Days from a Different World: A Memoir of Childhood

by John Cody Fidler-Simpson

‘I have already touched on my childhood in Strange Places, Questionable People . But the further through life I get the more I want to revisit it. I want to look at the whole of my childhood, the England I grew up in and my family.’ This is not a mere exercise in nostalgia, rather it is a journey through the England of the late 1940s in all its shabby wonder, which also tells the somewhat strange and often deeply painful story of John Simpson’s family. Here we meet his father and his grandmother, still living in the small and rather depressing south London suburb which his family built, dominated and, finally, declined with. We meet the grandfather who drank the family money away and abandoned his wife and children, and the grandfather who toured the country with a Wild West show. We learn, too, of the broken marriages and the unfulfilled lives, of the people who died, and the lives which were just beginning. Candid, beautifully written and touching, Days from a Different World will enchant all those who read it.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Autobiography, Memoir

Paperback

First published September 2, 2005

About the author

John Cody Fidler-Simpson CBE is an English foreign correspondent. He is world affairs editor of BBC News, the world's biggest broadcast news service. One of the most travelled reporters ever, he has spent all his working life at the corporation. He has reported from more than 120 countries, including thirty war zones, and has interviewed numerous world leaders.

Simpson was born in Cleveleys, Lancashire; his family later moved to Dunwich, Suffolk. His great grandfather was Samuel Franklin Cowdery (later known as Samuel Franklin Cody), an American showman in the style of Buffalo Bill Cody, who became a British citizen and was an early pioneer of manned flight in the UK. Simpson reveals in his autobiography that his father was an anarchist. That didn't prevent him from getting a top-notch education: he was sent to Dulwich College Preparatory School and St Paul's, and read English at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he was editor of Granta magazine. In 1965 he was a member of the Magdalene University Challenge team. A year later Simpson started as a trainee sub-editor at BBC radio news.

Simpson became a BBC reporter in 1970. He describes in his autobiography how on his very first day the then prime minister Harold Wilson, angered by the sudden and impudent, as he saw it, appearance of the novice's microphone, punched him in the stomach.

Simpson was the BBC's political editor from 1980 till 1981. He presented the Nine O'Clock News from 1981 till 1982 and became diplomatic editor in 1982. He had also served as a correspondent in South Africa, Brussels and Dublin. He became BBC world affairs editor in 1988.

Reviews

[Darla Ebert · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Simpson spins a riveting memoir, every page is both informative and entertaining. There are so many facets to his story, so many angles from which Simpson approached his personal story: World War 2 was coming to an end just around the time of his birth, Austerity Britain was ongoing for the next ten years and at the same time there were family struggles. Simpson rose above it all and became one of the best known journalists in England.

[Stefan Niekerk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unique way of writing by focusing on specific dates in the past. Enjoyed it.

[Ram · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superbly written childhood memoir by John Simpson in “Days from a Different World”

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[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very distinctive approach to the writing of an autobiography and social history as John Simpson recalls his childhood growing up in London in the 1940's and early 1950's and links it with the political, national and international events of the time. He paints a vivid picture of England in the war and its aftermath and recounts the painful story of his family, shaped by the experiences of two world wars. Bountifully written with touching portraits of his argumentative parents, who spent more time apart than together, his grandparents and extended members of the family.

[Steve Chilton · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fascinating memoir, interweaving his very strange early life with the stories of the time. In tears at both the part where he has to choose between his argumentative parents at the age of six, and when reflecting on the last of his close family passing on.

[Elke · Rating 4 out of 5]

a lot about the time in England during the 2. world war and afterwards. He makes it interesting by discribing his life with his parents as a 5 year old, but also adds British history of the time.