Simon Reeve (UK television presenter)
Encyclopedia
Simon Reeve is a British author, adventurer and TV presenter. Based in London, he makes travel documentaries in little-known areas of the world and has written books on international terrorism, modern history and about his adventures. Reeve has been around the world three times for the BBC television series Tropic of Cancer, Equator, and Tropic of Capricorn, and has travelled extensively in more than 90 countries, including troubled states in Africa, the Caucasus, Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Far East and Central Asia. Reeve is the New York Times bestselling author of The New Jackals (1998), One Day in September (2000) and Tropic of Capricorn (2007). He has received a One World Broadcasting Trust
Award for an "outstanding contribution to greater world understanding."
, England, and that he rarely went abroad until he started work. After leaving school Reeve took a series of jobs, including working in a supermarket, a jewellery shop, and a charity shop, before he started researching and writing in his spare time while working as a postboy at a British newspaper. Reeve then conducted investigations into subjects such as arms-dealing, nuclear smuggling, terrorism and organised crime before he began studying the 1993 World Trade Center bombing
just days after the attack. Reeve's research formed the basis for his book The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden and the future of terrorism
. Published in the UK and USA in the late 1990s, The New Jackals was the first book on bin Laden. Classified information cited by Reeve detailed the existence, development, and aims of the terrorist group al-Qaeda
. The book warned that al-Qaeda was planning huge attacks on the West, and concluded that an apocalyptic terrorist strike by the group was almost inevitable. It has been a New York Times bestseller http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A01E6DE1F39F93BA25752C1A9679C8B63&scp=6&sq=simon+reeve&st=nyt, and in the three months after the 9/11 attacks it was one of the top three bestselling books in the United States.http://www.shootandscribble.com/sr/page17/page17.html
After the 9/11 attacks Reeve became a regular commentator and reference source on the emerging terror threat.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2800297.stm He has been quoted in The New York Times warning that al-Qaeda was moving "far beyond being a terrorist organization to being almost a state of mind. That’s terribly significant because it gives the movement a scope and longevity it didn’t have before 9/11.”
Reeve followed The New Jackals with a study of the 1972 Munich massacre
called One Day in September: the full story of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre and the Israeli revenge operation 'Wrath of God, published in 2000 by Faber & Faber. The book detailed the siege and the massacre, in which 11 Israeli athletes and officials were killed by Black September
, the global recriminations, and the launch of an Israeli revenge mission. The accompanying documentary film of the same name won the Academy Award for Documentary Feature
and was screened in cinemas around the world. The book was described by The New Yorker as 'highly skilled and detailed...it’s a page-turner'.
After the attacks of 9/11 Reeve began making travel documentaries for the BBC in obscure and troubled parts of the world. Tom Hall, Travel Editor, Lonely Planet publications, has described Reeve’s travel documentaries as: “the best travel television programmes of the past five years”.
After vomiting blood and being diagnosed with malaria on a journey around the equator
, Reeve became an ambassador for the Malaria Awareness Campaign.
Simon Reeve is the older brother of award-winning photographer James Reeve http://www.fiftycrows.org/photoessay/reeve/bio.php, former winner of the Nikon/Wanderlust/The Independent International Professional Travel Photographer of the Year Award http://www.shootandscribble.com/jr/biog.html, who has been recognised by the National Portrait Gallery Portrait Prize and the Observer Hodge award for his work in Afghanistan
.
is a four-part BBC Two
and BBC World series on Central Asia
, written and presented by Reeve. The series took Reeve from the far north-west of Kazakhstan
, by the Russian border, east to the Chinese border, south through Kyrgyzstan
and Tajikistan
to the edge of Afghanistan
, and west to Uzbekistan
and the legendary Silk Road
cities of Samarkand
and Bukhara
. It was broadcast on the BBC in 2003, and internationally during 2004 and 2005.
