Not Quite World's End: A Traveller's Tales [Unabridged] [Paperback]

John's somewhat pompous and self-regarding writing style sometimes grates, but the breadth of his experience across the world's trouble-spots over the last 30 years is truly astonishing. This book contains some evocative insights and anecdotes, and I found it both engrossing and informative. Could have done without the liberal sermonising on occasions.

When I was impressionable and even more naive than now I was warned not to trust anyone who started a story with "When I was in ...". This was tremendously good advice. For some reason the society I swim in rates travel above all else and fails to see it as just another form of consumption - like fast cars, designer clothes and unnecessary kitchens. It is relatively easy to travel half way round the world, look poverty and injustice in the eye, then rail about it at comfortable middle class dinner parties. It is far harder to admit to it in your own back yard.

Not Quite World's End by John Simpson didn't therefore look promising as the only book I got under the Christmas tree this year. It consists almost entirely of "When I was in..." stories. Fortunately Simpson has been in a few interesting places in the last forty years such as Saddam Hussein's trial or parts of the Congo and so many of the stories are genuinely fascinating and I have had an entertaining few days working through the four hundred plus pages. There is no doubt that Simpson is a highly professional reporter. The back stories to some of the major conflicts of the world are fascinating.

Unfortunately Simpson can't help giving us more than a glimpse of his personal life. He could have covered the birth of his son (a third child by a second marriage late in Simpson's life) in a page or two and it would have had the same effect as the entire chapter he devotes to it. Has he not noticed that although conception and birth stories are of immense personal importance their interest to others is minimal? Parts of the book read like a rather embarrassing chain letter. On the one hand he says he has to keep working to pay for the upbringing of his new son but goes on to describe his house in London and his flat in Paris (two of the most expensive places on the planet) and is clearly shuttling backwards and forwards to South Africa to holiday and visiting relatives. Whatever Simpson's reason for continuing to work into his 60's it isn't putting bread on the table. It would be helpful if he were honest with himself and his readers - many of whom really will have to work to seventy to pay for even one home in a modest location.

The whole thing can be summed up for me with a single quote:

"Directly Rafe [Simpson's son] is old enough to remember the experience, I will take him to see tigers, jaguars, gorillas and polar bears in the wild, so that he can at least take the memory of them into the future."

There isn't even a hint that it is supporting this kind of life style for the very rich, or even the existence of the very rich, that is causing these creatures to become extinct and many of the conflicts in the world. Simpson seems totally unable to examine the fact that he may actually be part of the problem rather than a neutral voice.

The book would have been improved enormously with the help of a non sycophantic editor who could have said "John nobody is really interested in this" instead I suspect, like Saddam, Simpson is surrounded by celeb buffers. He would get on well with Prince Charles.

This is a book that echoes with the sound of barrels being scraped - or is it the sound of a multi-book contract with Macmillan being lazily completed?

John Simpson's previous volumes of autobiography, egotistic reportage and anecdote have been stonking good reads - the pomposity and digressions very much part of the attraction.
But in this latest instalment he fails on any number of counts. For one, the previous careful balance of self-importance and self-deprecation comes badly undone here. Grand swagger is very much part of Simpson's persona, but in this book it frequently reaches unbearable levels. At one point he writes: "I didn't particularly care about myself... but I don't like to see any sign that the BBC is being treated disrespectfully". Simpson knows as well as anyone that when it comes to major foreign news stories he IS the BBC, and that of course, is the point.

There is some cringe-worthy name dropping and a lot of smug crowing about the wonderfully exotic and indulgently adventurous life he has led.
This was all present in his earlier works, and was all bearable - or even part of the charm. What makes it less so here is the shambolic scrapbook tone of this book. Simpson claims in his introduction that the book is a loose portrait of the current state of things, the world in which we live. This is nonsense. The declared theme is quite obviously a sloppy last minute tag-on, afterthought of some editor (who ought, incidentally, to have spent more time on the proof-reading) eager to provide at least some kind of theme for a random collection of unconnected anecdotes.
"I once happened to be in Argentina; some time later I was in Iraq again, then I went to South Africa with my wonderful wife and baby; I have known President Karzai well for many years..." You get the idea.

Of course, Simpson is an excellent and engaging writer and a fine raconteur with a neat yet deceptively informal style. And it is thanks to this that there are large chunks of the book that can be read with real pleasure. The pieces about Iraq, the section on America, the interlude in the Congo all fall into this category.
Other sections are less enjoyable. The bits where he pontificates grandly about the state of the world in which we live - mainly in the first and last chapters - are almost unreadable, and the lengthy longeurs about his beautiful young wife and adorable baby son are excruciatingly embarrassing.
Given the disjointed nature of the book these sections can safely be skipped over. But this in itself highlights the major disappointment of Not Quite World's End: amongst the scraps and cuttings there are the bones of potential for at least a couple of really good books. Though he has done it already, Simpson surely knows enough to have written another decent book on Iraq (one of the most attractive elements of World's End is the way he nails his colours firmly to the mast on this topic). It's doubtful that he could muster the humility necessary to produce a soul-searching assessment of the attractions and contradictions of life as a war reporter (as done so well by Anthony Loyd) but he could have made another book specifically about journalism. But perhaps the best opportunity missed here was for a book about sub-Saharan Africa. The self-indulgent interlude on the Afrikaans people is dreadful, but the other chapters and sections on Congo, South Africa and the Kalahari Bushmen are excellent, and given his experience reporting there he could certainly have written something prescient about Zimbabwe (actually, one suspects his next tome will be a hastily hammered out piece of hackery on just that).

Of course, World's End - or most of it at least - is still enjoyable, rather like being treated to dinner in some hallowed London club (Simpson's anachronistic twittering about "my clubs" is unforgivable by the way), by a garrulous old buffoon with a string of entertaining yarns to spin.
But ultimately it's not really a book at all - it's a raggedy collection of little sketches, hammered out in plush hotel-rooms between trips to Iraq, glorious family holidays amid the raw nature of the Veldt, and dinner with movie stars... He ought not to be able to get away with this, but he does, just about - after all, he IS John Simpson...