Lament for the Lost Glory of Fleet Street

Stephen Harper tells his own story of a boyhood dream coming true when the legendary editor Arthur Christiansen took him on the Daily Express and started him on a long career as a foreign correspondent. Those were the balmy days when foreign correspondents were the aristocrats of Fleet Street and the Express sold close on 4 1/2 million copies a day.

Name a dateline and the odds are Harper was there. As New Delhi correspondent his mobbing in Kashmir was debated in the Security Council, and he was in Cairo for the Suez crisis of 1956, later he climbed to 22,000 feet reporting a fatal all-woman Himalayan expedition. He was held hostage in Stanleyville in the Congo during the first United Nations peace mission. In Cold War Russia he covered the early space missions, the Cuban crisis and pulled off a world scoop on Krushchev's New Year message soon afterwards and was drugged by KGB thugs on his way to visit Stalin's birthplace. As Rome and Vatican correspondent he covered the last months and death of Pope John XXIII, moving on to six years based in Beirut. He covered the end of empire in Aden, and the Nasser years. A Saudi prince poured his Scotch down a drain when he was tried for bringing a noxious fluid into the Holy land on the morning he interviewed the country's new King Feisal at his coronation. He covered the last years and death of General Franco , where the regime labelled him 'un hombre pelligroso' - a dangerous man. He became Chief Foreign Reporter of the Daily Express with a global responsibility covering stories of his choice.

He covered three Arab-Israeli wars, the wars between India and Pakistan and highlights of the Vietnam War the Vietnam War from the arrival of the first American advisers in 1961 until leaving from the roof of the US Embassy as North Vietnamese tanks approached. He met most world leaders of the time as well as many celebrities.

This story is much more than simply a memoir, however rich in anecdote, of a veteran newsman. It is a salute to a heroic era in British journalism and a lament for the lost glory of Fleet Street from a man who lived through its decline and fall, from the time when Lord Beaverbrook instructed his reporter to stay in the best hotels. On his final trip to cover the end of the Vietnam War the foreign budget was cut so low that he used the travel manager's 'freebie' air ticket to South-East Asia.