, written and presented by Reeve. The journey took Reeve across Saudi Arabia, from the cities of Jeddah
and Riyadh
to the vast Empty Quarter desert. Participants ranged from Saudi princes and Islamic militants, to teenage girls and Osama bin Laden
's former best friend. It was broadcast in 2004.
was Reeve's 2005 award-winning five-part series on breakaway states and unrecognised nations, broadcast on BBC2 and broadcasters internationally. Among the countries Reeve visited for this series were Somaliland
, Transnistria
(where Reeve was detained for 'spying' by the KGB ), Nagorno-Karabakh
, Ajaria
, South Ossetia
, Azerbaijan
, Armenia
, Somalia
, Moldova
, Taiwan
, and the former Soviet Republic of Georgia
.
is a three-part BBC documentary first broadcast in September 2006 in which Reeve followed the equator
around the world. Among the places he visited were some of the most dangerous regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
and Colombia
. The Radio Times described the Equator series as 'an extraordinary journey…revelatory…thrilling and thought-provoking…hits us with jaw-dropping facts…eye-opening…delivers a string of revealing snapshots'. The series was the Silver Award winner at the 2007 Wanderlust Travel Awards. Reeve contracted malaria
while filming this series.
is a four-part 2008 BBC documentary series in which Reeve tracked the southern edge of the tropics region around the world. The series, and the accompanying book, also written by Reeve, outlined his journey through southern Africa
, Madagascar
, Australia and across South America. Reeve crossed the Andes Mountains, the Namib
, Kalahari
and Atacama
deserts, found giant rats detecting landmines in Mozambique
and was forced to eat penis soup by Madagascan royalty. He met miners scrabbling for gems in dark, dangerous tunnels and a British anthropologist fighting to save forest communities in South America. He also went hunting with a tribe of former cannibals, travelled the equivalent of half-way up Everest
, ate dried caterpillar
s, grilled llama
, sheeps' eyes, and searched for wild honey in the forests of northern Argentina.
to the Pampass, Africa's Great Rift Valley
, Istanbul
to Anatolia
, and Manila
to Mindanao
. Issues covered in the series range from forced farming to fashion Goliaths, World Heritage rice terraces to dwindling honey industries, extreme hunger to extreme football. The Daily Mail
gave it "Highlight of the Week ... very good ... As ever, Reeve is not content with spectacular landscapes and local colour; he and his team dig deep to come up with real stories".
, the northern border of earth’s tropical region.
After travelling around the Tropic of Capricorn
and Equator
, this series completed Reeve’s trilogy of journeys exploring the tropics. Reeve described the journey as his toughest, longest, most dangerous and most ambitious challenge.
Starting on the Pacific coast of Mexico, Reeve followed the Tropic of Cancer almost 37,000 kilometres east on a journey blending travel with current affairs. The journey took him through 18 countries, ranging from Mexico and Mauritania
, to Bangladesh
and the Bahamas.
Reeve headed east across the Caribbean, the Sahara, over borders in North Africa closed to foreigners for decades, and then on through the deserts of Arabia and the remote jungles of Asia, to finish in Hawaii. In Mexico he was put through his paces by a masked female wrestler, while in the Bahamas he documented the suffering of Haitian refugees. In North Africa he crossed the world’s largest minefield, and travelled through a region suffering from a long forgotten civil war. In Asia, Reeve trekked into western Burma to meet villagers struggling to survive under brutal oppression. In Taiwan
, he praised this island as the most successful economy among all the other countries on the Tropic of Cancer where he experienced social order, wealthy democracy and a highly educated society.
The series, described as ‘adventure journalism’, has Reeve exploring some of the huge challenges facing the Tropics, including poverty
, the drug trade
, climate change
, industrial pollution
, and forgotten conflicts. But it is also described as “a spectacular travelogue”, taking Reeve and viewers to some of the most remote and beautiful places on earth.
