the world affairs editor. He now hosts Simpson’s World, a current affairs show on BBC World TV that currently has an audience of more than 200 million viewers worldwide.

From Publishers Weekly:

In this engaging memoir, BBC television correspondent Simpson goes everywhere and sees it all. He's on hand for the Iranian Revolution, the siege of Sarajevo and the fall of Kabul to the Northern Alliance. He interviews Gadhafi, Khomeini and Castro. He gets punched by British Prime Minister Harold Wilson ("he had a good left hook") and former UN Secretary-General/alleged Nazi war-criminal Kurt Waldheim ("I did not rate him as a puncher") for asking questions, and stands by nervously while a young Osama bin Laden offers the Afghan mujaheddin Simpson is filming five hundred dollars to shoot him. Simpson sniffs at the tabloid press and American news in general, but his book shares the typical weaknesses and strengths of television journalism. He sees mainly what's in front of the camera, and his take on world affairs tends to the impressionistic and superficial. His assessments of public figures sometimes wallow in bathos, as in an elegy to Princess Di that muses on "how empty the lives of people like me who didn't really know her were going to seem." But he has an eye for telling details and a knack for drawing vivid thumbnail sketches and you-are-there atmospherics, rendered with an impressive degree of literary polish. In the best sections, his profiles of unsung heroes, victims and ambiguous villains-a courageous Peruvian mayor battling a corrupt local army commander, a widow who stoops to desperate measures to get her children out of Sarajevo and the UN official who exploits and saves her-make the tragedies of history come alive.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Miramax
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1401300413
• ISBN 13: 9781401300418
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432