Last updated July 2006
Category: News
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John Simpson is the BBC's World Affairs Editor, the senior member of a team of
London-based foreign and specialist correspondents.
In a BBC career spanning 40 years, John has earned a reputation as one of the
world's most experienced and authoritative journalists.
His first job with the
BBC was as a trainee sub-editor in Radio News in 1966.
Four decades later, he
has reported from 120 countries across the globe, from 36 war zones, and has
interviewed more than 150 kings, presidents and prime ministers.
His assignments have included the great majority of big international news
stories since the Eighties: the Iranian revolution against the Shah (when he flew
to Tehran with Ayatollah Khomeini), the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe and
in Russia itself, Tiananmen Square, the Gulf War, the wars in Bosnia, the end of
apartheid in South Africa, the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, their
overthrow in 2001 and the invasion of Iraq two years later.
Since then he has
reported regularly from Baghdad.
During the Kosovo crisis of 1999, John reported from Belgrade.
He was one of
only a handful of journalists to remain in the Serbian capital when NATO began
its bombing campaign.
"As everyone else was pulling out I decided I would just stay put and see what
happened," he said.
For the next 12 weeks he filed reports every day and often
round-the-clock for all BBC outlets, and was the first BBC journalist in a war
zone to answer questions from internet users via BBC News Online.
In April 2000, he was named Royal Television Society Journalist of the Year for
his reporting of the conflict.
In a career which makes visiting trouble spots a way of life, John says he
rarely fears for his safety - even when a Palestinian soldier ordered him to
kneel in the road and pulled the trigger.
Other close shaves include being shelled in Afghanistan, bombed with poison gas
in the Iran-Iraq War and dodging the bullets in Tiananmen Square.
During the invasion of Iraq in 2003 he and his team were bombed by the Americans
in the north of the country, in the worst 'friendly fire' incident of the war.
18 people were killed, but John and his team were able to continue broadcasting
from the scene.
His experience of trouble started early: in 1970, on his first day as a
reporter, he was punched by then British Prime Minister Harold Wilson for
asking whether he was about to call an election.
John was appointed World Affairs Editor in 1988 following periods as Political
Editor, Diplomatic Editor and presenter of the BBC ONE Nine O'Clock News.
Before that he
worked as a correspondent in South Africa, Brussels and Dublin.
John also presents the current and political affairs programme, Simpson's World,
which is broadcast on both BBC World and BBC News 24. Seen in 200 countries,
Simpson's World has interviewed more than 100 people in over 40 countries.
His books include an autobiography, Strange Places, Questionable People (1998),
and several accounts of his journalistic experiences: A Mad World, My Masters
(2000); News From No Man's Land (2002), The Wars Against Saddam (2003), and Days
From A Different World (2005).
John received a CBE in the Gulf War Honours (1991), and is one of only two
people to have been twice named the Royal Television Society's Journalist of the
Year (1991 and 2000).
Among his other awards have been three Baftas, a Golden Nymph award for his
reporting of Ayatollah Khomeini's return to Iran (1979), a Peabody Trust award
for news (1999), a special jury's award at the Bayeux War Correspondents Awards
(2002), an International Emmy award for News Coverage for his report on the fall
of Kabul for BBC ONE's Ten O'Clock News, and an RTS award for his reporting
during the invasion of Iraq.
Born on 9 August 1944, John was brought up in London and Suffolk, and educated
at St Paul's School and Magdalene College, Cambridge where he read English, and
edited the magazine Granta.
He has two daughters by his first marriage, and a
son (born 2006) by his second wife, Dee, who worked for the BBC in her native
South Africa and was the first producer of Simpson's World. They live in
London and Paris.
In 2000 Magdalene College awarded John an honorary fellowship, and in 2005 he
was made Chancellor of Roehampton University. He holds honorary doctorates from
six universities altogether.
