Rewatching it with a heavy heart. He was a true moral compass. The world feels like a darker place without him. Rest in peace.

Robert Fisk, one of the most educated people on the Mid-East..i love this guy & respect his view & words...he is very unbiased & speaks the truth even if it hurts! i read "Pity the nation" & will be getting his new book.

What a great journalist. He's enlightened and infuriated me for 20 years in the Independent. I told him so as he signed his book for me when i saw him lecture in London

"The Great War for Civilisation" is an outstanding piece of writing.

Wow wow. What a journalist. You are listening A real journalist

I miss you Robert. Rest in peace.

Fascinating, brilliant, amazing & a very human great Robert Fisk...

I gotta admit, Harry Kreisler does conduct decent interviews no matter what you might think of his intellectual architecture when those characters surface in how questions are posed, reveal those characteristics etc - yet the "convos with history" segments are way better than any other tv-interview you see around.

"The Great War for Civilization" was amazing. I can't think of a more penetrating work on the Middle East.

he might have the most admirable moral character of any living person.

A real gem of a interview by Mr. Kreisler, who is a heralded historian in his own right. I've read Robert Fisk's work for many years. At 48:15 Mr. Kreisler asked about him about War.........."Is this just our fate of mankind?" Robert Fisk's book "Age of the Warrior" sums up very well the answer to this question, and aspects of this interview today allude to those who condone, contribute and even come to need war. At the 54:00 minute mark, Mr. Fisk himself speaks about feeling more at home when returning to the Beirut warzone, than having spent a Utopian holiday in Switzerland. As the philosopher George Santayana said, "Only the dead are safe; only the dead have seen the end of war"

Rest In Peace Robert Fisk. If anyone deserves it... 11/1/20

Whoa. This guy. Brilliant.

He was a great man, and this was a great interview.

Great series. I listen to an interview every morning. So wonderful to listen to bright people. I agree they really need to change the theme tune.

This guy is freaking awesome. Cant wait to read his book

@ali12147 Not only Fisk and Chris Hedges, John Pilger is also a very truthful journalist.

Fisk is a miracle ... the best of all time.

A great man who made a difference.

I think that this was by far the best conversation with history that I have ever seen! Robert Fisk is truly an amazing man and has put me on the verge of tears! If only every person were so adamantly pacifist and understood the pain of war as he does!

Robert Fisk is the man- he proves that some journalists have dignity- respect.

on the one hand, this gentleman is a brilliant advocate for the need to depict war realistically in the media, and, after 30 years on the front lines of Middle Eastern warzones it's impossible to question his commitment to doing so. On the other hand, if he's serious about the need to open the eyes of the public about the realities of war, with the goal of making it harder for western leaders to gain public support for their wars, then why not get a digital camera and an internet connection?

Fisk and Chris Hedges are very unique war correspondents, they both speak the truth which is quite rare for journalists.

thank you sir for what you did for humanity .

You have to have a special mind to preserve your composure and inform in such clear way what this man has witnessed, I admired him a lot.

Watching this interview has made me order as many of the books that he mentions as possible, including Fisks stuff!

"We've all committed crimes against humanity, not just al quaeda" - this is a great man.

Thank you for the courage to reveal the history and the truth of war. Many are fooled by the heroics and the so called 'glory' of the military life style. The truth is that the young lads recruited really believe that the military is somthing to be proud of having been wooed by the image of heroism, the joy of being employed (with possibly no other opportunities,) receiving paid education and cheap home loans ( or for some - to avoid reform school). They have no idea what it is really about.

This man is my cousin whom I have never met .His book "Age of the warrior " contains a chapter concerning my grandfather Edward Fisk and his time on the Cutty Sark.

"Believe me they are all bastards, there are no good guys in war." Robert Fisk

I like and respect this guy and his blessed responsible journalism

this guy is one of the most objective worth respecting people i've ever heard about. I believe all reporters should be like him. especially lebanese reporters...

Rest in Peace Mr Fisk. You will be greatly missed

Robert Fisk, a true legend! One of the few journalists alive today who tells things as they are and doesn't care who he upsets in the process. We fail to recognise the importance of such people in the current climate.

Robert Fisk is a Great Journalist and Commentator. This was excellent. It also touched upon a telling point: he says that he met men in Lebanon who took drink and drugs and then tortured and raped. Moreover, he says that they enjoyed it. He goes on to say that he later met these men after they had had children. This made me look up. How do they reconcile their actions with raising children? Perhaps they don't.....Wow.

Watch the "one on one" with Riz Khan for him speaking about that. He said his religion is journalism. Nice line.

What is the theme music to this 'Conversations with History' series?

A man of absolute integrity.

Did Fisk predict 7/7 just months before it happened here? The man's uncanny and brilliant; I've enormous respect for him.

If the US market media ever had the brains to pick up this guys reporting or so, Americans (As myself) would have a truly better education of the middle east. I read his book and it is truly what needs to be in history classes etc.

