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Point of Departure: Experiment in Biography
A classic 1967 memoir by one of the great journalists of the 20th century, Point of Departure collects James Cameron's eyewitness accounts of the atom bomb tests at Bikini atoll, the Chinese invasion of Tibet and the war in Korea, and vivid evocations of Mao Tse-Tung, Winston Churchill, and many others. Cameron, who was born in London in 1911, began his career in newspapers as a foreign correspondent; later, his television documentaries for the BBC and his column in The Guardian gave him a new audience in Britain and abroad. In the 1960s, Cameron was presented with the Granada Award for Foreign Correspondent of the Decade. He died in 1985.
318 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1967
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About the author
James Cameron
12 books9 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
James Cameron was born in London in 1911. After leaving school he worked as an office boy for the Weekly News. He worked for newspapers in Dundee and Glasgow before joining the Daily Express in 1940.
Cameron witnessed atom bomb tests in 1946. Shocked by what he saw he became a strong opponent of the possession of these weapons and later helped form the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
In 1950 Tom Hopkinson sent Cameron and Bert Hardy to report on the Korean War for the Picture Post. While in Korea the two men produced three illustrated stories for Picture Post. This included the landing of General Douglas MacArthur and his troops at Inchon. Cameron also wrote a piece about the way that the South Koreans were treating their political prisoners. Edward G. Hulton, the owner of the magazine, considered the article to be "communist propaganda" and Hopkinson was forced to resign.
Cameron covered world events for the Daily Chronicle (1952-60). He also wrote several books including Men of Our Time (1963), Witness in Vietnam (1966) his autobiography, Point of Departure (1967) and Cameron Country (1984). James Cameron died in 1985.
James Cameron was born in London in 1911. After leaving school he worked as an office boy for the Weekly News. He worked for newspapers in Dundee and Glasgow before joining the Daily Express in 1940.
Cameron witnessed atom bomb tests in 1946. Shocked by what he saw he became a strong opponent of the possession of these weapons and later helped form the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
In 1950 Tom Hopkinson sent Cameron and Bert Hardy to report on the Korean War for the Picture Post. While in Korea the two men produced three illustrated stories for Picture Post. This included the landing of General Douglas MacArthur and his troops at Inchon. Cameron also wrote a piece about the way that the South Koreans were treating their political prisoners. Edward G. Hulton, the owner of the magazine, considered the article to be "communist propaganda" and Hopkinson was forced to resign.
Cameron covered world events for the Daily Chronicle (1952-60). He also wrote several books including Men of Our Time (1963), Witness in Vietnam (1966) his autobiography, Point of Departure (1967) and Cameron Country (1984). James Cameron died in 1985.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
February 21, 2016
Sometimes James Cameron annoys me in his writing. I remember him quite well as a child (he and his wife were friends of my parents) and he was a likeable somewhat dogmatic leftwing cove but a gentleman and with a genuine passion for doing and saying what he believed to be right, a quality which he shared with the late Christopher Hitchens. I much prefer this generation of journalists and reporters, often wrong headed maybe but always trying to do the right thing, caring for the truth more than for their career, to the smarmy know-it-all discourteous careerists who seem to have replaced them. This book is less a biography than a collection of biographical essays and although somewhat dated, still makes for good reading. Imagine the old News Chronicle (if you are old enough to remember that paper!) or The Guardian or even The Times as they were before the days of the internet and you will have an idea of the style and irony here. It is also a nostalgic record of journalism as it used to be, a great adventure in companionship. Let's face it, the middle class of James Cameron's generation had a much more interesting life than their children on the whole and certainly than their grandchildren, who can boast packs more money but not so much in the way of life adventure.
June 12, 2014
This book is a nice look at the "golden-age" of journalism when correspondents hopped around the globe to exotic places, drank in bars with interesting characters, and formed the opinions of masses back home. I like how he took this role seriously and was more interested on reporting what he believed morally correct instead of insisting on portraying both sides of everything as if they hold equal ground. This is precisely why the press is irrelevant today. People don't want to have to go fact-check and look up what's right. That's why the press is supposed to exist - to be a trusted source of news and thought.
Anyways, mini-soapbox. Good book, pick it up if journalism and good writing interests you.
Anyways, mini-soapbox. Good book, pick it up if journalism and good writing interests you.
