Robert Peston
Autor von Who Runs Britain?: and Who's to Blame for the Economic Mess We're in
Über den Autor
Bildnachweis: Steve Punter
Werke von Robert Peston
Getagged
Wissenswertes
- Geburtstag
- 1960-04-25
- Geschlecht
- male
- Nationalität
- UK
UK - Berufe
- journalist
author - Beziehungen
- Busby, Siân (wife)
Peston, Maurice (father) - Organisationen
- British Broadcasting Corporation
Mitglieder
Rezensionen
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Statistikseite
- Werke
- 7
- Mitglieder
- 435
- Beliebtheit
- #56,232
- Bewertung
- 3.7
- Rezensionen
- 22
- ISBNs
- 33
As it happens, it was during that crisis that I first became aware of Robert Peston, who was then the BBC’s leading financial correspondent, and whose sanguine reporting helped offer some degree of understanding of terms being bandied around such as ‘subprime’ and ‘toxic debt’. Peston moved on to become the BBC’s leading political editor, before then moving to perform a similar role in commercial television.
His second novel revisits the crisis. The story is a first-person narration from Gil Peck, a high-profile journalist with the BBC, and opens in 2007 when he receives a tip that one of Britain’s banks, based in the north-east of England, may have seriously overreached itself and could be facing existential challenges. Peck checks with contacts in the Bank of England who confirm that there are issues with the bank in question. Peck uses the tip to secure a journalistic scoop, although that results in massive queues outside each branch of the ailing bank as customers rush to withdraw their money. But then Peck’s contact in the Bank of England is found dead, and it transpires that various other banks are experiencing similar problems, and may be looking for the government to bail them out.
Peston draws on his immense knowledge of the field to create a very tense thriller, full of twists. He also has an enviable capacity to describe highly complex financial transactions and constructions in a readily accessible manner. In a former incarnation I was an investigative tax inspector, but my experiences of forensic accounting would not have helped me to make much headway through the labyrinthine twists and deceptions that mar Gil Peck’s investigations.
My one cavil – a minor one – is that nearly all of the characters are so deeply unpleasant, including Peck himself. I don’t particularly need to be able to empathise with characters in order to enjoy a book, but it would be nice to find at least one that has some redeeming traits.… (mehr)