An Audience with John Simpson

With over 40 years' experience in international journalism John Simpson has dodged the bullets in Tiananmen Square, danced on top of the Berlin Wall, and was on hand for the revolutions in Czechoslovakia and Romania. He stood alongside Boris Yeltsin during the KGB coup which brought down the Soviet Union, and was the first Western journalist to penetrate the KGB headquarters in Moscow.

John has reported from 140 countries and interviewed around 200 world leaders, including Mikhail Gorbachev and Vladimir Putin, Margaret Thatcher and every other British prime minister since Harold Wilson, every German Chancellor since Willy Brandt and every French President since Giscard d’Estaing.  Among others he has interviewed Mrs Gandhi, Emperor Bokassa, Colonel Gadaffi, Bashir al-Asad, Nelson Mandela, and Robert Mugabe.   He has covered forty-six wars on four continents, not to mention the trial and execution of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and of Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania.

Last autumn John's novel -  a fast paced and revelatory thriller - MOSCOW, MIDNIGHT was published to critical acclaim, and John will sign copies of this and his other books after his talk.

In this fascinating afternoon, John will talk about some of the difficult and often dangerous situations he has faced as a reporter, as well as some of the more light-hearted and amusing tales from his own travels interwoven with stories of figures who went before him, such as Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn and Charles Wheeler.

Presented in Association with Clive Conway Productions