"Following the Tropic of Cancer, the northern border of the Tropics, was a unique opportunity to explore and witness a slice of life in the most interesting and important region of the world: the Tropics!" Reeve was quoted as saying. "The whole point of the journey is that tracking the Tropic of Cancer took us off the beaten track, to places we wouldn't normally visit, and parts of the world that are rarely visited by foreigners, let alone TV crews. It was an extraordinary opportunity and a fantastically exciting journey that was also frightening, uplifting, exhausting, upsetting, challenging and surprising.” The first episode aired on 14 March 2010.
One World Broadcasting Trust
One World Media is a non-profit organisation, registered in the the UK as a charitable trust. Its current director is Marion Bowman. The charity promotes media that contributes to global dialogue and understanding, human rights and development, mobilising a global media community that shares the...
Award for an "outstanding contribution to greater world understanding."
Biography
Reeve was born and brought up in west London, and attended a local comprehensive school. He has said his childhood holidays were usually in DorsetDorset
Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...
, England, and that he rarely went abroad until he started work. After leaving school Reeve took a series of jobs, including working in a supermarket, a jewellery shop, and a charity shop, before he started researching and writing in his spare time while working as a postboy at a British newspaper. Reeve then conducted investigations into subjects such as arms-dealing, nuclear smuggling, terrorism and organised crime before he began studying the 1993 World Trade Center bombing
1993 World Trade Center bombing
The 1993 World Trade Center bombing occurred on February 26, 1993, when a truck bomb was detonated below the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. The 1,336 lb urea nitrate–hydrogen gas enhanced device was intended to knock the North Tower into the South Tower , bringing...
just days after the attack. Reeve's research formed the basis for his book The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden and the future of terrorism
The New Jackals
The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden and the future of terrorism is a book by Simon Reeve.Published in 1998, this New York Times bestseller was the first book on Osama bin Laden, Ramzi Yousef, and Al-Qaeda...
. Published in the UK and USA in the late 1990s, The New Jackals was the first book on bin Laden. Classified information cited by Reeve detailed the existence, development, and aims of the terrorist group al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda is a global broad-based militant Islamist terrorist organization founded by Osama bin Laden sometime between August 1988 and late 1989. It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad...
. The book warned that al-Qaeda was planning huge attacks on the West, and concluded that an apocalyptic terrorist strike by the group was almost inevitable. It has been a New York Times bestseller http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A01E6DE1F39F93BA25752C1A9679C8B63&scp=6&sq=simon+reeve&st=nyt, and in the three months after the 9/11 attacks it was one of the top three bestselling books in the United States.http://www.shootandscribble.com/sr/page17/page17.html
After the 9/11 attacks Reeve became a regular commentator and reference source on the emerging terror threat.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2800297.stm He has been quoted in The New York Times warning that al-Qaeda was moving "far beyond being a terrorist organization to being almost a state of mind. That’s terribly significant because it gives the movement a scope and longevity it didn’t have before 9/11.”
Reeve followed The New Jackals with a study of the 1972 Munich massacre
Munich massacre
The Munich massacre is an informal name for events that occurred during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Bavaria in southern West Germany, when members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage and eventually killed by the Palestinian group Black September. Members of Black September...
called One Day in September: the full story of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre and the Israeli revenge operation 'Wrath of God, published in 2000 by Faber & Faber. The book detailed the siege and the massacre, in which 11 Israeli athletes and officials were killed by Black September
Black September (group)
The Black September Organization was a Palestinian paramilitary group, founded in 1970. It was responsible for the kidnapping and murder of eleven Israeli athletes and officials, and fatal shooting of a West German policeman, during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, their most publicized event...
, the global recriminations, and the launch of an Israeli revenge mission. The accompanying documentary film of the same name won the Academy Award for Documentary Feature
Academy Award for Documentary Feature
The Academy Award for Documentary Feature is among the most prestigious awards for documentary films.- Winners and nominees:Following the Academy's practice, films are listed below by the award year...
and was screened in cinemas around the world. The book was described by The New Yorker as 'highly skilled and detailed...it’s a page-turner'.
