Badge greenslade blog

Walter Schwarz, telling it like it was...

Walter Schwarz, a former foreign correspondent for The Guardian during those days when copy was dictated over a crackly phone or transmitted by telex, has written his memoirs.


The Ideal Occupation, which is published next month, tells of his colourful experiences in several countries across the globe.

He landed up in jail in Nigeria during the civil war in breakaway Biafra and was later deported. He also had adventures in Israel, India and France.

Schwarz was just 13 when he decided he would like to be a foreign correspondent and honed his writing skills in letters to his parents.

He calls himself "as lucky boy" because his Jewish family left Vienna just before Hitler marched into Austria. As a wartime schoolboy, Churchill was his hero. He later served in the army, fighting in the Malayan jungle.

His memoirs are not solemn, nor are they conventional. "They just show what my life and career were like," he writes, "the thrill and the fun as well as some hard moments."

The Ideal Occupation is to be published by Revel Barker Publishing on 8 April.

Today's best video