Adam Brookes

View Reviews of books by Adam Brookes

Countdown with ...

Adam Brookes

Adam Brookes was born in Canada, but grew up in the UK, in a village in Oxfordshire. He studied Chinese at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and went on to become a journalist.

Adam became a radio producer at the BBC World Service, and then a foreign correspondent, based first in Indonesia, then China and the United States, where he now lives. Along the way he has reported from some 30 countries including Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea and Mongolia, for BBC television and radio.

His first novel, Night Heron, draws on his life in journalism, his years in China, and his efforts to understand something of what goes on in the world of intelligence. His second novel is Spy Games.

Interviewed 25 June 2016

Ten words to sum up your working life to date ...

Deadline, deadline, deadline, deadline, deadline, deadline, deadline, deadline, deadline, breathe.

Nine things you can see from where you're sitting ...

Books, stacks, desks, strivers, laptop, Hot New Fiction, chocolate, woolly hat, imagined world.

Eight minutes to prepare a meal. What's it going to be ?

Spicy ramen noodles out of a packet, probably.

Seven people you'd like to go for a drink with ...

Alan Furst, William Boyd, Krystyna Skarbeck, Hilary Mantel, Bai Juyi, Qian Zhongshu, Melita Norwood.

Six things you can't live without ...

Family and all that comes with it, my glasses, sleep, words, travel, my mandolin.

Five favourite words ...

Nifty, bollocks, India, pale, ale.

Four places you'd run away to ...

Our place in Eskdale, in the Lakes, because it’s beautiful;
San Francisco, for the sense of possibility;
Baucau, Timor L’Este, because they’d never find me there;
Kunming, China, for the food and the vibe.

Three books you've bought recently ...

Intelligence Collection by Robert M Clark
Ghost Fleet by PW Singer and August Cole
How to Disappear by Frank Ahearn and Eileen Horan

Two things that make you rant ...

Conspiracy theorists, of the wrong sort Bad urban planning

One thing you'd tell your teenage self ...

Learn how to relax. Really, figure it out. Relaxation is crucial for everything.