August 18, 2007
James Cameron, who died in 1985, was one of the best British foreign correspondents.
My favorite story about him is that he used to insert the phrase "...and a mad bugler rode past on a white horse..." somewhere low down in his copy before filing (usually by telex in those days), hoping that one day a sub-editor back home would miss it and allow it into the newspaper. To his regret, they always caught it.
My favorite story about him is that he used to insert the phrase "...and a mad bugler rode past on a white horse..." somewhere low down in his copy before filing (usually by telex in those days), hoping that one day a sub-editor back home would miss it and allow it into the newspaper. To his regret, they always caught it.
October 3, 2014
Spectacularly insightful. Witty and self-deprecating, by far the best autobiography I have ever read.
April 1, 2017
A humane witness to the sly wickedness of the world
August 17, 2023
There was a table in the bookshop, right at the back of the room, with several piles of books on it. The sign, recycled from a piece of packaging, said that these titles were all £1 and many of them knew it. There were books that would barely have sold the moment that they were published; great, obscure things about niche topics, even then, and things about topics that the world had moved on from a long while ago. Technology books always date quickly, often before they've even been published, and then there's the maps. There's always maps. Somebody will love them but it takes them a while to find each other.
And then there was this. I thought the author was the film director until I read the blurb: this was a journalist from back in the day who had witnessed atomic bomb tests and the war in Korea. He had been a foreign correspondent, present during the Chinese invasion of Tibet and meeting characters such as Winston Churchill and Albert Schweitzer along the way. I was going to see Oppenheimer later that week. I was intrigued. But more than that: I have a fascination for those firsthand stories of people in the middle of extraordinary times. The domestic stories, I suppose. The ones where simply people try to live their life and love their loves and to simply persist in the middle of great earth-turning events.
Point of Departure chronicles some of this moments of persistence. Technically it's a memoir, I suppose, but it sort of hovers somewhere between a 'Greatest Hits' and a biography. Cameron is a delicious writer; deeply opinionated, deeply political, deeply of his time, and occasionally very, very brilliant. Were I the sort to be highlighting and underlining books, then I would underline pretty much all of this. It's quality writing. His work about the nuclear bomb tests is transcendent, similarly his writing about the Korean war, because he's unafraid to let you know his feelings about the situation. You get the entire picture. I found myself rereading substantial parts of this, quite unable to fathom what it was I was reading until all of a sudden I did.
(There is a way, I think, to tell the horrific and that is this: to simply tell it, and Cameron gets that).
Towards the end of the collection, I felt the essays got a little thinner and the whole affair started to run out of steam. That's a slender section of an utterly remarkable collection and no reason to step away from this volume. Rather, it could be argued as a kind of meta-reflection on that which has come before. Cameron has witnessed so much, done so much, and watched humans bring themselves to the very brink of humanity. The wars; the brutality; the frank shock of the Atomic bomb tests; any ending would feel weary in comparison to them.
I understand why Point of Departure found itself on that table at the back of the bookshop: it's not an easy book. It's deeply political, deeply obstreperous. And yet here I am, reading it almost sixty years after it was published, and in awe of it. Writing like this, wherever it is in the bookshop and indeed, however long it's there, will always make itself heard.
And then there was this. I thought the author was the film director until I read the blurb: this was a journalist from back in the day who had witnessed atomic bomb tests and the war in Korea. He had been a foreign correspondent, present during the Chinese invasion of Tibet and meeting characters such as Winston Churchill and Albert Schweitzer along the way. I was going to see Oppenheimer later that week. I was intrigued. But more than that: I have a fascination for those firsthand stories of people in the middle of extraordinary times. The domestic stories, I suppose. The ones where simply people try to live their life and love their loves and to simply persist in the middle of great earth-turning events.
Point of Departure chronicles some of this moments of persistence. Technically it's a memoir, I suppose, but it sort of hovers somewhere between a 'Greatest Hits' and a biography. Cameron is a delicious writer; deeply opinionated, deeply political, deeply of his time, and occasionally very, very brilliant. Were I the sort to be highlighting and underlining books, then I would underline pretty much all of this. It's quality writing. His work about the nuclear bomb tests is transcendent, similarly his writing about the Korean war, because he's unafraid to let you know his feelings about the situation. You get the entire picture. I found myself rereading substantial parts of this, quite unable to fathom what it was I was reading until all of a sudden I did.
