I just got my copy of the book” Wars Against Saddam: The Long Road to Baghdad “written by one of most critically acclaimed writer and journalist John
Simpson. This book draws his experience from more than two decades which he spent in middle –east, and covers Saddam’s rise to power and his reign as the President Of Iraq.
He has single handedly transformed the art of journalism. John Simpson has earned a reputation as one of the World’s most experienced and authoritative journalists. John Simpson will probably be the first journalists, where a big story is breaking. This is a
Fact which is well known in the BBC and elsewhere, and the whole journalist fraternity has come to accept that. His major specialization area is Middle –east politics, from where he has done extensive coverage and this has formed a major part of his career.
John also presents the critically acclaimed program ”Simpson’s World” ( unfortunately w do not get this program now in India) on BBC World, which analyses and reflects on global events, and in the company of those who are at the heart of the stories shaping the international agenda and leading to certain major decision.
EARLY YEARS
John had a rather lonely childhood. He was born in London. His parents separated at an early age, and he was brought up by his father in London. He finally found his field at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he was editing the “Granta” magazine He started
His professional career at the age of 25 as a trainee sub editor in Radio News with BBC in 1966. His first assignments was in Angola, where he was covering the vicious fighting there in the 1970s - this was an experience he which describes as the most terrifying
of his long professional career. He was promoted to the role of reporter in 1970. And from there on John never looked back. He presented the BBC Nine O’clock News for a short period in the 1980s, and then he became the BBC’s Diplomatic Editor, and was appointed World Affairs Editor in 1988.
Professional Career
John Simpson’s remarkable gut instincts have drawn him into the thick of the action time and time again. Be it the war of Angola or the War of Iraq. Here is some of his most remarkable coverage which he has done over the years. In 1991, he was the BBC’s key correspondent in Baghdad during the Gulf War, where he was staying in the city despite being ordered to leave by BBC. And then he was in Belgrade during the NATO action against Serbia. He presented the coverage even when the bombing of the Montenegro
Was going on. He interviewed the King of Buganda Mutesa II a few hours before his
death on November 21, 1969; he was present at the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing in 1989; and the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu in Bucharest later that year( where incidentally the pen which he was using to write the report was gifted to him by Nicolae
Ceausescu, himself). He spent the early part of the 1991 Gulf War in Baghdad before being expelled by the authorities.
Simpson was one of the few journalists to remain in Belgrade during the Kosovo War of 1999. Two years later, he was one of the first journalists to enter Kabul after the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan. This was his most adventurous and most demanding,
major foreign assignment. This saw him smuggled into Afghanistan as a woman; as he entered Kabul he declared “It was only BBC people who liberated this city. We got in ahead of Northern Alliance troops.’’ This comment was not taken well by the USA (that was but obvious) and he had to apologize for it later. While working as a non-embedded journalist in Northern Iraq in the 2003 Iraq war, he was injured in a friendly fire incident when an American anti-tank bomb was accidentally dropped on a convoy of US special
forces and Kurdish fighters he was accompanying .The US F-16s thought that the entrouge was carrying some rebel leaders and Saddam allies. His translator was killed on the spot. He continued reporting from the scene with blood dripping from his face as his ear had been ruptured by the missile.
But that didn’t deter him at all.
This attitude of his has won him various accolades and awards. He was named Journalist of the Year by the Royal Television Society for his reports from Baghdad and around the world and also won the award “Man of the Year: in 1991. With a career span of 30 years, which has seen him witness the upheaval around the world, he has got the experience in international journalism and has earned him the ability to cover topics from highly factual
and intense World Affairs to more light-hearted and amusing tales from his extensive travels. When asked about his thought on retiring. ’’It’s a way of life, ’’ he says.
I hope this review has brought some light on one of the greatest journalist in the modern era.
Any comments or brickbats are welcome on the review.