Charles Wheeler - Witness to the Twentieth Century: A Life in News. Foreword by Christiane Amanpour
By (Author) Shirin Wheeler
Bonnier Books Ltd
Manilla Press
20th February 2024
9th November 2023
United Kingdom
General
Non Fiction
General and world history
News media and journalism
070.92
Hardback
416
Width 162mm, Height 240mm, Spine 36mm
646g
Charles Wheeler, the BBC's longest-serving foreign correspondent, was one of Britain's greatest news reporters. For more than four decades, he reported for radio and television from most of the world's trouble spots. Present at many of the key episodes of the twentieth century, he had - as a BBC manager noted after the shooting of George Wallace, Presidential candidate and Governor of Alabama, on 15 May 1972, 'a knack of being in the right place at the right time'. It was typical of Charles that he ran towards the sound of the gunshot while the crowd was running in the opposite direction.
Wheeler's investigative skill and sense of judgement made him one of the most authoritative reporters of his generation. But what was it like to have been witness to the events that shaped our modern world In this book - part memoir, part history, part reflection - his daughter, Shirin Wheeler, examines her father's journalistic legacy and brings her personal knowledge to bear on the project. She will tell the story of her father: a patient listener and forensic interrogator who was driven by curiosity and passion to report and expose injustice, and above all to give a voice to people ignored or unheard by many.
Shirin Wheeler, the daughter of Charles Wheeler, was a BBC journalist for twenty-five years. She now advises on EU climate action, gender equality and innovation in and out of Europe.