Fall Of The Wall

John Simpson recalls the day the Berlin Wall came down

- Caren Clark, Ian Macewan

On 9 November 1989, BBC foreign correspondent John Simpson reported live on a seismic European event – the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now, in a one-off documentary, he re-examines the story and looks at what’s happened in the 30 years since that dramatic night.

‘I grew up in the shadow of the Cold War,’ says the 75-year-old. ‘Back then, Europe was totally unrecognizable from the Europe we know today. Germany was split into two countries, east, and west. It was a legacy of World War Two that had left the continent divided.’

The physical manifestation of that divide was the 28-mile-long wall, which made a huge impression on Simpson when he was sent to West Berlin in the late 1970s.