After the attacks of 9/11 Reeve began making travel documentaries for the BBC in obscure and troubled parts of the world. Tom Hall, Travel Editor, Lonely Planet publications, has described Reeve’s travel documentaries as: “the best travel television programmes of the past five years”.
After vomiting blood and being diagnosed with malaria on a journey around the equator
Equator
An equator is the intersection of a sphere's surface with the plane perpendicular to the sphere's axis of rotation and containing the sphere's center of mass....
, Reeve became an ambassador for the Malaria Awareness Campaign.
Simon Reeve is the older brother of award-winning photographer James Reeve http://www.fiftycrows.org/photoessay/reeve/bio.php, former winner of the Nikon/Wanderlust/The Independent International Professional Travel Photographer of the Year Award http://www.shootandscribble.com/jr/biog.html, who has been recognised by the National Portrait Gallery Portrait Prize and the Observer Hodge award for his work in Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
.
Meet the Stans (2003)
Meet the StansMeet the Stans
Meet the Stans was a 2003 travel documentary, part of the Holidays in the Danger Zone series, produced and broadcast by the BBC, and written and presented by Simon Reeve. The series featured Reeve travelling through Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan...
is a four-part BBC Two
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
and BBC World series on Central Asia
Central Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...
, written and presented by Reeve. The series took Reeve from the far north-west of Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...
, by the Russian border, east to the Chinese border, south through Kyrgyzstan
Kyrgyzstan
Kyrgyzstan , officially the Kyrgyz Republic is one of the world's six independent Turkic states . Located in Central Asia, landlocked and mountainous, Kyrgyzstan is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the southwest and China to the east...
and Tajikistan
Tajikistan
Tajikistan , officially the Republic of Tajikistan , is a mountainous landlocked country in Central Asia. Afghanistan borders it to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kyrgyzstan to the north, and China to the east....
to the edge of Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
, and west to Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan , officially the Republic of Uzbekistan is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia and one of the six independent Turkic states. It shares borders with Kazakhstan to the west and to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south....
and the legendary Silk Road
Silk Road
The Silk Road or Silk Route refers to a historical network of interlinking trade routes across the Afro-Eurasian landmass that connected East, South, and Western Asia with the Mediterranean and European world, as well as parts of North and East Africa...
cities of Samarkand
Samarkand
Although a Persian-speaking region, it was not united politically with Iran most of the times between the disintegration of the Seleucid Empire and the Arab conquest . In the 6th century it was within the domain of the Turkic kingdom of the Göktürks.At the start of the 8th century Samarkand came...
and Bukhara
Bukhara
Bukhara , from the Soghdian βuxārak , is the capital of the Bukhara Province of Uzbekistan. The nation's fifth-largest city, it has a population of 263,400 . The region around Bukhara has been inhabited for at least five millennia, and the city has existed for half that time...
. It was broadcast on the BBC in 2003, and internationally during 2004 and 2005.
House of Saud (also broadcast as: Saudi: The Family in Crisis) (2004)
A one-off BBC2 and BBC World documentary filmed inside Saudi ArabiaSaudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
, written and presented by Reeve. The journey took Reeve across Saudi Arabia, from the cities of Jeddah
Jeddah
Jeddah, Jiddah, Jidda, or Jedda is a city located on the coast of the Red Sea and is the major urban center of western Saudi Arabia. It is the largest city in Makkah Province, the largest sea port on the Red Sea, and the second largest city in Saudi Arabia after the capital city, Riyadh. The...
and Riyadh
Riyadh
Riyadh is the capital and largest city of Saudi Arabia. It is also the capital of Riyadh Province, and belongs to the historical regions of Najd and Al-Yamama. It is situated in the center of the Arabian Peninsula on a large plateau, and is home to 5,254,560 people, and the urban center of a...
to the vast Empty Quarter desert. Participants ranged from Saudi princes and Islamic militants, to teenage girls and Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...
