Life, Love, Laughter, Liberty

About the Book

At a time when journalists all over the world – from a sophisticated city like Paris to less-developed areas in the Middle East and elsewhere – are being targeted by terrorists for murder, the author (himself a top 20^th-century correspondent for newspapers, television and radio) dedicates his work “to journalists and broadcasters everywhere,” (as well as to his family). He hopes that by reading about the triumphs and disasters of his career, other wordsmiths might perhaps learn something useful about how to go about getting news – and how not to do so. The book is not only an account of an adventurous and action-packed life but it is a work that is sometimes deeply serious; at other times wryly comical; but always thoughtfully reflective. The 85-years-old author worked all over the world covering historic events; meeting and interviewing famous – and infamous – politicians and other controversial characters; reporting wars, revolutions and upheaval of all kinds; being imprisoned in some countries and deported from others; as well as covering much more pleasant events such as royal tours by the Queen, Royal Ascot, the Centenary Gala Concert of the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden; the opening of Disney World in Orlando, Florida; and the re-opening and re-erection of the old London Bridge in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. From the White House in the United States of America to the Kremlin in the former Soviet Union; from Buckingham Palace in London to mud huts in Africa, caves in the Yemen and a “ger” or “yurt” in the Gobi Desert in Outer Mongolia; in 100 countries over nearly 70 years John Osman travelled impressively and has lived his long life to the full. He has enjoyed writing this book after being inspired to do so by a premature BBC report in 2012 that he was dead!

About the Author

The great John Osman” was the description employed about the author of this book by BBC World Affairs Editor John Simpson During his career, he pulled off numerous scoops, recalled for what the news itself was: not news as a way of polishing a television, radio, Internet, or journalistic image. Osman belonged to a generation of journalists who, broadly speaking, thought that a reporter’s self-effacement, so far as possible, was the best way of seeking truth. Osman has travelled in one hundred countries over sixty years, and he held several of the world’s top journalistic jobs as a foreign correspondent. He thinks he remains to this day the only BBC staffer to have been, for some years in each post, BBC Washington correspondent, BBC Moscow correspondent, and BBC Buckingham Palace correspondent – a rare combination of major assignments. In addition to those posts, he served BBC Radio and TV News and the World Service during a quarter of a century or so in roles as varied as BBC Commonwealth and colonial affairs correspondent, United Nations correspondent, Africa correspondent, and diplomatic correspondent. Earlier, for nearly ten years, he worked for the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Telegraph as their special correspondent in the Middle East and Cyprus, Africa, India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Sikkim, his assignments including the flight from Tibet in 1959 of the Dalai Lama. One of his dispatches appeared in the first columns of the Sunday Telegraph upon its initial publication in February 1961. Osman and his wife, Virginia.. have been wed for forty-four years. Osman is now eighty-five and has ideas for producing three other very different kinds of books to this one before he reaches one hundred or dies. He skied until he was eighty-three; still goes mountain walking (the pair were members of the French Alpine Club for thirty years); and (camping most of the time) they drive their small Romahome camping-car all over the place – including, in recent years, through twenty countries in West Europe, East Europe, and the Balkans, as far as Capadoccia in Asian Turkey.