I used to hunt as a child but gave up the chase in my ‘Ho Ho Ho Chi-Minh, we shall fight and we shall win’ chanting and marching days – by which time I had come to share Oscar Wilde’s feelings about ‘the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.’ Jonathan Dimbleby Read Quote
I have to grit my teeth sometimes, knowing I am going to be written about. But I think it is my life, and I don’t want to get people interested in debating it. But I do feel that if you are going to put yourself about as a public person on a television screen, there’s a curiosity. Jonathan Dimbleby Read Quote
I cycle, I take an hour’s strenuous walk in the evening, I play tennis twice a week with a trainer, and I sail. I used to ride horses professionally – I’d ride seven or eight horses a day, so I had to be fit for that. Jonathan Dimbleby Read Quote
For a few months when I was about 17, I smoked a small cigar because I thought it looked cool and it would get me the girls. It didn’t. Jonathan Dimbleby Read Quote
Ethiopia is engraved on my heart. I first went in 1973 because I heard of a terrible famine. They were denying it even as we got the film out. The coverage destroyed the emperor’s credibility. Jonathan Dimbleby Read Quote
Presidents and prime ministers, whether they live in the rich or the poor world, are insulated and isolated from the devastating impact of global poverty. They read the statistics, but they rarely witness at first hand the misery and degradation of life on a dollar a day. Jonathan Dimbleby Read Quote
Until I was 21, I wasn’t going into the media. I was a professional show jumper; I was going to have a farm… Then my father died, and it changed my life. I realised I had to have a go at being a journalist to see if I could cut the mustard. Jonathan Dimbleby Read Quote
