Jon Swain Biography and latest books by Jon Swain

“We lived in an insane atmosphere and the memories of  Saigon are strong – the neon-gash of the bars by the darkening Saigon river, the narrow-human-filled alleys, the sensual warmth of the narcotic nights, the shock waves of exploding bombs and rockets rattling the windows, the orange flares sinking towards the ground.”

British writer, Jon (John) Anketell Brewer Swain is synonymous with the Oscar-winning movie ‘The Killing Fields’, coverage on the former Khmer Rouge regime. His book: River of Time: A Memoir of Vietnam, is a record of the happenings in Indo-China from 1970-1975 and the fall of Cambodia. He was born in London and spent a considerable amount of time in West Bengal and at the independent Blundell’s School, England. He was unhappy at school and decided to join the French Foreign Legion and served there for a while. He moved to Paris to become a foreign correspondent and then headed to Indo-China to cover the Vietnam War. He worked for the Agence France-Presse, The Sunday Times (for 35 years), BBC, Economist, and Daily Mail.

Jon Swain was the only British journalist, who was in Phnom Penh, when it succumbed to the Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot’s brutality. His coverage of the events in Indo-China earned him the British Press Awards Journalist of the Year and several other awards. His love for Cambodia and the Far-East is explicit in his writings. He said, “I had read widely; I had grown up on Buchan, Conrad, Forester, Henty, Wren, but also on books about World War Two and France’s own wars in Indo-China. The need to confront a life-threatening situation was strong. I itched to know, albeit with trepidation, how I would react on the borderland of death. Would I behave like a staunch Buchan hero or panic and run away?

I already had an Indian upbringing which gave me a feel for life in a colonial environment. Until 1953 I grew up in the first years of independent India, but my parents’ life was even then pure British colonial. I was much more seduced by the French version.” He has reported and chronicled wars and political events from all over the world.

Jon Swain’s publications: http://jonswain.org/jonswain/publications.html