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BBC News presents Simon Reeve: From Equator to the Tropic of Capricorn and now the Tropic of Cancer
SUNDAY 7 FEBRUARY
Theatre 1
Time: 2.00pm
BBC News presents Simon Reeve: From Equator to the Tropic of Capricorn and now the Tropic of Cancer!
In conversation with Dan Linstead, Wanderlust Magazine
Simon Reeve is a bestselling author and presenter of the acclaimed BBC TV travel series Tropic of Capricorn, Equator, Places That Don’t Exist and Meet the Stans, for which he has travelled to scores of countries. He is currently filming a new 6-month journey around the Tropic of Cancer, the northern border of the Tropics, for a 6-part BBC series.
Simon Reeve was born and raised in west London. For those interested, Simon went to a local comprehensive, where he was an unspectacular student. He did not get a scholarship to Oxford University, or even Uxbridge College, and at the end of his schooling he was thrown out onto the cobbled streets of the great metropolis and left to forage for work and food.
After a series of terrible jobs, including working in a supermarket, a jewellery shop, and a charity shop, Simon finally found gainful employment as a postboy at a national newspaper. Still in his teens, he sorted the mail during the day, and began researching and writing in his spare time. His 'big break' came when he found two foreign terrorists on the run in the UK, and he began conducting investigations for the newspaper into subjects such as arms-dealing, nuclear smuggling, terrorism and organised crime.
In 1993, Simon began studying the first World Trade Center attack just hours after the bombing. While investigating the background and origins of those responsible for the 1993 terrorist strike, Simon discovered more terror attacks were being planned by a disparate group of militants connected to the bombers - a group now commonly called al Qaeda.
Over the next few years, Simon traced and interviewed 'Afghan Arabs' and close friends and supporters of Osama bin Laden, along with senior FBI, CIA, and Asian intelligence officials. Simon had clandestine meetings with spies and militants in tea houses, car parks and burger bars, was followed by secret agents from at least two countries, and worked undercover in disguise while searching for a former Lebanese arms smuggler. Traveling across three continents, Simon obtained classified documents and evidence detailing the existence, development and aims of the most dangerous terrorist organisation in modern history.
Simon's research and conclusions formed the basis of his first book The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden and the future of terrorism. Published in the UK and USA in the late 1990s it was the first book in the world on bin Laden and al Qaeda. The New Jackals warned al Qaeda was planning huge attacks on the West, and concluded an apocalyptic terrorist strike by the group was almost inevitable.
Simon's next book was One Day in September: the story of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre and Israeli revenge operation 'Wrath of God', published by Faber and Faber in 2000. The movie of the same name, narrated by the actor Michael Douglas, won the Oscar for best feature documentary.
At the time of the attacks of September 11, 2001, Simon's book The New Jackals was one of few sources of information about Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. The book became a New York Times bestseller, and in the three months after the 9/11 attacks was one of the top three bestselling books in the United States. Simon was repeatedly asked to comment on the new terror threat and the Western response. He became a regular guest and contributor to all of the major US and UK TV networks, including the BBC. Appearing on the BBC led to working for the BBC, and in recent years Simon has been travelling around little-known regions of the world for a series of television documentaries.
In Meet the Stans, a four part series on Central Asia broadcast on BBC2 and BBC World during 2003 and 2004, Simon journeyed 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.
During Summer 2004 the BBC2 and BBC World documentary House of Saud showed Simon travelling around the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, from the cities of Riyadh and Jeddah, to the isolation of the Empty Quarter desert.
For the five-part BBC2 series Places That Don’t Exist, broadcast in 2005, Simon visited a group of unrecognised nations – countries so obscure they don’t officially exist - including Somaliland, Transdniestria, Nagorno-Karabkh, Taiwan, Adjaria/Ajaria and South Ossetia.
In 2006 Simon travelled around the world for the BBC series Equator, The journey took Simon around the region with both the richest biodiversity, and perhaps the greatest concentration of human suffering. Among the countries visited were Gabon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Indonesian Sumatra, Borneo and Sulawesi, the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador, Colombia and Brazil.
In 2007 Simon set-off around the Tropic of Capricorn for a BBC TV series and book. The Capricorn journey started in Namibia, and took Simon through Botswana, South Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar, Western Australia, the Northern Territory, Queensland, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil.
During 2008 and early 2009, Simon and a team of BBC presenters travelled to some of the most exotic and extreme locations on earth for a new TV series called Explore. Explore blends travel with current affairs to get under the skin of some fascinating countries.
Simon is currently travelling around the Tropic of Cancer for a BBC TV series due to be shown in 2010.
Simon says his main professional motivation is a fascination with interesting stories, and a basic desire to learn more about issues and subjects that matter, whether that be the emergence of a new terrorist organisation, the personal story of a stateless refugee, or the problems of an apparently obscure country. "Thanks to globalisation, events, issues and problems in far-off countries can have a direct impact on the cozy lives of those of us lucky enough to live in the West," he says. "So why don't we try to find out a little bit more about those issues, and try to resolve them - before they become major problems for all of us?"
Interviewed by Dan Linstead:
Dan Linstead is the editor of Wanderlust, the leading magazine for independent and adventurous travellers. He worked as an advertising copywriter before taking a career break in 1999 and spending 18 months on the road in Australia and SE Asia. Since then, he’s written for and edited numerous publications, winning a British Society of Magazine Editors award in 2004. He now plans and commissions most of Wanderlust’s features – and very occasionally gets to write one.
