John Simpson, the renowned BBC world affairs editor, visited Stanfords in London to discuss his latest book Not Quite World’s End. John has graced our screens for 40 years in a career that saw him shelled in Afghanistan, attacked with poisonous gas in the Gulf, dodging bullets at the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing, and injured in a friendly-fire incident in Iraq. He discusses these incidents and more in his lively new book.
John spoke with Stanfords’ web editor Rachel Ricks at the Covent Garden store about books, the BBC, Nelson Mandela, and travelling with tinned oysters…
His Work
Growing up, did you always want to be a journalist, a foreign correspondent?
I don’t know what I wanted really. I think all I thought of was that I like travelling and I like writing. But I didn’t have that as an image in my mind, the notion of the foreign correspondent.
So there was no particular influence or inspiration?
I don’t think so, except, when I was at school and university I did a lot of journalism.
Do you set out a timescale when you write your books? How do you make time to do everything you do?
Oh god, it’s the most painful thing imaginable, because I don’t feel I can take time off from work as my work is so weird and it happens at all times. I don’t want to just say, “Alright I’m going to take a month to write a book”, or two months or something. I can’t do that.
So can you literally be called up by the BBC and be told, “Right, tomorrow you’re off…”?
Not really, because although I’m not the boss, I’m my own boss, so I can have some say. But I can’t say, “I’m going to Russia tomorrow” – I’d have to persuade them that it’s worth sending me there. By and large they let me do what I want to do, which is very nice of them really.
How do you stay so positive when you see so many awful happenings?
Well, the fact is that people – a lot of people – behave really well when the moment comes. I mean, not everybody, in fact, not in any sense the majority, but there’s always people in every circumstance…I did some reporting on that awful, awful massacre in Rwanda in 1994, when people behaved bestially to their friends and neighbours of different tribes, but I also met people who behaved with the most tremendous courage in rescuing, saving and protecting their neighbours of a different ethnic group. When you see that – that was just one thing, but I’ve seen it in so many other places around the world. In Bosnia for instance, where sometimes I used to think people behaved dreadfully, and yet some people behaved so well.
There’s that saying – from the Bible, I think – “It takes one man to save a city”. I feel that just a few people behaving properly and decently gives you a feeling that the whole of humanity is saved.
Risking his Life
What drives you to risk your life to report from the front line?
Well for a start I don’t necessarily see it as risking my life; we’ve got a lot of good protection and a lot of really good security people working for us, which means you don’t even have to worry or think about it.
I just want to tell people what’s going on. I want to find out for myself what’s going on, I want to know. For instance with this latest surge in Iraq, I wanted to go there during the surge, examine how well it was doing and make my own mind up; I don’t want somebody else telling me. And that’s what I did.
I go to Iraq about every six to eight weeks and try and see what’s happening – there and elsewhere. Particularly because it’s such a contentious place. But I feel, “Yes I know about that now”, and I know about it because I’ve been there, not because I’ve just read all the newspapers and the official documents. And that keeps me going to places like that. It’s just so bloody interesting.
Would you be happy for your son [Rafe, 20 months] to follow in your footsteps, in your career?
I’ve seen several sons of friends of mine doing the job and I’m always terribly affected by it. I have two daughters by my first marriage and neither of them wanted to have anything to do with journalism and I don’t blame them at all. But I would actually kind of like it, yes; if there is journalism when he grows up, if there’s a BBC, if there’s decent journalism. I don’t want him being part of some sort of propaganda set-up; I wouldn’t be very enthusiastic about that.
Saddam, Mugabe, Hollywood stars…who was the person you’ve been most thrilled to meet?
A few people in different ways. [Pointing at quote on the cover of Not Quite World’s End] Nelson Mandela is an absolute delight – now, when he’s almost 90, as he was when he was nearly in his 80s when I first met him, during the 1994 election in South Africa. He’s lovely, he’s wonderful; he’s what you imagine he is.
It’s also quite interesting and amusing to meet these great ones of the Earth because you find how different they are from how they seem. Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, is clearly a man with all sorts of ideas that are quite different from what you might expect an Israeli prime minister to have. When I met him a year ago, I was really taken by his (apparent, at any rate) sincerity in wanting to do a deal with the Palestinians.
