As a young foreign correspondent for ITN covering the Nigerian civil war in Biafra in 1968, a badly wounded Peter Sissons lay on the ground as he waited for an independence fighter to finish him off. His life was saved when Frederick Forsyth, a freelance journalist who would later make his name as a thriller writer, grappled with the sniper and pushed the rifle away so that he shot into the air. Sissons kept the fragments of the bullet that had penetrated his legs. They helped him to keep perspective as he deflected the regular criticism that came his way during his acclaimed but often controversial 45-year career in television news. The Oxford-educated Liverpool grammar school boy — who had been a…

Source: The Times October 02, 2019 23:03 UTC