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Shooting History: A Personal Journey
Jon Snow
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.
COPYRIGHT (#ulink_5391adc7-9fde-5cef-aef1-d140a6b44273)
William Collins
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
This edition published by Harper Perennial 2005
First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2004
Copyright © Jon Snow 2004
PS section copyright © Louise Tucker 2005, except ‘Signposting History’ by Jon Snow
© Jon Snow 2005
PS™ is a trademark of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
Jon Snow asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Lines from ‘On the Pulse of Morning’ by Maya Angelou reproduced by permission of Time Warner Book Group UK
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Source ISBN: 9780007171859
Ebook Edition © MAY 2017 ISBN: 9780008258047
Version: 2017-05-04
PRAISE FOR SHOOTING HISTORY (#ulink_972f3eb0-4346-5fcc-a09c-74940ae201e9)
From the reviews of Shooting History:
‘Snow is the closest we have to a modern-day George Orwell … A vivid, accurate, honest 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
‘Shooting History is among my favourite memoirs this year. Snow is a thinker and a generous writer who has done incredible things and has views on them’
MATTHEW PARRIS, The Times, Books of the Year
‘Snow charts his own growth with self-deprecation and a lightness of touch … A fascinating insight into a world in flux’
Time Out
‘Will inspire anyone who wants to know what television is like at the uncomfortable end of the camera when the bullets are flying’
Guardian
‘[Snow is a] witty, mildly eccentric and utterly engaging writer … He cleverly uses his own personal experiences and insights gained while being present at some of the major events in modern world history to argue a particular point … His anecdotes on the likes of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Idi Amin are spot on’
Birmingham Post
‘Opinionated, eloquent … As one man’s take on the history of the past 30 years this is an impressive piece of work. Snow is good at teasing out the often terrible ironies of our times … A well-written, engrossing and surprisingly passionate piece of work’
Sunday Herald
‘Hugely entertaining … and makes you think’
Manchester Evening News
‘Fascinating … this book puts history into startling clarity’
Irish Examiner
DEDICATION (#ulink_95ce03e3-a26b-53d5-8eeb-a8e93e94c632)
To Madeleine, Leila and Freya
CONTENTS
Cover (#u1aed2003-5b4c-5796-9559-071d065802fc)
Title Page (#u92b9b187-52ed-5ac6-a06b-b75d73be7cb1)
Copyright (#ulink_7e07fc91-bb05-5a07-aca8-7743d7cfe68e)
Praise (#ulink_6be7b03e-68f5-5436-9a43-60bf163a04fb)
Dedication (#ulink_c39f8aa3-d4f4-5eb0-b20e-6370407a6770)
List of Illustrations (#ulink_c72e42d2-0947-55db-b4da-b6b0ba00031c)
Prologue (#ulink_5bc5ce95-c253-57f4-9c39-be4864d7f63d)
1. Home Thoughts (#ulink_27983633-da20-50d2-88e3-32838ea36bb0)
2. Africa, Revolution and Despair (#ulink_9aacc63d-18a8-543b-a7e7-fa7b802dbb06)
3. Of Drugs and Spooks
4. Tea with the Tyrant
5. First Brick Out of the Wall
6. Of Oil, Islam and Moscow
7. Uncle Sam’s Backyard
8. Potomac Fever
9. Talking with the Enemy
10. The Whole Lot Comes Down
11. Hey, We Never Expected to Win!
12. Shooting at the Messenger and Coming Full Circle
Picture Section
Index
Acknowledgements
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More …
About the author
About the book
Read on
About the Publisher
ILLUSTRATIONS (#ulink_6f1e8991-a72c-520c-9cdb-9f16ca30c3b5)
(Photographs are from the author’s collection)
General Tom, my twice-knighted grandfather, who hung above the mantel and seemed to have inspected every boiled egg I ever ate.
War wedding. My father and mother met and married in a matter of weeks.
My father’s Hudson Terraplane Eight configured as a wartime fire-tender.
The damage caused by a Second World War bomb on the lawns of Charterhouse School; my father’s one moment of ‘action’.
A sunny Sussex childhood. Growing up in the aftermath of war.
No particular talent. Following childhood encounters with Harold Macmillan, my earliest ambition was to be a Tory MP.
My father with Macmillan at Ardingly. ‘Do you know what a Prime Minister is?’ he asked me. ‘Are you married to the Queen?’ I responded.
With Tom and Nick in the Terraplane; a happy contrast to the dining-table warfare.
The Queen visiting Ardingly. My mother had been to Harrods to buy a pair of Crown Derby cups and saucers from which the royal lips could sip their afternoon tea.
As a chorister at Winchester Cathedral in 1958.
My father, every inch a Bishop – eight feet tall in his mitre.
Back from Uganda. VSO had radicalised me, and one reason I wanted to become a journalist was in order to return there.
India in the summer of 1969, singing ‘Hey Jude’ in the Liverpool University close-part harmony Beatle band.
Pre-mobile-phone reporting for LBC in 1973, on a clunky old Motorola two-way radio.
An exchange with Ugandan dictator Idi Amin on the 1974 trip with Jim Callaghan to rescue Denis Hills.
Vietnamese boat people below decks on the refugee boat on which we found ourselves stranded in the South China Sea in 1976.
The shell of the Vietnamese refugee boat beached in Malaysia.
Interviewing the Somali President Siad Barre, a grumpy Moscow-educated ideologue running a classic Cold War Russian client state, in 1976.
With Mohinder Dhillon in Somalia. Mystified British viewers were treated to a travelogue in which an excitable white man jumped up and down talking about the threat to world peace.
Back to Uganda again in 1977, this time for ITN armed with Edward Heath’s book.
Interviewing US President Jimmy Carter and Prime Minister Jim Callaghan outside Lancaster House in London, 1977.
Preparing to conduct the first ever English-language interview with a Pope, aboard John Paul II’s plane in January 1979.
Afghanistan, 1980. With the Mujahidin in mountains above Herat in the immediate aftermath of the Soviet invasion.
Filming with Charlie Morgan at ‘Desert One’ in Iran in April 1980 amid the wreckage of Jimmy Carter’s catastrophic attempt to rescue the American hostages.
The Iran–Iraq War in 1981. Wearing no body armour and no flak jacket, I was less than well prepared to survive the conflagration in which I was caught.
With President Reagan in the White House, February 1985.