I'll second that! He is brilliant and an excellent writer.

yay there are still awesome folks available DESPITE all efforts

The Great Robert Fisk!!!

great stuff...

Very powerful stuff.

Rest in peace to one of the most principled and morally upright individuals to walk this planet in recent centuries.

Fisk is such a passionate and courageous man...

i love how they cut each other in conversation! :D

Could you please expound on that? I'm curious as to what you've seen that leads you to that conclusion.

@Rossyboy3000 Excellent point. I always despair of people of the older generation who refuse to modernise. They miss out on a brighter new world of instant knowledge and communication and yes, in Fisk's case, the empowerment to be able to inform people of the truth.

great writer very readable

I had dinner with him in 2006 when I was in Beirut he's a great guy. He hates talking about politics. XD

Robert, for your life the lives of others will hopefully be indebted.

Truly a badass, fiercely intelligent, genuinely visionary. RIP

He’s also very witty & funny 😊

lol @ the old school educational intro and closing music

Hitchens was more like a Bush apologist with these bloody adventures in the middle east.

What is the french publication he mentioned?

@AnatolyaTurkiye If you actualy read the book you would realise that he talks about his experiences covering the middle east which he has been doing for over 30 years. He doesn't talk about the ancient history of the middle east rather the post ww2 era which he is most familiar with and which mainly involves the west. So based on what the book is about the title is totaly relevent.

It's a standard Open University-style sound from the 70s

That CharlesDickens guy has been going around Fisk videos posting the same stuff. He's been at it for a few years now. I got messages off of him telling me all Fisk's work is wrong and he writes to please people like Bin Laden.

Robert Fisk, an honest journalist!

27:30 hahaha!! very interesting interview!

ha ha... At 10:03, he got Harry and it dragged on for a minute. Such an awesome fellow Mr. Fisk.

What I would give for Fisk to write a book that dissects the arguments of the 9-11 Commission Report.

A proper journalist i agree!

@AnatolyaTurkiye i think its sarcasm, he doesn't realy view these wars as 'great'. he is one of the biggest critics of the western foreign policy.

This guy's awesome

Robert Frisk was a burning spear 🔥 🗡🔥

RIP robert terrible to lose a vioce of sanity in a time when the world seems to be going mad

true words.

interesting.

Agreed.

i hate the theme tune but love these programs

An informed observer would trace back the current problems in the Middle East as being in large part a reaction to the arrogant imperilaism of England which decided that it would promise Palestine to both the Arab majority who lived there and the international Jewish community who had bought only 6% of the land there. An informed observer would that English imperialism has held back countries such as Zimbabwe, Kenya, South Africa and India while spreading English by cultural imperialism.

robert fisk ia a great man!!

No journalists left? I wouldn't agree with that. If you only read the Mail or the Express then it's no surprise, but the Guardian and Independent possess many fine journalists, and the BBC clearly boasts better television and radio (particularly radio) journalism than any commercial US network.

Dat music.

RIP

Is the role of the journalist to challenge power as Fisk asserts or is it to try to tell the truth as best a human can relate to other humans?

@ali12147 Yep. Watch some of his other videos. He believes the whole "clash of civilizations" argument is bullshit and he is also highly critical of all actors. The way it should be.

If you ask him who he prefers Neville Chamberlain to Winston Churchill and he prefers Chamberlain.

The ultimate reporter would be Fisk's foxhole perspective with Hitchens' towering intellect.

what a man

What a legend

I will like to concede that british did gave things like administrative bureacracy, modern military and legal systems. All of which are essential to the formation of a modern state, however, at the heart of ruling this region was an ideology of colonialism and economic self-interest which was simply unjustified.

true

My Hero, nuf said.

19:30

Surely you jest. Did you download it? I think you could play the theme of this show through loudspeakers, and that alone would keep the Palestinians away from Israeli borders. Forget about that wall! :)

Fisk is a great journalist, but I wish he would not be so intensive in friendly interviews like this one. Why does he have to cut off and interrupt the interviewer so much, or call out the interviewer as doing a "snobby academic thing" as he does at 10:00? It really adds nothing to the interview, but rather mess up the flow.

yes he is, and he can write too.

There is only a [superficial] stop-off after second term; that's more worrying to me.

Le Monde, Figaro, Liberation.

rest in peace the world will miss you

@ 27:05 just listen for a minutes or so ... this isn't fair

@kelticuss1 No. Fisk is not comparable to Fox news at all, he references and bears witness to everything he reports, he doesn't just flail an agenda around bolstering it with hyperbole and catchphrases. Credibility.

An informed observer would know that the Anglo-Saxons are indigenous to only one country in the world: England. Virtually every country that the English invaded had a stupendous drop in the population of its native people. Consider the America where hundreds of thousands of Natives were killed and their culture destroyed, Australia, which has gone the same way, Ireland, where the English imposed their religion and their language and stole the natives' land by force of arms.

@CharlesDickens99 not really strange - what has any political party ever really done

This music is seriously killing me slowly