In the 21st century it is perhaps harder than ever to operate as a good investigative journalist. The age of ‘embedded’ correspondents and massive government and corporate advertising produces writing which is influenced or controlled to a greater or lesser extent by the powers which dominate world events. So for journalists in both the corporate and public sector it is often a case of toeing the editorial or government line or losing their jobs. Likewise, for broadcasters and newspapers it is often necessary to promote or be silent about the policies and ideology of the incumbent government and its institutional supporters or lose public funding or political advertising revenue. The internet has countered this by giving genuinely independent investigative journalists a platform, but it remains, as yet, a small one.

In this environment it is instructive to have access to a body of work from a genuinely independent reporter, one who had his own ideas and politics which were clearly expressed throughout his career. The writing of Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett looms large in any history of 20th century reportage, and not just as a result of one of the great scoops of the century, his solo journey to Hiroshima after the first bomb was dropped. Burchett covered most major world conflicts over four decades from World War II onwards, and this book attempts to represent this immense breadth of reporting by including chapters from most of his published books over the entire period of his working life.