Unreliable Sources: How the Twentieth Century was Reported

Through many decades of groundbreaking journalism, John Simpson has become not only one of the most recognizable and trusted British personalities, but has transferred his skill to books with multiple bestselling success.

With his new book he turns his eye to how Great Britain has been transformed by its free press down the years. He shows how, while the press likes to pretend it’s independent, they have enjoyed the power they have over the events they report and have at times exercised it irresponsibly. He examines how it changed the world and changed itself over the course of the last hundred years, from the creation of the Daily Mail and the first stokings of anti-German sentiment in the years leading up to the First World War, to the Sun’s propping up of the Thatcher government, and beyond.

In this self-analysis from one of the pillars of modern journalism some searching questions are asked, including whether the press can ever be truly free and whether we would desire it to be so. Always incisive, brilliantly readable, and never shy of controversy, Unreliable Sources sees John Simpson at the height of his game as one of Britain’s foremost commentators.

John Simpson is the BBC’s World Affairs Editor. He has twice been the Royal Television Society’s Journalist of the Year. He has also won three BAFTAs, including the Richard Dimbleby award in 1991 and the News and Current Affairs award in 2000 for his coverage, with the BBC News team, of the Kosovo conflict. He has written four volumes of autobiography, Strange Places, Questionable People, A Mad World, My Masters, News from No Man’s Landand, most recently, Not Quite World’s End, a childhood memoir, Days from a Different Worldand The Wars Against Saddam.