David Willey | |
|---|---|
| Born | David Douglas Willey [1] December 1932 (age 92) [2] |
| Nationality | British |
| Education | Sir William Borlase's Grammar School, Buckinghamshire |
| Alma mater | Queens' College, Cambridge |
| Occupation(s) | Journalist and author |
| Years active | 1960—present |
| Employer(s) | BBC Reuters |
| Known for | BBC Rome and Vatican Correspondent (1971—2009) |
David Douglas Willey, [1] OBE (born December 1932, [2] in High Wycombe), [3] is a BBC reporter and journalist, based in Rome. [4] He has served as Vatican correspondent since 1971, under five Popes. [5]
David Willey was the grandson of an Italian master woodcarver, from Venice, and brought up in the town of Marlow in Buckinghamshire. [6] He was educated at Sir William Borlase's Grammar School, [6] a state grammar school in the town, followed by Queens' College at the University of Cambridge, where he studied law and modern languages. [7]
Whilst at Cambridge, he was a member of the Cherubs dining society and The Bats (the college drama society).
After graduation, Willey joined Reuters, at a trainee post in Rome, where he covered the signing of the Treaty of Rome, in 1957. [8] One of his most vivid memories of that year was seeing a shepherd guiding a flock of several hundred sheep along one of Rome's main streets, the Via del Corso, early on a Sunday morning. [8]
This was followed by a period in Algeria (1960–64), where he worked as a freelance reporter after that country's independence from France in 1962. In 1964, he became the BBC's correspondent in East Africa. His career continued in 1965 with a spell in Asia, where he reported widely on the early part of the Vietnam War from Saigon, then the capital of South Vietnam. [9] Also in 1965 he reported from Beijing for the BBC, becoming one of its first foreign correspondents to report from China since the communist revolution. He was based in London from 1969 to 1971 in the post of the corporation's Assistant Diplomatic Correspondent, becoming the BBC's Rome correspondent in August 1972.
He is the author of The Promise of Francis: The Man, The Pope And The Challenge Of Change (Simon & Schuster, 2015) which assesses the high expectations aroused by the election of the first pope from Latin America. [10] His other books include: Italians (BBC Books, 1984) and God's Politician (Faber & Faber, and St Martin's Press, 1992), a critical biography of Pope John Paul II, whom he accompanied on more than 40 of his foreign journeys as a member of the Vatican press. [11]
He was appointed to the Order of the British Empire in 2003 for services to broadcast journalism. [12]