
British journalist, presenter and news anchor Clive Myrie has been at the forefront of reporting on worldwide events, often in dangerous conflict zones, for three decades. An unrivalled passion for journalism, as well as empathy and understanding of the marginalised, shines through the pages of his memoir Everything Is Everything.
The son of Windrush generation parents who came to Britain at the start of the early 1960’s, Myrie was painfully shy in his early years at school: without his mother’s intervention, he may have been written off by the educational system. Myrie’s parents’ resilience to the racial barriers placed in front of them, as recounted here, is quite staggering – as, in time, is the author’s own.
As a youngster in Bolton, browsing the daily headlines while on his paper round fuelled Myrie’s ambition to become a journalist; seeing ITN’s first Black news reporter Trevor McDonald on TV made his dreams feel more like reality. After studying law and journalism, Myrie was employed by the BBC as a trainee reporter at the tail end of the 1980s, and then as now, Myrie’s reporting style – dispatched from Iraq, South Africa and Ukraine to name three notable locations – is driven by a hunger for hard facts.
There is an acute sharpness as well as emotion as Myrie recollects on his frontline reporting over the years. Everything Is Everything is a moving, illuminating and vital read.
Everything Is Everything: A Memoir Of Love, Hate And Hope, Clive Myrie (Hodder & Stoughton)
Price: £22/£24.99 audiobook. Info: here
words DAVID NOBAKHT