Here's a selection from BBC World Affairs Editor John Simpson's Twitter feed this week. Enjoy!:
- 80 years ago today my dear friend Clare Hollingsworth, on her first real story for the Daily Telegraph, sat in her hotel room & watched the German tanks crossing into Poland — & neither her boss, nor her foreign desk, nor the British (or any other) embassy would believe her.
- Went through the rite-of-passage experience this morning of delivering my son for the first day at his new secondary school & have been feeling thoroughly melancholic ever since.
- I’ve reported on ten consecutive British prime ministers. None of the other nine made anything like as bad a start as Boris Johnson has. Margaret Thatcher, whom I came to know well, would I’m certain have been furious at his performance.
- Broadcasting all morning about Robert Mugabe. Having visited Matabeleland after his forces, backed up by the North Korean army, murdered 20,000 of his political opponents, and spent time 11 years ago reporting on the collapsing economy, I find it hard to be too positive. Just found in my notes that in November 2008 the year-on-year inflation rate in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe was a shade under 90 sextillion per cent. Soon afterwards his wife Grace beat up a British photographer who snapped her buying expensive jewellery in Hong Kong.
- No wonder the Afghan govt feels it’s being abandoned by Pres Trump & the US - he now reveals he was planning to meet the Taliban! They must think they’ve got America on the run.
- Heading off to Iraq for a couple of weeks’ reporting. I’ll get away from political extremism, threats against decent moderate politicians, anxieties that the govt will break the law, & a sense of despair about the direction the country is heading in. Yes, Iraq will be a doddle.
