Simon Reeve (British TV presenter)

Life and career

Reeve was born in Hammersmith and brought up in west London, attending a local comprehensive school. He rarely went abroad until he started work. After leaving school, he took a series of jobs, including working in a supermarket, a jewellery shop and a charity shop, before he started researching and writing in his spare time while working as a postboy at a British newspaper.

After the attacks of 11 September 2001, Reeve began making travel documentaries for the BBC. Tom Hall, travel editor for Lonely Planet publications, has described Reeve's travel documentaries as "the best travel television programmes of the past five years".

After catching malaria on a journey around the Equator, Reeve became an ambassador for the Malaria Awareness Campaign. Along with Sir David Attenborough and other conservation specialists, Reeve is a member of the Council of Ambassadors for WWF, one of the world's leading environmental organisations.

In January 2013, Reeve appeared in a charity special of The Great British Bake Off.

Meet the Stans (2003)

Meet the Stans is a four-part BBC Two and BBC World series on Central Asia, written and presented by Reeve. In the series Reeve travelled from the far north-west of Kazakhstan, by the Russian border, east to the Chinese border, south through Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the edge of Afghanistan and west to Uzbekistan and the legendary Silk Road cities of Samarkand and Bukhara. It was broadcast on the BBC in 2003, and internationally during 2004 and 2005.

House of Saud (also broadcast as: Saudi: The Family in Crisis) (2004)

A one-off BBC Two and BBC World documentary filmed inside Saudi Arabia, written and presented by Reeve. The journey took Reeve across Saudi Arabia, from the cities of Jeddah and Riyadh to the vast Empty Quarter desert. Participants ranged from Saudi princes and Islamic militants, to teenage girls and Osama bin Laden's former best friend. It was broadcast in 2004.

Places That Don't Exist (2005)

Places That Don't Exist was Reeve's 2005 award-winning five-part series on breakaway states and unrecognised nations, broadcast on BBC Two and broadcasters internationally. Among the countries Reeve visited for this series were Somaliland, Transnistria (where Reeve was detained for 'spying' by the FSB), Nagorno-Karabakh, Ajaria, South Ossetia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Somalia, Moldova and Taiwan. He also visited Mogadishu, one of the most dangerous cities in the world.

Equator (2006)

Equator is a three-part BBC documentary first broadcast in September 2006 in which Reeve followed the Equator around the world. Among the places he visited were some of the most dangerous regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Colombia. The series was the Silver Award winner at the 2007 Wanderlust Travel Awards. Reeve contracted malaria while filming this series.

Tropic of Capricorn (2008)

Tropic of Capricorn is a four-part 2008 BBC documentary series in which Reeve tracked the southern edge of the tropics region around the world. The series, and the accompanying book, also written by Reeve, outlined his journey through Southern Africa, Madagascar, Australia and across South America. Reeve crossed the Andes Mountains, the Namib, Kalahari and Atacama deserts.

Explore (2009)

A four-part series for BBC Two broadcast from 25 January to 15 February 2009 in the UK. Leading a team of reporters in journeys of discovery to some of the most colourful and intense locations on earth, Explore blended travel with current affairs. The tag line for the series was "Don't just visit... Explore!" Programmes include: Patagonia to the Pampas, Africa's Great Rift Valley, Istanbul to Anatolia and Manila to Mindanao. Issues covered in the series range from forced farming to fashion goliaths, World Heritage rice terraces to dwindling honey industries, extreme hunger to extreme football. The visit to Manila included a special interview with Imelda Marcos in which she unwittingly shared a document with Reeve which showed that her late husband, the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, had holdings worth $937 Billion deposited with a bank in Brussels. Imelda immediately tried to salvage the gaffe but it was already caught on camera.

Tropic of Cancer (2010)

A six-part television series in which Reeve travelled around the Tropic of Cancer, the northern border of the Earth's tropical region. After travelling around the Tropic of Capricorn and Equator, this series completed Reeve's trilogy of journeys exploring the tropics. Starting on the Pacific coast of Mexico, Reeve followed the Tropic of Cancer almost 37,000 kilometres. The journey took him through 18 countries, ranging from Mexico and Mauritania, to Bangladesh and the Bahamas. The first episode aired on 14 March 2010. The series was broadcast on BBC TV in the UK, by broadcasters in more than 40 countries and by BBC World News globally.

Indian Ocean (2012)

In this six-part BBC TV series – broadcast during 2012 – Reeve travelled around the edge of the Indian Ocean.

Australia with Simon Reeve (2013)

In the first episode of this three-part BBC Two TV adventure series Reeve travelled from the 'red centre' of Australia south to the wine region, then west to Perth. In the second, he travelled across the remote and wild north to the Great Barrier Reef, and the third took him down the east coast to the cities of Sydney and Melbourne.