I liked the relatively new president of Syria whom I also met last year – very charming and also with all sorts of ideas about changing Syria in a democratic fashion. So there are lots of these people, but of course I’d give my eye teeth to go (well I’m not sure I’d give my eye teeth, but I’d give something that was quite valuable to me) and see Robert Mugabe again. I must have interviewed him about six times in my life but I really want to go and interview him now.
Does Chelsea [where he now lives in London] not seem a little quiet after everywhere you’ve been?
[He smiles] Blessedly! Wonderfully quiet! I really love being back and it takes a long time for that feeling of relief and pleasure to wear off. It does wear off, of course, because you get used to it again, but it just feels absolutely lovely each time. And London in general, I’ve got a real affection for London. I think it’s just a wonderful city and I speak as somebody who actually lives part of the time in Paris, which is a lovely city. But London is the capital of the world.
Travels
Do you travel much in your spare time?
I do actually, yes. I know it sounds bonkers and you’d think I’d want to just stay at home but I do quite a lot of travelling in my spare time. Not for very long – I never stay anywhere for very long.
What sort of trips?
This year, I went to Morocco, Egypt, Italy, all just for a few days. I like to do that, go for about a week and then I get restless and need to go somewhere else.
Is there anywhere you haven’t been that you’d really like to?
Antarctic, the Arctic, Venezuela. I almost went to Venezuela this summer and then my mother-in-law who was going to go with us got ill and we weren’t able to go, sadly. It sounds really, really interesting and I’ve never been there. Where else would I like to go? I confess I’ve never been to Australia. And now that we beat them in Rugby it seems to me a good moment to go – I can go and rub it in.
What do you never travel without?
Books, books. I’ve got a horror actually; it’s kind of like a fear of the dark, or a fear of heights. I suffer from a fear of heights but I also suffer from a fear of not having reading material. There’s probably a Latin or a Greek word for it – a loathing of the thought that I might not have anything to read. I’m the kind of person who reads the cereal packet in the morning for want of something to read. So I never travel without that.
Also, this is rather boring and obvious, but I never travel nowadays without my iPod, because of course you can put your entire CD collection on it. Hours, I’ve got 21 days or something on it. I’ve got a lot of music so that when I travel I don’t have to listen to the same thing. So that’s it really, nothing else – I don’t have to take some special cheeses or something. But I do quite often, if I’m going to stay in some dump for a long time, of course this is Baghdad, I take tins of oysters with me, just because it’s nice. And I always, I always take whisky; I take whisky into places where you’re not supposed to take whisky, because I feel it’s my unquestionable right.
The Future
So what’s next? Another book?
No, no, thank god, not for some time. The trouble is, to write these things, because I don’t have the chance to take the time off, I have to get up at about 5.30 in the morning and crawl down to the computer, or have it with me wherever I am, and it’s sort of life-wrecking, so thankfully I don’t have to do it for at least another year.
So the next thing is just another trip to somewhere else and I think it’s actually Saudi Arabia, I’m going to interview the king there, at the end of the month.
Are you looking forward to that?
My wife often says, “Are you looking forward to it, are you nervous or excited about these things?” and I always tell her, well I’m not really because I’ve learnt so much that when you do get excited, something comes in to stop you; or when you’re nervous, it all passes off fantastically well; and when you think, “Oh this is going to be a doddle, I’m going to have a lovely time”, something dreadful happens.
I was going to China in May of 1989, and thought it was going to be absolutely marvellous; I was going to enjoy myself. Well I did enjoy myself, but that was the month of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations and I ended up lying in the gutter in Chang’an Avenue in Beijing with bullets whistling all around, absolutely terrifying. So you never can tell, that’s what I always say to my wife when she says, “Aren’t you excited” or, “Aren’t you nervous?” and I just say “no”, because you never know what’s going to happen.
So you just go with the flow?
I just go with the flow – I take it easy, I don’t worry about things, I don’t get upset about things like I used to, I’m quite laid-back. When things go wrong I just think, “Well, what the hell” and that great old-fashioned phrase: “Nobody died.” I may fail to get something on the ten o’clock news and lose my job, but nobody died. And as long as they don’t die and as long as we all survive the experience, it seems to me to be ok, really.
Author: Rachel Ricks
Date: 11 October 2007