Last updated February 2006
Category: News
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David Willey has been the BBC's Rome Correspondent since 1971 and is one of the veterans of BBC News.
He is the author of an acclaimed critical biography of Pope John Paul II, God's Politician, (Faber & Faber 1992) and also of Italians (BBC 1984), published in connection with a successful BBC Television series.
He read law and modern languages at Cambridge University .
After a traineeship in Rome with Reuters News Agency, and a period working as a freelance reporter in post-independence Algeria, he joined the BBC in 1964 as East Africa Correspondent.
In 1965 he moved to Asia as a roving radio and TV reporter, covering the early stages of the Vietnam War from Saigon, as it was then called.
In that same year he was also one of the first BBC correspondents to report from Beijing since the Communist takeover.
From 1969 to 1971 he was Assistant Diplomatic Correspondent, based in London.
Resident in Rome during the past four decades, David Willey has covered for the BBC events in Italy ranging from rise and fall of the Red Brigades urban guerillas, to the Naples earthquake of 1980, and the politics of the Berlusconi period.
From the Vatican, he reported extensively the whole record breaking pontificate of John Paul II, whom he accompanied on more than 40 of his foreign journeys.
David Willey was awarded the Order of the British Empire by Her Majesty The Queen in 2003 for his services to broadcasting journalism.
