My life through a lens

Celebrities share the stories behind their favourite snaps – this week it’s broadcaster and author

1956 David and I are standing here alongside HMS Wellington by the Thames on London’s Victoria Embankment. I’m about 12, and David is ten. The ship had taken our grandfather to France as an accredited press photographer with the Allies during World War II. He often talked about his war experiences – he took pictures of everyone from Winston Churchill to Field Marshal Montgomery.

1980 Here I am in Afghanistan reporting on that country’s war with Russia. I went undercover there with an ITN camera crew five times. On one occasion Russian soldiers saw us filming and arrested us. When they put us against a wall, I thought we were facing a firing squad, but instead they reported us to the Afghan authorities and we were deported. Our news footage was a world scoop on News At Ten.

2001 I’ve met the Queen several times – on this occasion she came on a tour of ITN. She nodded gracefully as I explained how the news bulletin was done, and what it was like when things went wrong. She has an aura – whether you’re a royalist or a republican, when you meet her you think, ‘My goodness, it’s the Queen’. She made it all very easy. She’s interested in you and knows how to turn it on for the cameras.

2016 My wife Nula and I both lost our spouses, James and Bonnie, to dementia. They were in the same care home, which is how we came to know each other. This is us on our wedding day – it was lovely because we’ve both been through such a horrific time. We like to think we’re proof there’s life after dementia and we’ve said that if anything happens to either one of us, the other is to get out there and have fun.

2018 Here’s Team Suchet – Peter (far left), David (right) and I, plus our wives – taking on a gruelling four-day trek to Machu Picchu earlier this year to raise money for Classic FM’s charity, Global’s Make Some Noise. I found hiking through the Peruvian Andes at high altitude much tougher than expected, but with a group of around 30 we raised £150,000. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

1953 The pain on my mother’s face (behind me) as I’m being sent off for my first term at boarding school still brings tears to my eyes. I hated almost every minute of it but my dad Jack insisted on me, David and our eldest brother Peter all going. I found myself on Kent’s bleak Thanet coast, with fog horns in the North Sea and ice-cold sheets in the dormitory. The headmaster used to cane us viciously.

1952 This is me aged about eight with my younger brother David (left) and Jimmy, our grandfather, at our grandparents’ London flat. We adored Jimmy. He was a photographer on Fleet Street and his tales of derring-do as a war photographer partly inspired me to become a news reporter. He also inspired David [the actor, best known as Poirot] to take pictures – he’s seriously good.

1987 I covered Ronald Reagan’s presidency as ITN’s Washington correspondent and secured an interview with him (pictured) when he came to London to meet then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He was a charmer and greeted me by name. No doubt he’d been well briefed! My abiding memory was when I asked how much his wife had helped him and he said, ‘John, if I walk into a room and Nancy is there, it’s as though a warm fire is glowing in the corner.’ He was an absolute master.