(There is a way, I think, to tell the horrific and that is this: to simply tell it, and Cameron gets that).
Towards the end of the collection, I felt the essays got a little thinner and the whole affair started to run out of steam. That's a slender section of an utterly remarkable collection and no reason to step away from this volume. Rather, it could be argued as a kind of meta-reflection on that which has come before. Cameron has witnessed so much, done so much, and watched humans bring themselves to the very brink of humanity. The wars; the brutality; the frank shock of the Atomic bomb tests; any ending would feel weary in comparison to them.
I understand why Point of Departure found itself on that table at the back of the bookshop: it's not an easy book. It's deeply political, deeply obstreperous. And yet here I am, reading it almost sixty years after it was published, and in awe of it. Writing like this, wherever it is in the bookshop and indeed, however long it's there, will always make itself heard.
November 14, 2018
James Cameron was a noted & important journalist in the post-war UK. His mémoire, Point of Departure, originally published in 1967, is one in a series of “Classics of Reportage” published by Granta Books. I have mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, it’s a well-written, witty, and engaging account of an intelligent & opinionated observer of international affairs. On the other hand, while Cameron avoids the imperialistic mindset with regard to 3rd world peoples, there is still way too much of the – why can’t I get a decent glass of wine in this god-forsaken place – kind of whining.
Chapter four is a gem. Therein, Cameron examines his own profession with conclusions still relevant: “I always tend to argue that objectivity was of less importance than the truth, and that the reporter whose technique was informed by no opinion lacked a very serious dimension.” (p. 74) Cameron participated in the creation of the Committee for Nuclear Disarmament and he devotes a chapter to the now irrelevant dirty laundry of that organization. He also devotes a chapter to the repressive regime in South Africa (which expelled him) that must have stung in 1967. Otherwise, if you are familiar with the personalities & events on the world stage in the 1950s and 1960s, then this book is of some interest. All-in-all I can give it only two stars.
Chapter four is a gem. Therein, Cameron examines his own profession with conclusions still relevant: “I always tend to argue that objectivity was of less importance than the truth, and that the reporter whose technique was informed by no opinion lacked a very serious dimension.” (p. 74) Cameron participated in the creation of the Committee for Nuclear Disarmament and he devotes a chapter to the now irrelevant dirty laundry of that organization. He also devotes a chapter to the repressive regime in South Africa (which expelled him) that must have stung in 1967. Otherwise, if you are familiar with the personalities & events on the world stage in the 1950s and 1960s, then this book is of some interest. All-in-all I can give it only two stars.
September 9, 2017
My review is affected by my mistake at believing this was a sequence of interviews with important people of the 20th century.
It was largely an autobiography which occasionally veered into his experiences in various war zones and important times of change. Korea seems to be a focus.
This said, I found his experiences, when referred to, fascinating. Yet I would have preferred a lot more information from those meetings.
It was largely an autobiography which occasionally veered into his experiences in various war zones and important times of change. Korea seems to be a focus.
This said, I found his experiences, when referred to, fascinating. Yet I would have preferred a lot more information from those meetings.
March 13, 2025
I like that one
October 26, 2025
Not to be ignored.
February 12, 2013
This was the book my English teacher Ferdie Keon - (who could forget him?) - lent me in order to inspire me to write .... well, it hasn't worked so far (bado kidogo) but the book is still on my shelf (my own copy, I hasten to add!). The description of the detonation at Bikini Atoll is famous; it really hit home (no pun intended) at the time ... also the description of Tabora as the rock-bottom fundament of the world.
August 16, 2015
Mid 4. This is a perfect illustration of incise, truthful, war reporting which reveals Cameron to have been one of the most distinctive voices within the ranks of international correspondents at the height of the war in Indo-China. First-rate.
January 24, 2011
Although written it what may now seem an old fashioned style, the book recounts a full and fascinating life. Given the current situation in Korea, the author's account of his first hand experiences in the Korean War are particularly illuminating.
July 22, 2012
At times densely written, but it's an absorbing account of the life of a journalist who had a front row seat for many of the landmark moments of the 20th century. Highlights are his accounts of Korea, the atom bomb tests at Bikini Atoll and Vietnam.
August 14, 2007
I don't know many journalists who care to write this well today.
July 17, 2012
Some very important, and very well written reporting here, from some of the most crucial events of the 20th century.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews