Step By Step cover art

Step By Step

By the presenter of BBC TV's WILDERNESS

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Step By Step

By: Simon Reeve
Narrated by: Simon Reeve
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About this listen

The inspiring memoir from TV traveller Simon Reeve's life of amazing adventures in over 120 countries and the most remote and extreme corners of the planet.

TV documentary maker Simon Reeve has dodged bullets on frontlines, hunted with the Bushmen of the Kalahari, dived with manta rays, seals and sharks, survived malaria, walked through minefields, tracked lions on foot, been taught to fish by the President of Moldova, and detained for spying by the KGB. After a decade spent making more than 80 programmes he has become a familiar face on British TV, well known for his extraordinary journeys across jungles, deserts, mountains and oceans, and to some of the most beautiful, dangerous and remote regions of the world. But what most people don't know is that Simon's own journey started in a rough area of Acton, West London where he was brought up and left school with no qualifications. For the first time he will tell his life story with a book rich in anecdotes to entertain and inform readers about some of the most fascinating (and often dangerous) places in the world and what it took to reach them.

(P)2018 Hodder & Stoughton Limited©2018 Simon Reeve
Adventure Travel Adventurers, Explorers & Survival Entertainment & Celebrities Adventure Inspiring Thought-Provoking Espionage Middle East Africa

Critic reviews

Reeve is a most likeable travelling companion, and the joy of the open road radiates from these pages
Genuinely interesting stories... remarkable
This vivid account of his fascinating, often hair-raising crusades feels more like an enthralling exchange over coffee with a friend than a formal autobiography.
Fascinating... a very honest account of the world as he has seen it, from Acton to the ends of the Earth
Cracking stories from his travels
Simon Reeve, a man whose very name is a guarantee of interesting television. Outstanding.
TV's most interesting globetrotter
The craziest (or bravest) man on TV
In the last decade, he's made a name for himself as British TV's most adventurous presenter. He's hunted with the Bushmen of Kalahari, hung out with biker outlaws in Australia and been taught to fish by the president of Moldova.
You can be sure to trust Simon to find a fun story. Simon might just be the best tour guide in the world.
Reeve is in a class of his own
It is an account of his mind's journey to inner peace - and it is wonderfully life-affirming (Max Pemberton)

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I have always enjoyed the authors travel documentaries , he focuses on the people and the positives in where ever he is in the world . This book has shed so much more light on the positives, I have learnt so much about the world by listening to him narrating his own story, a brilliant listen

A “ must read”

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Straight, honest, warm, insightful, exuberant - what a brilliant book this is! It’s read by Simon Reeve himself, his voice so familiar from all his excellent investigative adventure travel television programmes.

A memoir as well as a travelogue, Step by Step presents his childhood in Acton which was not one you’d expect a courageous traveller to emerge from. School was nothing much and he left without qualifications; his adolescence was deeply troubled and some of his acts of vandalism and out of control behaviour are truly shocking; dogged by depression he came within moments of suicide. I feel for both adolescent Simon but also for his parents who must have suffered years of worry. It was the therapist who told him to take his life ‘step by step’, advice he took to heart.

It was a chain of luck and pluck that got him onto the Sunday Times as a post boy and from there he started writing travel articles. At last absorbed by a passionate interest, he researched the bombs used in the attack on the World Trade Centre in 1993 and wrote the prophetic The New Jackals. After 9/11 and he was feted as the world specialist on Islamic terrorism and The New Jackals which had all but disappeared became New York best seller. Never in his wildest dreams as he drove round Acton in his granny’s adapted car (apart from his BMX bike his only childhood adventures) could Simon have imagined such a life path!

His brilliant travel adventures – ‘adventures with purpose’ he calls them – followed. His engaging amazement and wonderment never leaves him as he travels world wide – not merely observing but getting right in with the people (often requiring sharing prodigious amounts of local alcohol and food. Fancy barbecued rat?) to learn what life is really like. Abject poverty (Somalia, the ‘Stans’) and ruination of the environment (the draining of the Aral Sea) can leave him in tears of despair and sorrow as he draws the listener into places where most people will probably never go. He’s faced terrifying dangers (a stand-off in Mogadishu between his minders and a local gang, both groups armed with anti-aircraft guns).

Above all Simon is totally unpretentious and hugely generous in his investigations, his empathy and zeal, his determination to learn and experience more and more bursting from him and never failing to bind the listener. Even his camera crew are repeatedly appreciated for their work lugging camera equipment as heavy as a fat Labrador through rough terrain, sweltering heat or bitter cold.

Just great!

Adventure with purpose

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Absolutely amazing read .Best book I've read in a very long time !.what an amazing life story and brought to tears a lot at the outset . If there is ever a book of inspiration this is it .😊

Inspiring

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enjoyed every minute of this audiobook. just wish it was longer. simon would be on my ultimate dinner part guest list. I hope he will do more audiobooks about his travels.

wish is was longer

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Loved listening to your life and adventures , you are our new Attenborough and look forward to all your shows

Simon reeve fantastic book thank you

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