Soldier, journalist, diplomat and politician – John Freeman’s 99 years should provide enough material for any budding biographer. He spent five years fighting his way across Africa and Europe and reduced Winston Churchill to tears with his first speech in Parliament.
Bored with party politics, he moved into TV where his Face To Face programme pulled in millions of viewers and introduced the on-screen interrogation. But he soon swapped the studio for India and then Washington DC where he was British Ambassador to the US.
Throughout his career, and four marriages, he seems to have kept himself hidden from the world, resulting in this unsatisfying skim across the surface of one of the 20th century’s most interesting lives – something Freeman would probably approve of.
Book Review: A Very Private Celebrity by Hugh Purcell
