A: A Damn Good Read

If you've never read any of John Simpson's books, read this one. It
has that marvelous capacity to change your world-view, and it achieves
this in a way that is neither overbearing, nor simplistic.

Simpson has a real talent for descriptive narrative. For those,
therefore, seeking a straightforward factual account of recent world
history and current affairs, this book is something more than that.
Simpson takes us on a journey with him, not only to different
geographical locations, but into the worlds and lives of those heroes
and villains he encounters there. These worlds might include the
chilling Orwellian nightmare of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the oddly moving
meeting with a retired East German spymaster, or the story behind the
wonderfully surreal interview Simpson had with a very flatulent Colonel
Gadhafi. Simpson overstates nothing, but uses his greatest strength,
his economy of language, to tell his story. And what a story.
It is, in turns, happy, sad, even truculently angry and self-mocking.
(Who will ever forget Simpson's wonderful description of how he
"mooned" at the Queen and some 70,000 others by accident!).

But behind it all, Simpson manages, despite his attempt to hide behind
a journalistic impartiality, to fail gloriously to do just that.
Instead, through the shining language, and the beautiful writing, even
behind the stories he writes about, Simpson reveals his sense of
ethical and moral fairness. He is not afraid to come to a judgment, to
comment personally, to cast the first stone.

And how wonderful that is.

(December 2001)