Robert Fisk - Rachel Cooke

Robert Fisk is one of the most famous journalists in the world, and one of the most divisive. Many revere him both for the muscular quality of his reporting - in a world numbed by 24/7 television, he makes news seem gripping and important and full of pity - and for his refusal to shy away from saying that which few other writers dare to put down on the page. No one escapes the heat of his ire: neither Bush nor Blair, neither Israel nor the Arab dictatorships. For him, journalism is about 'naming the guilty' and sod the consequences. In his more than 30 years as a Middle East correspondent - during which time he has survived bombs, bullets, two kidnap attempts and, perhaps most notoriously, a thorough beating at the hands of a group of Afghan refugees in Pakistan - he has won more awards than any other foreign news journalist and has written two bestselling and acclaimed books: Pity the Nation, a devastating history of the Lebanese civil war, and The Great War for Civilisation, a 1,300 page history, with eyewitness accounts lifted directly from his own notebooks, of the 'conquest' of the Middle East (his latest book, The Age of the Warrior, a collection of his journalism, has just been published). Fisk's lectures sell out across the world; at his book signings, the queue extends out of the door. [thanks YA]

Journalist Robert Fisk.- Rachel Cooke Photograph: Mick Tsikas/EPA