Ethnicity British Occupation Journalist | Name John Simpson Role Correspondent | |
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Full Name John Cody Fidler-Simpson Born 9 August 1944 (age 79) ( 1944-08-09 ) London, England Children Rafe Simpson, Eleanor Simpson, Julia Simpson Spouse Adele Kruger (m. 1996), Diane Petteys (m. 1965–1995) Movies and TV shows Top Dogs: Adventures in War, Sea and Ice, Freeze Frame Books Not quite world's end, Wars Against Saddam, Simpson's world, The disappeared, Behind Iranian Lines Similar People John Humphrys, Kate Adie, Jon Snow, Marcel Ophuls, Richard Scott | ||
Putin vs john simpson december 2014
John Cody Fidler-Simpson (born 9 August 1944) is an English foreign correspondent and world affairs editor of BBC News. He has spent all his working life at the BBC, and has reported from more than 120 countries, including thirty war zones, and interviewed many world leaders.
Contents
- Putin vs john simpson december 2014
- Iranian reporter interview bbc john simpson and kasra naji
- Early life and education
- Career
- Awards
- Personal life
- References
Iranian reporter interview bbc john simpson and kasra naji
Early life and education
Simpson was born in Cleveleys, Lancashire. He says in his autobiography that his father was an anarchist. He spent ten years growing up in Dunwich in Suffolk. He was educated at Dulwich College Preparatory School and St Paul's School, followed by Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he read English and was editor of Granta magazine. In 1965 he was a member of the Magdalene University Challenge team. A year later Simpson started as a trainee sub-editor at BBC radio news.
Career
Simpson became a BBC reporter in 1970. On his very first day, the then-prime minister Harold Wilson, angered by what he saw as the sudden and impudent appearance of the novice's microphone, punched him in the stomach.
Simpson was the BBC's political editor in 1980–81. He presented the Nine O'Clock News in 1981–82 and became diplomatic editor in 1982. He had also served as a correspondent in South Africa, Brussels and Dublin. He became BBC world affairs editor in 1988 and presented an occasional current affairs programme, Simpson's World.
Simpson's reporting career includes the following episodes:
Simpson has freely admitted to using hallucinogenic drugs offered to him by locals in various jungles of the world. This prompted jibes from other panellists when Simpson appeared on BBC Television's topical quiz show Have I Got News For You. On his first appearance, Simpson revealed that one hallucination involved a six-foot goldfish putting its flipper round his shoulders while wearing dark glasses and a straw hat.
In 2008 and 2009, Simpson took part in a BBC programme called Top Dogs: Adventures in War, Sea and Ice. It saw Simpson unite with fellow Britons Sir Ranulph Fiennes, the adventurer, and Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, the round-the-world yachtsman. The team went on three trips, each experiencing each other's adventure field. The first episode, aired on 27 March 2009, saw Simpson, Fiennes and Knox-Johnston go on a news-gathering trip to Afghanistan. The team reported from the Khyber Pass and the Tora Bora mountain complex. The three also undertook a voyage around Cape Horn and an expedition hauling sledges across the deep-frozen Frobisher Bay in the far north of Canada.
During the 2011 Libyan civil war, Simpson travelled with the rebels during their westward offensive, reporting on the war from the front lines and coming under fire on several occasions.
In 2016, Simpson presented a Panorama special, 'John Simpson: 50 Years on the Frontline', revisiting the people and places that have impacted on him most, as he reveals his thoughts on the challenges for the future.
Awards
Simpson has received various awards, including a CBE in the Gulf War honours list in 1991, an International Emmy for his report for the BBC Ten O'Clock News on the fall of Kabul, the Golden Nymph at the Cannes Film Festival, a Peabody award in the US, and three Baftas. He was appointed an honorary fellow of his old college at Cambridge, Magdalene, in 2000, and became the first Chancellor of Roehampton University in 2005.
Various universities have awarded him honorary doctorates: De Montfort, Suffolk College at the University of East Anglia, Nottingham, Dundee, Southampton, Sussex, St Andrews, and Leeds. He has received the Ischia International Journalism Award and the Bayeux-Calvados Award for war correspondents. In June 2011 he was made a Freeman of the City of London. Simpson was honoured by the City of Westminster at a Marylebone tree planting ceremony in May 2012.
Personal life
Simpson has two daughters, Julia and Eleanor, by his first marriage to American Diane Petteys. He married Dee (Adele) Kruger, a South African television producer, in 1996. They had a son, named Rafe, in January 2006. Simpson, whose grandmother was born in Ireland, holds British and Irish citizenship; he moved back to London in 2005 after living in Ireland for several years. In an interview with the Irish Independent, Simpson admitted to using a legal tax avoidance scheme to purchase his London home in 2004, but stated that he would abandon the scheme and pay all applicable domestic taxes on its sale.
He is an Anglican and worships at Chelsea Old Church.
In 2015, he was named one of GQ's 50 best dressed British men.