Subfondo JS - Simpson, John

Born in Cleveleys, Lancashire, but was taken to his mother's "bomb-damaged house in London" the following week.
His father Roy, was a property developer. His parents separated when he was seven years old and he chose to remain with his father while his mother cared for his two half sisters. He was educated at Dulwich College Preparatory School and St Paul's School.

Admitted to Magdalene College where he read English and was editor of Granta magazine.

After Magdalene he started as a trainee sub-editor at BBC radio news. and became a BBC reporter in 1970. Early in his career, the then prime minister Harold Wilson, angered by being asked whether he was about to call an election, punched Simpson in the stomach.

1980-81 - BBC's political editor
1981-82 - he presented the Nine o'clock News
1982 - became diplomatic editor
1988 - became BBC world affairs editor

Simpson's reporting career includes the following:

Nov 1969 - he interviewed the exiled King of Buganda, Mutesa II, hours before the latter's death in his London flat from alcohol poisoning. The official cause was suicide but some suspected assassination. Simpson told the police the following day that the king, a fellow-graduate of Magdalene College, Cambridge, had been sober and in good spirits, but this line of enquiry was not pursued.

1 Feb 1979 - he travelled back from Paris to Tehran with the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini, a return that heralded the Iranian Revolution, as millions lined the streets of the capital.

1989 - he avoided bullets at the Beijing Tiananmen Square massacre.

1989 - he reported the fall of the Ceauşescu regime in Bucharest.

Early part of the 1991 - Gulf War in Baghdad, before being expelled by the authorities.

1999 - reported from Belgrade during the Kosovo War, where he was one of a handful of journalists to remain in the Yugoslav capital after the authorities, at the start of the conflict, expelled those from NATO countries.

2001 - he was one of the first reporters to enter Afghanistan disguising himself by wearing a burqa, and subsequently Kabul in the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

He was hunted by Robert Mugabe's forces in Zimbabwe.

2002 - he had an interview with the Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn just four days before his assassination. Fortuyn was not happy with Simpson and his questions and so sent him away just five minutes after the start of the interview.

He was the first BBC journalist to answer questions in a war zone from internet users via BBC News Online.

While reporting on a non-embedded basis from Northern Iraq in the 2003 Iraq war, Simpson was injured in a friendly fire incident when a U.S. warplane bombed the convoy of American and Kurdish forces he was with. The attack was caught on film: a member of Simpson's crew was killed and he himself was left deaf in one ear.

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.

2016 - he presented a Panorama special, "John Simpson: 50 Years on the Frontline", revisiting the people and places that have impacted on him most, revealing his thoughts on the challenges for the future.

2018 - he described how a previous head of BBC News had recently tried to force him out of the BBC. "I wasn't the only one: he did the same to several eminent broadcasters, on the grounds that the news department was clogged at the top by the aged. I was unsighted by being assured regularly how wonderful my contribution to the BBC was. 'I'd be distraught if you left', he said."

Since 2022 he regularly presents Unspun World with John Simpson for the BBC, dissecting political opinions from around the world as their world affairs editor.

Awards
CBE in the Gulf War honours list in 1991
International Emmy for his report for the BBC Ten o'clock News on the fall of Kabul
Golden Nymph at the Cannes Film Festival
Peabody award in the US
Three BAFTAs
2000 - made an Honorary Fellow of Magdalene
2005 - became the first Chancellor of Roehampton University

Various universities have awarded him honorary doctorates:
De Montfort, Suffolk College at the University of East Anglia, Nottingham, Dundee, Southampton, Sussex, St Andrews, Exeter 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.
He was honoured by the City of Westminster at a Marylebone tree planting ceremony in May 2012.