Robert Fisk

For 41 years, author and broadcaster Robert Fisk has been a Middle East correspondent based in Beirut, first for the Times of London and then, since 1989, for the Independent. He has reported from most of the region’s wars over the past four decades, including the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979), the Iranian revolution, the Iran–Iraq war (1980–88), the Lebanese civil war, the Algerian civil war, and today, the Syrian war.

He has written eyewitness accounts of the US invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 (and the subsequent occupation), numerous Israeli invasions of Lebanon, and the Arab revolutions in 2011. He is the author of two bestselling histories of the Middle East – Pity the Nation and The Great War for Civilisation – and is currently writing Night of Power, the story of the Arab world since 2005.