For over thirty years, John Simpson has travelled the world to report on the most significant events of our time. From being punched in the stomach by Harold Wilson on one of his first days as a reporter, to escaping summary execution in Beirut, flying into Teheran with the returning Ayatollah Khomeini, and narrowly avoiding entrapment by a beautiful Czech secret agent, Simpson has had an astonishingly eventful career. In 1989 he witnessed the Tiananmen Square massacre, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Communism throughout Eastern Europe and, only weeks later, in South Africa, the release of Nelson Mandela. With Simpson's uncanny knack of being in the right place at the right time, this autobiography is a ring-side seat at every major event in recent global history. 'So vivid I could feel my heart beating' Jonathan Mirsky, Spectator 'great stories, sometimes harrowing, sometimes hilarious' Daily Telegraph

John Simpson is the BBC's World Affairs Editor. He has twice been the Royal Television Society's Journalist of the Year and won countless other major television awards. He has written several books, including five volumes of autobiography, Strange Places, Questionable People , A Mad World, My Masters, News from No Man's Land and Not Quite World's End and a childhood memoir, Days from a Different World. The Wars Against Saddam, his account of the West's relationship with Iraq and his two decades reporting on that relationship encompassing two Gulf Wars and the fall of Saddam Hussein, is also published by Pan Macmillan. He lives in London with his South African wife, Dee, and their son, Rafe.