REPORTER: David Brill
The distinguished journalist Phillip Knightley is preparing for another television appearance. The media is always seeking his opinion.
DEREK CONWAY: Hello and welcome to 'Epilogue', Press TV's book review show. I'm Derek Conway. In this program we shall review a new book called 'Envoys to the Arab World', edited by Paul Tempest.
In this London studio, he's joined a high-powered panel discussing the history of Britain's Middle East diplomacy.
DEREK CONWAY: This is all a bit somewhat 'public school boy' - sort of outings, derring-do and tales of great adventure.
It's a pleasant exchange, but Knightley swings quickly onto a topic he knows better than anyone - the spy business.
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY, JOURNALIST: I'd like to ask Paul if he could clear up the spy story about MECAS. I mean, George Blake went there - the notorious spy - and a few others I've heard of, but why did it have that reputation?
DEREK CONWAY: It had that nickname 'School for Spies', didn't it? I thought you might, maybe... That's 'Volume 3'. The 'School for Spies'.
As the session ends, the host has nothing but praise for Knightley.
DEREK CONWAY: Phillip, I think, as well as being a superb writer - that comes with his intellect - but he's also, I think, a very courageous man. Some of his journalistic endeavours were a great challenge and challenged the system quite a lot. So whilst he's now sort of a doyen of the British press, but in his day he's clocked up some very serious exposes, which is what I presume being a journalist is all about, really. So he's a man greatly admired in this country and rightly so.
Now 80 years old, Knightley is in constant demand. This morning he's meeting with TV producer Leon le Cash. He's is producing a 6-part series with Phillip as a consultant. Le Cash's series has a lot to do with the spy game.
LEON LE CASH, TV PRODUCER: For want of a better word, a John le Carre-type series and obviously Phillip's expertise in this arena, nobody in the whole world has better expertise than him. What I like about the way that Phillip writes is that he even when he is talking about his own opinions, he tries to balance them out - he's sceptical about his own opinions.
REPORTER: He can also be quite funny, can't he?
LEON LE CASH: Yeah. And I find that quite extraordinary, actually. When you read his books they are not like historical documents, they're very personalised, but you still walk away knowing all the details about the CIA or the KGB in a user-friendly way, you know?
Knightley is a prolific author.
REPORTER: You've written 11 books and a lot of them have been produced in various languages?
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: Yes. Russian, Japanese
REPORTER: Let's go through them. What's that book?
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: I think this is a Russian edition of 'Philby'.
His book on master spy Kim Philby is considered a classic. How he came to write it says much about the author's tenacity.
REPORTER: Why was the Philby story such a big story?
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: It was a big story because, first of all, nobody knew what it was about.
Philby may well have been the greatest spy in history. He was a senior British agent, who for 30 years was actually working for the Russians. He delivered his handlers the West's deepest secrets. Philby eventually fled to Moscow and Knightley revealed his story. Then he wrote to the master spy for 25 years seeking an interview. Finally, this telex arrived.
REPORTER: So once you got the OK from him over you went?
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: Over I shot. And I said, "Mr Philby," and he said, "Yes, come in. Would you like a big drink or shall we get straight into the story?" I said, "I think both," and we did - and we spent the next eight days together.
The interview was a world scoop and the book soon followed. Then came decades of writing about the spy game. No wonder he's sought after as a book reviewer and interviewee. This morning he's poring over a new work about Britain's spy agencies. He doesn't like what he sees and contacts the book editor of the 'Sunday Times'.
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: Hello, Andrew. I'm under-impressed by the book. No, it's not awful, but it's repetitious, nothing new, a synthesis of everything that's ever been written about MI5 and MI6 over the years. I don't understand what the fuss is about.
And woe betide an author who doesn't check the facts.
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: Looking for a quick way to check its accuracy, I looked up 'Blake' in the index and he says Blake wrote a book that was called 'No Other Choice' and no British publisher was the slightest bit interested. Well, it was not only published by Jonathan Cape, it was serialised in the bloody 'Sunday Times'. I mean, it's a 415-page book.
REPORTER: It's a big book, isn't it?
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: The actual review I have to deliver by next Tuesday, so I'm reading away like a big-arsed bird.
REPORTER: And then write your article for the Indian magazine.
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: Yes, it's all go, go, go.
REPORTER: And you're 80 years of age.
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: That's got nothing to do with it. It's irrelevant.
Knightley has always followed his own instincts. His inner sanctum bears witness to a career spent exposing secrets and lies.
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: Now, this was a war crimes thing. It began in Adelaide when the Australian war crimes tribunal accused a Ukrainian, Polyukhovich, of war crimes and the Federal Government sent a whole war crimes team to investigate.
REPORTER: This was in the former Soviet Union, wasn't it?
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: Yeah.
REPORTER: I notice a colour photo, this one here.
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: 'Dumps of Death', that was a Russian story.