's former best friend. It was broadcast in 2004.
Places That Don't Exist (2005)
Places That Don't ExistPlaces That Don't Exist
Holidays in the Danger Zone: Places That Don't Exist is a five-part BBC Four series on breakaway states and unrecognised nations, devised, written and presented by Simon Reeve. The series producer was Will Daws...
was Reeve's 2005 award-winning five-part series on breakaway states and unrecognised nations, broadcast on BBC2 and broadcasters internationally. Among the countries Reeve visited for this series were Somaliland
Somaliland
Somaliland is an unrecognised self-declared sovereign state that is internationally recognised as an autonomous region of Somalia. The government of Somaliland regards itself as the successor state to the British Somaliland protectorate, which was independent for a few days in 1960 as the State of...
, Transnistria
Transnistria
Transnistria is a breakaway territory located mostly on a strip of land between the Dniester River and the eastern Moldovan border to Ukraine...
(where Reeve was detained for 'spying' by the KGB ), Nagorno-Karabakh
Nagorno-Karabakh
Nagorno-Karabakh is a landlocked region in the South Caucasus, lying between Lower Karabakh and Zangezur and covering the southeastern range of the Lesser Caucasus mountains...
, Ajaria
Adjara
Adjara , officially the Autonomous Republic of Adjara , is an autonomous republic of Georgia.Adjara is located in the southwestern corner of Georgia, bordered by Turkey to the south and the eastern end of the Black Sea...
, South Ossetia
South Ossetia
South Ossetia or Tskhinvali Region is a disputed region and partly recognized state in the South Caucasus, located in the territory of the South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast within the former Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic....
, Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan , officially the Republic of Azerbaijan is the largest country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to...
, Armenia
Armenia
Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
, Somalia
Somalia
Somalia , officially the Somali Republic and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under Socialist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Since the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 there has been no central government control over most of the country's territory...
, Moldova
Moldova
Moldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...
, Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
, and the former Soviet Republic of Georgia
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
.
Equator (2006)
EquatorEquator (BBC TV series)
Equator is a BBC television documentary series in three parts charting presenter Simon Reeve's journey along the Equator through Africa, Asia and South America....
is a three-part BBC documentary first broadcast in September 2006 in which Reeve followed the equator
Equator
An equator is the intersection of a sphere's surface with the plane perpendicular to the sphere's axis of rotation and containing the sphere's center of mass....
around the world. Among the places he visited were some of the most dangerous regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Democratic Republic of the Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a state located in Central Africa. It is the second largest country in Africa by area and the eleventh largest in the world...
and Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
. The Radio Times described the Equator series as 'an extraordinary journey…revelatory…thrilling and thought-provoking…hits us with jaw-dropping facts…eye-opening…delivers a string of revealing snapshots'. The series was the Silver Award winner at the 2007 Wanderlust Travel Awards. Reeve contracted malaria
Malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...
while filming this series.
Tropic of Capricorn (2008)
Tropic of CapricornTropic of Capricorn (BBC TV series)
Tropic of Capricorn is a BBC television documentary series. It was aired on BBC Two in 2008 and showed presenter Simon Reeve travelling along the Tropic of Capricorn.-References:*...
is a four-part 2008 BBC documentary series in which Reeve tracked the southern edge of the tropics region around the world. The series, and the accompanying book, also written by Reeve, outlined his journey through southern Africa
Southern Africa
Southern Africa is the southernmost region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. Within the region are numerous territories, including the Republic of South Africa ; nowadays, the simpler term South Africa is generally reserved for the country in English.-UN...
, Madagascar
Madagascar
The Republic of Madagascar is an island country located in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa...
, Australia and across South America. Reeve crossed the Andes Mountains, the Namib
Namib Desert
The Namib Desert is a desert in Namibia and southwest Angola that forms part of the Namib-Naukluft National Park, the largest game reserve in Africa. The name "Namib" is of Nama origin and means "vast place"...
