Conor O’Clery has been a witness to some of the major world events of the last thirty years, including the Troubles in Northern Ireland; the ending of the Cold War as viewed from Moscow; the reluctant opening up of China to the West; the Clinton years in the White House; and the 9/11 attacks. As foreign correspondent for The Irish Times, he was the first western journalist to open an office in Moscow at the height of Gorbachev’s glasnost, and he subsequently acted as correspondent from Washington, Beijing and New York.