REPORTER: What was that about?
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: Thousands of tons of chemical weapons dumped into the Baltic at the end of the war.
REPORTER: These are all your files. How many years would we go back here?
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: 40 years in journalism It's all there, is it? maybe 50. Some of my first stories ever written.
His journalism has brought many accolades, including an honorary doctorate from Sydney University and an Order of Australia. From the 1950s to the '70s, Knightley worked with a dynamic team at Britain's 'Sunday Times', led by editor Harold Evans.
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: I mean, Evans used to encourage us to think big, in themes, rather than just reacting to the news of the day.
For years they campaigned against Distillers, the company that distributed thalidomide, a drug that caused deformities in children.
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: Thalidomide was one of the biggest stories that the 'Sunday Times' ever tackled.
The 'Sunday Times' fought hard in the courts to publish their investigation. And there was tremendous commercial pressure as well. Distillers also spent several hundred thousand pounds per year advertising in the paper. The 'Sunday Times' advertising manager was up in arms.
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: Here we were attacking the subsidiary company for marketing a drug that caused deformities among children and Evans told him to go and get lost. It wouldn't happen today. Every newspaper proprietor… Oh, I can't think of anyone who wouldn't take into account the fact that you might alienate your advertisers.
The paper's coverage was instrumental in the victims receiving more than £20 million in compensation.
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: It changed all our lives. I mean, anybody who took part in that campaign feels today that they took part in something that was worthwhile.
Knightley's brilliant career had humble beginnings - on a small newspaper in Lismore, in northern NSW.
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: And it was very clear to me that the newspaper was part of the community.
He remembers how a short article he wrote about a pothole became an early lesson in the power of journalism.
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: The next day the hole in the street was repaired and I thought, "My God! If it works on this scale, why shouldn't it work internationally?" The general principle of public service journalism stood me in good stead. I have tried to practice public service journalism all my life.
In 1954, at the age of 24, he joined the London office of the 'Sydney Daily Mirror'.
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: It was Keystone House. It was a press agency, photographic, and we occupied the second floor.
But it would be another eight years before he landed a job in Fleet Street.
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: "The Street of Adventure" they call it.
REPORTER: Not anymore. And how long did you work in this building?
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: 20 years.
Along with the 'Times' and the 'Sunday Times', all the big newspapers made Fleet Street their home.
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: The whole street used to shake at night with the rumble of the presses. You could stand here and feel the vibration.
But now they have moved away.
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: Was the 'Telegraph' - now shut and locked. 'Daily Express' building - known as "the Black Lubyanka" because of all the black glass. Now a Japanese bank.
Knightley laments the loss of the Fleet Street culture.
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: It's a disaster. The old-fashioned Fleet Street, with all the papers in one street, 9 out of 10, had the advantage that journalists drank together, ate together - same paper, different papers - worked together.
And now he's not simply being nostalgic. He says, in those days whistleblowers knew exactly where to go to leak their information.
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: The main thing that's gone is the ability of somebody who had a story to tell of finding a sympathetic ear and knowing it is in the one place.
And here's the proof. This is a cartoon that celebrates Knightley's withering attack on the Vesteys - cattle barons who ran a vast business empire.
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: Saying to the butcher, "Never mind your best end of neck, who's your tax accountant?"
Phillip got the story from a man who walked in off the street.
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: I was suddenly on to a marvelous story about this gigantic family who had successfully avoided paying any justified amount of income tax since 1921.
His expose changed Britain's tax laws. But where would a whistleblower go today?
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: If you ask people where the newspaper office is - the 'Daily Mail' or the 'Daily Express' or some of the great newspapers of yesteryear - they wouldn't be able to tell you.
But he's not giving up on his daily news fix.
REPORTER: What flavour do we get, Phillip?
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: We get the 'Guardian'.
REPORTER: Why is that?
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: Their political opinions agree with mine. We like to have them confirmed, our prejudices confirmed.
REPORTER: Right! Slightly left of centre, eh?
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: Yes. Well, wildly left of centre.
In the age of Google, blogging and Twitter, there's much talk about "the end of newspapers". But Knightley says they still have a future.
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: I think that money is devoted to serious journalism, with analysis, interestingly presented, by good writers can still sell newspapers.
And this icon of journalism intends to be troubling the powers-that-be for a long time yet.
REPORTER: You're 80 years of age, you're still turning out columns and articles for newspapers. Any thoughts of retiring?
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: Not at all.
REPORTER: That's a dirty word?
PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: Yes. Journalists don't retire, writers don't retire. I'm still hoping for that other big story. There's always one just around the corner.
Reporter/Camera
DAVID BRILL
Researcher
VICTORIA STROBL
Editors
CATHERINE WHELAN
NICK O’BRIEN
Producer
GEOFF PARISH
Original Music composed by
VICKI HANSEN