, Kalahari
Kalahari Desert
The Kalahari Desert is a large semi-arid sandy savannah in Southern Africa extending , covering much of Botswana and parts of Namibia and South Africa, as semi-desert, with huge tracts of excellent grazing after good rains. The Kalahari supports more animals and plants than a true desert...
and Atacama
Atacama Desert
The Atacama Desert is a plateau in South America, covering a strip of land on the Pacific coast, west of the Andes mountains. It is, according to NASA, National Geographic and many other publications, the driest desert in the world...
deserts, found giant rats detecting landmines in Mozambique
Mozambique
Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique , is a country in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west and Swaziland and South Africa to the southwest...
and was forced to eat penis soup by Madagascan royalty. He met miners scrabbling for gems in dark, dangerous tunnels and a British anthropologist fighting to save forest communities in South America. He also went hunting with a tribe of former cannibals, travelled the equivalent of half-way up Everest
Mount Everest
Mount Everest is the world's highest mountain, with a peak at above sea level. It is located in the Mahalangur section of the Himalayas. The international boundary runs across the precise summit point...
, ate dried caterpillar
Caterpillar
Caterpillars are the larval form of members of the order Lepidoptera . They are mostly herbivorous in food habit, although some species are insectivorous. Caterpillars are voracious feeders and many of them are considered to be pests in agriculture...
s, grilled llama
Llama
The llama is a South American camelid, widely used as a meat and pack animal by Andean cultures since pre-Hispanic times....
, sheeps' eyes, and searched for wild honey in the forests of northern Argentina.
Explore (2009)
A 4x60-minute series for BBC2 broadcast from 25 January to 15 February 2009 in the UK. Leading a team of reporters in journeys of discovery to some of the most colorful and intense locations on earth, Explore blended travel with current affairs. The tag line for the series was "Don’t just visit... Explore!" Programmes include: PatagoniaPatagonia
Patagonia is a region located in Argentina and Chile, integrating the southernmost section of the Andes mountains to the southwest towards the Pacific ocean and from the east of the cordillera to the valleys it follows south through Colorado River towards Carmen de Patagones in the Atlantic Ocean...
to the Pampass, Africa's Great Rift Valley
Great Rift Valley
The Great Rift Valley is a name given in the late 19th century by British explorer John Walter Gregory to the continuous geographic trench, approximately in length, that runs from northern Syria in Southwest Asia to central Mozambique in South East Africa...
, Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...
to Anatolia
Anatolia
Anatolia is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the majority of the Republic of Turkey...
, and Manila
Manila
Manila is the capital of the Philippines. It is one of the sixteen cities forming Metro Manila.Manila is located on the eastern shores of Manila Bay and is bordered by Navotas and Caloocan to the north, Quezon City to the northeast, San Juan and Mandaluyong to the east, Makati on the southeast,...
to Mindanao
Mindanao
Mindanao is the second largest and easternmost island in the Philippines. It is also the name of one of the three island groups in the country, which consists of the island of Mindanao and smaller surrounding islands. The other two are Luzon and the Visayas. The island of Mindanao is called The...
. Issues covered in the series range from forced farming to fashion Goliaths, World Heritage rice terraces to dwindling honey industries, extreme hunger to extreme football. The Daily Mail
Daily Mail
The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...
gave it "Highlight of the Week ... very good ... As ever, Reeve is not content with spectacular landscapes and local colour; he and his team dig deep to come up with real stories".
Tropic of Cancer (2010)
A six-part television series in which Reeve travelled around the Tropic of CancerTropic of Cancer (BBC TV series)
Tropic of Cancer is a BBC television documentary presented by Simon Reeve. It was first broadcast on BBC Two in 2010. It follows his previous series Equator and Tropic of Capricorn.-External links:*...
, the northern border of earth’s tropical region.
