Strange Places, Questionable People

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

Reader Reviews:

From Your Humble Correspondent (0/0 people found this helpful)

John Simpson's self-effacing recollections makes good reading, especially for Americans who are used to jaded TV talking heads who are overpaid, over-praised and over-produced. Until the current crises in the Middle East, most broadcast correspondents did their jobs with few reasons to worry about their safety. Simpson, on the other hand, stuck his neck out throughout his career. He is perhaps the best-known reporter to have ever been assaulted by a prime minister (Wilson)! From Sarajevo to Baghdad and back again, Simpson placed himself in danger to get the news, not always with the assistance of London higher-ups. Some sections make seem tedious when the author details the mechanics of broadcasting, i.e. getting pictures transmitted quickly as possible, exclusives that turned out to be of short-lived importance. All in all, a satisfying reading experience. Decidedly unglamourous.

World events are not important, but John Simpson is... Apparently (0/1 people found this helpful)

I hated this. I read it to learn more about the Middle East, particularly the conflicts since the Iran/Iraq war and the Islamic Revolution, and I did so without any interest in Simpson - not what school or university he went to nor his rise through the ranks of the BBC. I had no interest in how Simpson feels about the BBC's senior management or his opinions of the British government, or the state of journalism. Ultimately I found him pompous and self-centred. As conflicts and world changing events occur around him Simpson doesn't just depict himself as physically there, but as if his presence at an event supersedes the event himself - as if his hotel accommodation is more relevant than the rain of cruise missiles in the distance that he can see from his window. But of course this is a biography and does therefore by definition have to be about the author. But Simpson has a problem as his life is only of interest because of what has happened around him. He is significant merely as an observer but his ego won't accept this and by some strange logic concludes that his opinion matters because he has witnessed things that do matter. I didn't finish this book, I couldn't - John Simpson got on my nerves and I've had to quell my desire to learn more about the Middle East elsewhere. Thanks to our invasions and foreign policy there are Afghanis, Iranis, Iraqis, Syrians etc everywhere in the UK and in my experience they're very knowledgeable and much more likeable than John Simpson. Furthermore they are happy to talk and inform, so if you want to learn more about Iran, the Gulf & Arab countries - then speak to people who come from these places.

An insight into the world of news reporting (4/6 people found this helpful)

Okay, let's get the confusing bit out the way. John Simpson actually seems to have at least three autobiographies... "A Mad World, My Masters", "News from No Man's Land", and this one... I believe this one was his first autobiography, although I must confess to having read one of the others already and it did not affect my enjoyment of the book.

In this book, Simpson recounts his life, his route to get to the BBC, his early life at the BBC in the radio news office, and how he progressed to be foreign correspondent amongst many other roles within the BBC, for which he is of course now famous.

As an autobiography I suppose I have to say there's nothing particularly interesting about Simpson's childhood or route into the BBC. However, the two aspects I very much enjoyed reading about were Simpson's views on the BBC, and his stories from foreign lands all in the name of reporting events.

His reporting of flying to Iran with Ayatollah Khomeini, and his recollection of the vast events of 1989 were my highlights, and although he presents himself as a bit of a larger-than-life self-obsessed ego, I was impressed by how very honest he seemed to be with his reporting. I was also quite interested by his comments on how different news operations work, how they sometimes work together and how they sometimes try to stop each other from working.

Definitely an interesting read, and not a bad high readable history lesson on the fall of Communism.

Experience is Things You'd Rather Not Have Seen (0/0 people found this helpful)

This book, using quite a lot of the same material as A Mad World, My Masters, is a better read. Simpson seems sort-of at home in odd places, perhaps a by-product of his own unusual family background, which he described elsewhere as "Wandering Jew Meets Flying Dutchman". He has seen things most of us hqve not or would not wish upon ourselves: Chinese soldiers burned alive by a mob, the aftermath of the massacre of Muslim civilians by the Israeli-paid "Christian" militia in Beirut, a Securitate agent beaten to death in the (as he points out) stage-managed "revolution" in Bucharest. Sad events and times such as the old man collecting wood for other old folks in Sarajevo, killed by a sniper for the hell of it.

Oft-times, his sense of objectivity is uncomfortable for more partisan journalists and others, as in Bosnia, where the Americans, in particular, were uncomfortable with the true and complex picture of a three-sided conflict without obvious good guys; they preferred a view showing a two way split, with the Bosnian Muslims called "Bosnians" (good guys) and the Bosnian Serbs called "Serbs" and very definitely bad guys.

Even in Southern Africa, while having been very anti-apartheid and fairly pro-ANC as a reporter there, Simpson does not shrink from showing the better side of the Afrikaaners, nor from exposing the mess into which South Africa under Mandela was sliding at the time this book was published nearly a decade ago (and which continues...).

Simpson can come across as rather smug, he who has seen all, though far less so in this book than in A Mad World...or on TV (he still appears on satellite TV on occasion. You will not find solutions to world problems here, but this book IS a damn good read.

Always at the centre of the story (0/21 people found this helpful)

Please, anyone who wants to read real old-fashioned journalism, get some James Cameron or even the early John Pilger. Simpson is a show business star, with himself always on camera and, in his books, at the centre of the story. File alongside books by the cast of Eastenders and Coronation Street.

Strange Places, Questionable People

John Simpson

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