Life and Career
After school, Hawksley joined the Merchant Navy, and sailed across the world. He joined the BBC in the early 1980s.
In 1986, Hawksley was expelled from Sri Lanka where he had reported on a number of government atrocities in its conflict with Tamil separatists. In 1987 he covered violence in the Philippines and received death threats. In 1989 after the killings in Tiananmen Square he went to Hong Kong and reported on social stresses due to the country’s imminent transfer to Chinese rule. He was simultaneously a reporter for the whole of Asia. He later covered this transfer live in Beijing. In 1994, he opened the BBC’s first television bureau in China. Humphrey Hawksley reported on fighting in The Balkans, Iraq and Timor Humphrey Hawksley has also reported on slavery in cocoa production.
Hawksley has written extensively in Newspapers including The Guardian and The Times.
Hawksley is also the author of best-selling political novels aimed at raising key strategic issues in the far east before a broader audience. These include Dragon Fire, Ceremony of Innocence, Absolute Measures, Red Spirit and co-author with Simon Holberton of Dragon Strike. His latest books are The Third World War, The History Book and "Democracy Kills: What's So Good About Having the Vote?".
The History Book was re-released as Security Breach on 28 July 2008. On his blog, Humphrey Hawksley explains the renaming thus:
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Famous quotes containing the words life and, life and/or career:
“The fate of the poor shepherd, who, blinded and lost in the snow-storm, perishes in a drift within a few feet of his cottage door, is an emblem of the state of man. On the brink of the waters of life and truth, we are miserably dying.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?”
—William Henry Davies (1871–1940)
“Work-family conflicts—the trade-offs of your money or your life, your job or your child—would not be forced upon women with such sanguine disregard if men experienced the same career stalls caused by the-buck-stops-here responsibility for children.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)