After travelling around the Tropic of Capricorn
Tropic of Capricorn
The Tropic of Capricorn, or Southern tropic, marks the most southerly latitude on the Earth at which the Sun can be directly overhead. This event occurs at the December solstice, when the southern hemisphere is tilted towards the Sun to its maximum extent.Tropic of Capricorn is one of the five...
and Equator
Equator
An equator is the intersection of a sphere's surface with the plane perpendicular to the sphere's axis of rotation and containing the sphere's center of mass....
, this series completed Reeve’s trilogy of journeys exploring the tropics. Reeve described the journey as his toughest, longest, most dangerous and most ambitious challenge.
Starting on the Pacific coast of Mexico, Reeve followed the Tropic of Cancer almost 37,000 kilometres east on a journey blending travel with current affairs. The journey took him through 18 countries, ranging from Mexico and Mauritania
Mauritania
Mauritania is a country in the Maghreb and West Africa. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean in the west, by Western Sahara in the north, by Algeria in the northeast, by Mali in the east and southeast, and by Senegal in the southwest...
, to Bangladesh
Bangladesh
Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...
and the Bahamas.
Reeve headed east across the Caribbean, the Sahara, over borders in North Africa closed to foreigners for decades, and then on through the deserts of Arabia and the remote jungles of Asia, to finish in Hawaii. In Mexico he was put through his paces by a masked female wrestler, while in the Bahamas he documented the suffering of Haitian refugees. In North Africa he crossed the world’s largest minefield, and travelled through a region suffering from a long forgotten civil war. In Asia, Reeve trekked into western Burma to meet villagers struggling to survive under brutal oppression. In Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
, he praised this island as the most successful economy among all the other countries on the Tropic of Cancer where he experienced social order, wealthy democracy and a highly educated society.
The series, described as ‘adventure journalism’, has Reeve exploring some of the huge challenges facing the Tropics, including poverty
Poverty
Poverty is the lack of a certain amount of material possessions or money. Absolute poverty or destitution is inability to afford basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. About 1.7 billion people are estimated to live...
, the drug trade
Drug trade
Drug trade may refer to:* Illegal drug trade, the manufacture and sale of illicit psychoactive substances* Pharmaceutical industry, the manufacture and sale of medical treatment chemicals...
, climate change
Climate change
Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...
, industrial pollution
Pollution
Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into a natural environment that causes instability, disorder, harm or discomfort to the ecosystem i.e. physical systems or living organisms. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light...
, and forgotten conflicts. But it is also described as “a spectacular travelogue”, taking Reeve and viewers to some of the most remote and beautiful places on earth.
"Following the Tropic of Cancer, the northern border of the Tropics, was a unique opportunity to explore and witness a slice of life in the most interesting and important region of the world: the Tropics!" Reeve was quoted as saying. "The whole point of the journey is that tracking the Tropic of Cancer took us off the beaten track, to places we wouldn't normally visit, and parts of the world that are rarely visited by foreigners, let alone TV crews. It was an extraordinary opportunity and a fantastically exciting journey that was also frightening, uplifting, exhausting, upsetting, challenging and surprising.” The first episode aired on 14 March 2010.
External links
- Simon Reeve – Website
- Simon Reeve – Biography
- BBC – Tropic of Cancer – Information and interview
- BBC – Tropic of Capricorn – Information and interview
- BBC – Equator – Information and interview
- BBC – Places That Don't Exist – Information Interview
- Wanderlust magazine – Interview
- USA TodayUSA TodayUSA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
– Interview - The Observer – Interview
- The Independent – Interview
- The Times – Health interview
- Fan Website – http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/simon_reeve_group/
- Facebook Fan Site – http://www.facebook.com/pages/Simon-Reeve/331672241130?ref=ts
- One Day in September – http://www.munich11.com
- Simon Reeve's Memorable Moments A collection of video introduced by Simon Reeve on the BBC's Human Planet Explorer