ABOUT

This is a site about the books and other writing by James Rodgers, author of Assignment Moscow: Reporting on Russia From Lenin to Putin (new edition 2023; first published July 2020); Headlines from the Holy Land (2015 and 2017); No Road Home: Fighting for Land and Faith in Gaza (2013); Reporting Conflict (2012). My work looks at how stories of international affairs, especially armed conflict, are told to the world.

BIOGRAPHY

I am an author and journalist. During two decades of covering international news, I reported on the end of the Soviet Union; the wars in Chechnya; the coming to power of Vladimir Putin; 9/11; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the 2003 war in Iraq; Russia’s war with Georgia in 2008. I completed correspondent postings for the BBC in Moscow, Brussels, and Gaza. I now teach in the Journalism Department at City St George’s, University of London.

The author in Berlin, February 2023. Photo © Kevin Cummins

London In Coronavirus Lockdown: A Tale Of Two Chinooks

May 29, 2020
AFTER NIGHTFALL, YOU SEE THE LIGHTS LINING UP. Coming to the end of my commute on a winter evening, I can look up and see plane after plane stretching away into the murk of the eastern sky. They follow one another to land at Heathrow to the west. Sometimes,...

For VE Day 75: Crossing A Continent Still Scarred By War

May 8, 2020
I STARTED MY LONGEST EVER OVERLAND JOURNEY on a London bus to Hammersmith. From there, I took the underground to St Pancras. On the Eurostar, I crossed the English channel below its busy shipping lanes. After an afternoon in Paris, I was at the Gare de l’Est, ticket in...

Vladimir Putin: 20 Years Of Telling A New Story Of Russia

April 17, 2020
On the 20th anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s first being elected president of Russia, I wrote for The Conversation about how Russia’s place in the world, and the technology used to tell its story, have changed since. You can read that piece here, and a complete text follows. It contains...