He was nearly shot on one of his first jobs as a 25 year old, and throughout his illustrious career, John Simpson has continued to dice with death, reporting from thirty war zones and most recently during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. In the context of his early years it looks like fate; whilst Simpson was still in the womb, a V-1 bomb fell on his neighbour’s house but within a week of his life he had returned to the site. His latest novel, Our Friends in Beijing is the second in his Jon Swift series and is out now.