Media Matter Nick Thomas

Last Wednesday evening found your correspondent seated in the extraordinarily plush surroundings of the Brunei Gallery, just opposite the main building of London University's School of Oriental and African Studies, listening attentively to a lecture about Zimbabwe. The subject is highly topical, of course, but even so this was somewhat removed from my normal beat. I was there because the lecturer, whose purpose was to publicise his new book, was a young man who provided me, back in 1993, with the only front page story I've ever written.
The front page in question was that of this newspaper, and the story was a one paragraph nugget to the effect that an undergraduate called David Blair, from St Benet's Hall, Oxford's Benedictine college, had been elected president of the Oxford University Conservative Association. And nine years on there was David, fresh from Harare, where he had been covering a rather different presidential election for the Daily Telegraph, and (having been expelled from Zimbabwe and gone back in under cover) risked his life in the process.
I don't remember David expressing any interest in journalism as a career when he was a student. But, after a brief spell at Conservative Central Office and a graduate degree, off he went to Africa with a knotted handkerchief over his shoulder and a determination to make his living by the pen, armed with a strong literary style and a natural talent for, as it were, being in the wrong place at the right time. Next thing you know his work for the Telegraph has got him voted Young Journalist of the Year by his fellow foreign hacks, shop windows are full of his book, and he's speaking with the authority of the new Bill Deedes to an audience of a couple of hundred students, academics, and old friends.
Having declared my interest, I can heartily recommend Degrees in Violence: Robert Mugabe and the struggle for power in Zimbabwe (Continuum). It is the result of two years spent observing the workings of Zanu PF at first hand, and it makes terrifying reading. But it isn't just reportage. It contains an excellent potted biography of Mugabe, and much detailed analysis of Zimbabwean politics, all written with the clarity and economy one would expect of a first class journalist.
And, with some daring, but mostly confidence born of knowing the patch inside out, David correctly predicted the outcome of the election, while many more senior commentators had put their shirts on a MDC victory. But as we sat in that lecture theatre we were given a chillingly thorough. point by point explanation of the result, boiling down to a well planned, lengthy exercise in ballot rigging, intimidation, violence and outright fraud that was breathtaking in its scale and complexity.
So now young Blair is back in Blighty, and can hardly hope to revisit Zimbabwe while the current regime remains in power. There can be few journalists around who are better qualified to write about the place, but the irony is that the very acquisition of such expertise has made it impossible for David to use it in quite the same way ever again. He now has Foreign Correspondent status at the Telegraph, but it's not clear where they're going to send him next.
Meanwhile I'll be seeing him again this week, when he comes back to Oxford to pop into Benet's and then possibly have a pint or two with me, and a giggle over the laughably innocent politics of the club that got his name into the Herald all those years ago. But there's really only one thing that David's friends want to say to him at the moment, over and over again. Well done, mate.