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Review
‘He’s much more than a newsreader. He understands what’s happening and he provides intellectual underpinning. We know what he stands for and relate to it…and trust him as a man.’ Observer
‘A compelling read, weaving boys’ own adventures with impassioned, often angry commentary.’ Mail on Sunday
‘Snow is the closest thing we have to a modern-day George Orwell…A vivid, accurate, hones guide to the key world events from 1975.’ Independent
‘Pacy, candid and anecdote-laden, Snow’s account of a childhood spent in awe of his father is a delight.’ Daily Mail
Product Description
The compelling autobiography of one of the great and most committed newsmen of our time: full, frank, and occasionally very funny, Jon Snow’s memoirs are as revealing about the great and the not-so-good as about his own passionate involvement in the reporting of world affairs.
Jon Snow is perhaps the most highly regarded newsman of our time; his qualities as a journalist and as a human being – his passion, warmth, intelligence, frankness and humour – are widely recognised and evident for all to see most nights on Channel 4 News and now in the pages of his first book.
His vivid personal chronicle is filled with anecdotes and pithy observations, and delightfully records his life and times since becoming a journalist in the early 1970s. He reported widely on Cold War conflicts in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Angola and Central America before becoming a resident correspondent in Washington D.C. in the 1980s, and he has met and interviewed most of the world’s leaders.
Drawing lessons from these experiences, he has pertinent things to say about how the increasing world disorder came about following the fall of the Berlin Wall; how the West’s constant search for an enemy has helped unhinge the world; and how and why the media have, in general, been less than helpful in drawing attention to key political and global developments.
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Customer Reviews
I enjoyed this almost as much as the Campbell interview on C4 News. The idea of a "new world disorder" might not be fully fleshed out, but this is compulsive reading nevertheless.
Yet the real heart of the book is Snow's years as a foreign correspondent for ITN. He tells his tales with flair, passion and insight.
Thus, on one page, you are wondering about Britain's failure to accept its responsibilities to Uganda in the 1970s; on the next, you are wondering about the fall-out from a whirlwind relationship he falls into, while covering events there: it's a beautifully written little vignette. For me, this made it a wonderfully entertaining read, though I imagine it would be frustrating for some.
That it is self-consciously subjective means that he can afford to be opinionated as he can't on Channel Four News. A good example of where this works well is in his chapters on America. As he covers the wars in Central America in which the States played an ugly hand in the 1970s, you sense his anger. Thus, it is all the more compelling when he becomes Washington correspondent in the 80s and is instantly seduced by America's can-do culture and sympathy for freedom of information and values he holds dear.
It's inevitably less interesting once his career takes him behind the News desk in the 1990s, but he still has a coherent and interesting take on world affairs which is worth reading.
Ironically, given his antipathy to the BBC, Snow has achieved the Reithian triumvirate: he informs, he educates and he entertains.
This would make a great Christmas or birthday present for anyone with a reasonable interest in world politics but wouldn't enjoy having to wade through a dry history. I am already planning it to give it to several friends.
His book is a mixture of biography, travelogue, recent history and political manifest. Jon was present at most of the crucial events of the last 25 years and his recollections are absolutely fascinating and in the book he can be less neutral than on the news. Highly recommended!
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