Sam Hall

Sam Hall is an author, journalist of 50 years standing, TV presenter and an accomplished speaker, presenter and conference host. He has travelled the world as an Enrichment Lecturer on the world's most luxurious cruise ships for 24 years and is currently writing a series of Cruise Passenger Guide books.

As a boy, he joined the choir at Westminster Abbey and sang at Queen Elizabeth II's wedding. Later, he sang with the London Philharmonic Choir under such conductors as Sir Benjamin Britten, Sir Adrian Boult, Sir George Solti, Colin Davis and many others.

In the 1960s, he was the Chief Scandinavian Correspondent for Reuters News Agency, based in Stockholm, Sweden, where he lived for the best part of 12 years. Later, he was assigned to cover the six southern United States and Cuba, and subsequently the Nigerian-Biafran war of 1967-8.

During his career, he dined with politicians, businessmen and diplomats, but was subsequently reduced by unforeseen circumstances to live with the homeless on Paddington Station in London.

Nonetheless, his positive approach to life enabled him to extricate himself from poverty. He eventually went on to become News Editor of Europa Magazine, Syndication Editor for Visnews and an on-screen reporter for ITN's prestigious flagship programme 'News at Ten'.

He covered various wars, riots and disturbances, including the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, the American Hostage taking in Iran and the 1982 Siege of Beirut. On that occasion, he endured 17 hours a day of bombing and shelling by land, sea and air.

Later, he joined TV-AM as a general reporter, Washington Correspondent and newscaster.

As a journalist, inveterate traveller and guest speaker on cruise ships, he has travelled to more than 90 countries around the world,

A compulsive traveller, he walked as a young man from Barcelona to Copenhagen, a sojourn that took three months, fortunately in the summer months.

More recently, he walked nearly 428 miles (713 kilometres) across the French-Italian Alps in the footsteps of Hannibal to raise money for leukaemia.

He also sailed across the North Sea in the most authentic Viking ship ever built. As if that were not enough, he travelled thousands of miles in the High Arctic researching his book 'The Fourth World'. This was acclaimed as a definitive work on the Arctic. The San Francisco Chronicle described his passion for the region as like that of Wilfred Thesiger for the desert.

Sam is also an international film-maker who won several international awards. Some of these films have been shown in as many as 68 countries worldwide.

At the age of 81, he was so horrified by debt figures in the United Kingdom that he wrote 'The Really Easy Student's Guide to Making Money Without Really Trying' and a year later embarked on an ambitious project to write at least 20-25 books in The Ultimate Cruise Passenger's Guide book series.

Sam is married with six grandchildren and lives in Dorking, Surrey, England.