The idea behind members’ BookNights is to have a thoroughly good time, encourage reading and discussion, and to end the night both happier and wiser than when it began. For more information about membership and the other benefits on offer, please contact membership coordinator Sophie Kayes.
For July’s BookNights we are delighted to welcome the distinguished former foreign correspondent for the BBC, Martin Bell OBE, who will present his book The End of Empire over an intimate dinner with Frontline Club members.
Before his career as a BBC correspondent and independent MP, Martin Bell also served as a soldier in Cyprus between 1957 and 1959. In a chocolate box in his attic many years later he found more than 100 letters that he had sent home to his family. He was not a journalist then, but the letters are war reports of a sort, impressions of what it was like to be a conscript on active service during the EOKA rebellion against British rule.
These letters describe road blocks and cordons and searches, murders and explosions and riots – and a strategy of armed repression that ultimately failed. The reality of the failure dawned on the young soldier only at the end, as he burned his intelligence files in perforated oil drums while the EOKA fighters were being feted as heroes in the streets of Nicosia. ‘It seemed,’ he wrote, ‘like a bonfire of the policies.’
Guests will be expected to have read the book, and to be ready and willing to contribute to the conversation. This will be an in-depth discussion rather than a standard format Q&A. The evening will start with drinks at 7:00 PM, following by a sit-down dinner at 7:30 PM. We will get to know one another over starters before the introduction of the evening’s guest author.
The event will be hosted by Frontline Club director, Pranvera Smith, and founding member and senior correspondent at The Guardian and The Observer, Ed Vulliamy.
Menu £25 per person excluding drinks.
]]>Your wonderful and kind messages mean so much to us, as has your friendship, council and support over so many years. There is no prize in our trade that we could ever value as much as your belief in us.
– Vaughan and Pranvera Smith
Thank you to Stewart Purvis, Richard Gizbert, Tina Carr, Emma Beals, Allan Little, Mani, Stuart Hughes, Richard Sambrook, Jon Snow, Marina Litvinenko, Martin Bell, Tom Fenton, Anthony Loyd, Lyse Doucet, Bill Neely, Lindsey Hilsum, Charles Glass, John G Morris, Salim Amin, Liz Palmer Gary Knight, Jon Lee Anderson, Jeremy Bowen, Matt Frei and Jean-Jacques Gonfier.
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He will be joining former BBC executive Vin Ray to take a look back at his career as a journalist, MP and UNICEF Ambassador.
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He has reported from more than 80 countries and 11 wars, from Angola to Vietnam and was one of the first journalists to be defined as a ‘war correspondent’
Martin Bell, joined the BBC in 1962 and is one of the best known and distinguised journalists of his generation, he has reported from Vietnam, the Middle East, Nigeria, Angola, and Northern Ireland during the “Troubles”.
Twice awared the Royal Television Society’s Reporter of the Year award, Bell changed course in 1997 and successfully ran as Independent MP on an anti sleaze ticket inTatton against Conservative Neil Hamilton.
He will be joining us at the Frontline Club with former BBC executive Vin Ray, to take a look back over his career reporting around the globe that includes an OBE, a shrapnel injury from Bosnia, and five books including A Very British Revolution: The Expenses Scandal and How To Save Our Democracy.
]]>At our First Wednesday Special, discuss the cultural and political changes set in motion by the events of 9/11 ten years ago and look ahead to the next decade.
We’ll also be discussing extremism, Somalia, photography in transit and the cult of youth in newspapers and there’s also a great opportunity to hear from industry veterans Martin Bell and the New York Times‘ David Carr and Richard Gizbert of Al Jazeera English.
Our screenings include a double bill of films by John D. McHugh, a special preview of The Debt, insight into the world of teenage miners in Bolivia and human trafficking in Nigeria.
Go to our website for further details of all the talks and screenings, PLUS a preview reading of Bang Bang Bang, a multimedia storytelling masterclass with Brian Storm and third party events on remembering 9/11 and on investigative journalism.
Follow us on Twitter and catch up on any events you missed on the Forum blog or download our podcasts on iTunes.
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In a brothel in Fernando Po, which is part of Equatorial Guinea. I was reporting on the Nigerian civil war and there were no hotel rooms left. It was the day that television had arrived in this Spanish colony and all the Africans were sitting there watching bullfights; it was pretty extraordinary. link
Not sure I can cap that however, I have unwittingly stayed in two brothels in my time – accompanied by my wife I might add. Once in Cambodia and once in South Korea. There’s a very fine line between hotel and whorehouse in some places. Although the wierdest was probably a hammock in a mosquito ridden guardhouse next a lake filled with crocodiles in the south of Vietnam.
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