Background
He was born in Bristol on 17 April 1945.
He was born in Bristol on 17 April 1945.
He studied at Queens" College, Cambridge.
After graduation, he spent from 1967 to 1973 as a freelance journalist, first in Malawi, then in Uganda. He then joined the British Broadcasting Corporation as a foreign correspondent. He worked there for 25 years.
He is the author of several books, among them the biographies of Mao Zedong, Mao: A Life, Political Pot, Political Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare, and François Mitterrand, A Taste for Intrigue: The Multiple Lives of François Mitterrand.
He presented a television documentary on Mao Zedong entitled "Mao"s Bloody Revolution Revealed" on the United Kingdom terrestrial station Five in May 2007.
