Book description
A new volume of memoir and traveller's tales from John Simpson, in the
vein of his bestselling A Mad World, My Masters John Simpson has been
travelling the world as a journalist for forty years, reporting on the
many disasters that have befallen us in that time. Today, at a time when
many of us might legitimately believe that the end of the world truly is
nigh, he takes a rather different view. For Simpson, perhaps better than
anyone, knows that though war, disease, terrorism, natural disasters and
crime always seem about to overwhelm us, the reality is that the great
events that afflict us have not caused the world to stop turning. Some
things change, indeed, but others stay much the same and we should
perhaps remember that every generation worries about the things it reads
in newspapers. Here, then, Simpson looks at the world's troubles - the
Middle East, global warming, population explosion - and takes the view
that it's nowhere near its end. His vivid prose, humanity and
clear-sightedness, and the wonderful anecdotes about the many strange
people and peculiar places he has come across - from Robert Mugabe to
the Bushmen of the Kalahari, from Chelsea to China, from Saddam Hussein
to Hollywood stars - all add up to a richly satisfying read. And with
his long experience and his remarkable ability to explain what's really
going on out there, he offers us all a crumb of comfort in desperate
times. Biographies John Simpson is the BBC's World Affairs Editor. He
has twice been the Royal Television Society's Journalist of the Year. He
has also won three BAFTAs, including the Richard Dimbleby award in 1991
and the News and Current Affairs award in 2000 for his coverage, with
the BBC News team, of the Kosovo conflict. He has written three volumes
of autobiography, Strange Places, Questionable People , A Mad World, My
Masters and News from No Man's Land, The Wars Against Saddam and, most
recently, Days from a Different World.
