After Dinner SpeakersJohn Simpson CBE is the BBC’s World Affairs Editor.
His peers and the public consider him the most distinguished foreign correspondent of the age. A veteran broadcaster and accomplished author, John has covered most major world news events from the 1960s to the present day.
His seminal reports on the big moments of recent history make up an illustrious list, including the Iranian Revolution, the First and Second Gulf Wars, the Fall of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall, the end of Apartheid in South Africa, the Genocide in Rwanda, the wars in the former Yugoslavia and the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing.
John’s stories of war and revolution are many and varied: he walked into Taliban-occupied Kabul at the head of the BBC news team in 2001, having previously infiltrated Afghanistan in extremely dangerous conditions, dressed in a burka.
He accompanied Ayatollah Khomeini on his plane from Paris to Tehran to depose the Shah of Iran; he danced on top of the Berlin Wall as it came down; he watched at close range the missiles raining down on Baghdad in the First Gulf War; he came very close to losing his life in the Second Gulf War.
An eye-witness of the many wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan, the Irish troubles and the South African and Rhodesian struggles, as well as the many other major revolutions in the former East Block of Europe and Latin America, it is safe to assume that ‘whatever the Headline of the Daily news’ – John Simpson will be there.
140 Countries and 200 World Leaders:
John Simpson has reported from 140 countries and interviewed 200 world leaders and dictators ranging from Michael Gorbachev, and Nelson Mandela, British Prime Ministers and U.S Presidents to Fidel Castro, Colonel Gaddafi, Robert Mugabe, Saddam Hussein, and Vladimir Putin.
He met successive heads of the IRA, Hezbollah, Hamas, Taliban, the Medellin and the Cali Drug Cartels at the height of their considerable power. Osama bin Laden offered to pay anyone to kill him in 1989.
He interviewed Yasser Arafat under Israeli bombs in West Beirut and the slain Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, in Jerusalem.
But it hasn’t just been war and strife, it has also been a life of huge adventure. John has rounded Cape Horn in a small boat and man-hauled a sledge in the Arctic! He lived with a previously uncontacted tribe in the farthest reaches of the Amazon. He reported on the first sunrise of the new Millennium on a desert island in the South Pacific.
Awards:
John Simpson was made a CBE for his reporting in 1991. He has won numerous awards, such as three Baftas, the International Emmy and Peabody in the U.S., and the RTS Journalist of the Year – twice, to name but a few.
Twelve universities have awarded him honorary doctorates, including St. Andrews, Nottingham, Southampton, Exeter and Leeds. A Freeman of the City of London, he is also an Honorary Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge.
He has written multiple books, incl. his memoir “A Mad World, My Masters,” which was on the Sunday Times Best Seller List for 6 months, and the novels “Moscow, Midnight” and “Our Friends from Beijing”.
In 2022, John’s new current affairs programme, “Unspun World with John Simpson”, started airing weekly on BBC television worldwide and World Service Radio.
In true Simpson tradition, he has been reporting on the war in Ukraine. His recent interview with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was broadcast to worldwide audiences of the BBC.