Pilgrimage with Simon Reeve (2013)

The series was broadcast in three parts on BBC Two in December 2013. In three episodes Simon travels through Europe to the Holy Land in Israel. He retraces the route of ancient pilgrims.

Tea Trail / Coffee Trail with Simon Reeve (2014)

In The Tea Trail, Reeve travels from Mombasa, Kenya and a tea auction, before taking the train to Nairobi and on into western Kenya visiting colonial plantations before crossing into Uganda, heading to Toro discovering the issue of child labour.

On The Coffee Trail in Vietnam, Reeve heads south from Hanoi on the Reunification Express to Huế, where he visits the Khe Sanh Combat Base, before driving through coffee plantations to Buon Ma Thuot, meeting a coffee billionaire (Dang Le Nguyen Vu). He then also meets up with Dave D'Haeze discussing the many problems of the growing of coffee in Vietnam, especially deforestation, and bad agricultural methods (monoculture plantations, overuse of fertiliser, overuse of water, additional problems due to climate change). He then travels to the Yok Don National Park and the rainforest, before finally arriving at a container port in Ho Chi Minh City, via Bangkok where he meets some human rights activists. Here, he meets Will Frith who discusses the future of growing coffee in Vietnam.

Sacred Rivers with Simon Reeve (2014)

This series was broadcast in three parts in October on BBC Two. In the first episode, Reeve heads to the River Nile. In the second episode, he visits the River Ganges in India, and explores its cultural values and what it means to the people of India. The third episode is based on the River Yangtze in China. The series has been released as a region 2 DVD, simply called Sacred Rivers.

Caribbean with Simon Reeve (2015)

This three-part series was broadcast in spring 2015 on BBC Two. In the first, Reeve explores Haiti, the Dominican Republic and the United States' territory of Puerto Rico, while in the second, he visits Barbados, St Vincent and the Caribbean coastlines of Venezuela and Colombia. His final leg sees him travel up the Caribbean coast of Central America, including Honduras, before ending in Jamaica.

Ireland with Simon Reeve (2015)

In a two-part series broadcast on BBC Two in November 2015, Reeve explores the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, examining the island's rich history, culture and beliefs, but also its complex and troubled past.

Greece with Simon Reeve (2016)

In this two-part series broadcast on BBC Two in February 2016, Reeve visits the islands of Kos, Lesbos and Crete, and the capital city of Athens, while also travelling from the Peloponnese peninsula in the south to the mountainous northern regions of Greece.

Turkey with Simon Reeve (2017)

In this two-part series broadcast on BBC Two in March and April 2017, Reeve visits Turkey, with highlights including Ankara, Istanbul, the Taurus Mountains and the Black Sea.

Books

Reeve's books have been translated into over 20 languages.

The New Jackals

While working as an investigative writer, Reeve began studying the 1993 World Trade Center bombing just days after the attack. His research formed the basis for a book, The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden and the future of terrorism, published in the UK and USA in the late 1990s. The New Jackals was the first book on bin Laden.

As he researched the book, Reeve traced and interviewed bin Laden supporters and senior FBI, CIA and Asian intelligence officials and also had clandestine meetings with spies and militants.

Classified information cited by Reeve detailed the existence, development and aims of the terrorist group al-Qaeda. The book warned that al-Qaeda was planning huge attacks on the West, and concluded that an apocalyptic terrorist strike by the group was almost inevitable. It has been a New York Times and international best-seller, and in the three months after the 9/11 attacks it was one of the top three best-selling books in the United States. The book has been translated into several languages.

After the September 11 attacks, Reeve became a regular commentator and reference source on the emerging terror threat. He has been quoted in The New York Times' warning that al-Qaeda was moving "far beyond being a terrorist organisation to being almost a state of mind. That's terribly significant because it gives the movement a scope and longevity it didn't have before 9/11."

One Day in September

One Day in September was published in 2000 and deals with the Munich massacre and subsequent events like the hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 615 and the covert Israeli retaliation operation dubbed Wrath of God. The book outlines the siege and the massacre during the 1972 Summer Olympics, in which 11 Israeli athletes and officials were killed by Palestinian group Black September, and also focusses on the aftermath. The accompanying documentary film of the same name, directed by Kevin Macdonald, won the Academy Award for Documentary Feature in 2000 and was screened in cinemas around the world.

Tropic of Capricorn

Tropic of Capricorn: circling the world on a southern adventure was written to accompany the television series of the same name.

Personal life

Reeve is married to Anya, a television camerawoman and campaigner. They have one son. Reeve is the older brother of photographer James Reeve.