Review: John Simpson’s The Leaders and Lunatics Tour at the Royal Hall

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The spectacular surrounds of Harrogate’s Royal Hall seem especially fitting for journalism royalty. John Simpson CBE, however, is rather more modest.

Opening to a full house, Simpson begins by clarifying that he is not David Attenborough, for whom he is frequently mistaken, and that those who had been expecting a lecture from the natural history icon may find themselves somewhat disappointed.

Legendary in his own right, of course, world affairs editor Simpson’s career has spanned an incredible sixty years.

In his The Leaders and Lunatics Tour, he reflects on this time, detailing incredible anecdotes and personal insights from meeting with the world’s most famous – and infamous – leaders, past and present.

Hugely compelling and crammed with tales from the journalistic frontlines, Simpson describes the day he met a young Putin, recounts tales of torture under Saddam’s regime and recalls an awkward interview with a rather flatulent Colonel Gaddafi.

Relating tales of executions in Baghdad, of dodging bullets in Beirut and Belfast and of observing the dead in Tiananmen Square, Simpson has experienced and documented some of the most defining moments in modern history.

A most thoughtful and reflective orator, Simpson is also sharp, witty and warm. Besides tales of the tyrannical, Simpson spotlights several leaders whom he admires – Mikhail Gorbachev, Václav Havel and Volodymyr Zelensky among them – with special mention for his friend, Nelson Mandela.

Simpson plays some wonderful archival footage of an extraordinary engagement that Mandela attended at the journalist’s old Cambridge college, Magdalene. Aged dons in formal robes abandon all academic pomp to sway to the rhythm of a traditional South African tune, alongside a beaming Mandela.

In its more interactive and equally fascinating second half, Simpson answers a few questions submitted by the audience, the last of which was asked by a young person worried by the state of the world.

Whilst acknowledging things aren’t looking too pretty, Simpson ended his speech on a note of hope. As he has seen with his very own eyes, walls fall, leaders perish and life moves on. History is ever-changing, our world forever in flux and there is always light; you just have to find it.

John Simpson: The Leaders and Lunatics Tour is touring until November 2026.