John Bulloch: A keen observer of the Middle East

John Bulloch was a star Middle Eastern correspondent for the Telegraph and Independent; and an author of a dozen vivid books on the region.

John Bulloch wrote insightful books on the region. Courtesy The Daily Telegraph

Foreign correspondents are a race apart - intrepid and charismatic; fluent, fearless and cool under pressure. John Bulloch, who has died at age 82, was an iconic member of this club, fiercely dedicated to obtaining and conveying a story. For four decades he travelled to and wrote about the Middle East for two quality broadsheets, The Daily Telegraph and The Independent. He also produced a dozen vivid, detailed and readable books on his subject.

John Angel Bullock was born near Cardiff, the son of a former seaman. Young John later changed his name after an editor misspelt it in the Welsh fashion, Bulloch. He grew up in Penarth, South Wales, and attended the county school before joining the merchant navy. On the training ship, the HMS Conway, he first caught sight of the Arabian Gulf. By the early Fifties he had joined a Cardiff newspaper, the Western Mail, as a reporter. In 1958, after journalistic positions with the Northern Daily Mail, the Press Association and the BBC, he joined the Telegraph. He quickly cultivated some impressive intelligence connections and in 1961 he co-wrote Spy Ring with a Telegraph colleague, Henry Miller. MI5: The Origins and History of the British Counter-Espionage Service followed two year later.

His first major posting was Africa, but the Middle East was where he honed his formidable skills and built his reputation. His long engagement there as a correspondent inevitably led to the coverage of much conflict. In the early Seventies he became resident in Beirut, frequently visiting the Gulf and other Arab states. He came to know personally an impressive number of leading figures in the region. This was clear from his study in 1974, The Making of a War: The Middle East from 1967 to 1973. It was received as "a bright, readable account of Arab preparations for the attack of October 1973". In 1977 he wrote Death of a Country: Civil War in Lebanon. While one Middle East specialist greeted it as "an over-simplified account of the immediate causes of the disastrous conflict of 1975-76 in the Lebanon", he acknowledged its illustrative details, gathered first hand or from witnesses, and praised it as "vivid and informative, and for those who know the country, has the ring of authenticity".

His The Gulf: A Portrait of Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE in 1984 was a seminal piece of writing that revealed the beginning of Dubai's emergence as a city. On the death of Sheikh Zayed Al Nahyan 20 years later he confirmed an understanding of the whole country in his obituary for The Independent of "the Father of the Nation". He wrote of the President: "Safely in office, Zayed surrounded himself with good advisors and took a genuine personal interest in all that went on … he made the transition from penniless desert sheikh to fabulous riches and dominion over a modern country with no trouble, hardly putting a foot wrong. It was a tribute not only to the man, but also to the family wisdom in choosing him."

Bulloch had left the Telegraph in the mid-1980s to help launch The Independent, where he became its diplomatic editor in 1986. He knew Saddam Hussein and had drunk with him. His book Saddam's War: Origins of the Kuwait Conflict and the International Response (1991), written with fellow correspondent Harvey Morris, proved prophetic of the events that led to Saddam's eventual downfall. In 1993 the pair also wrote No Friends but the Mountains, a poignant and, again, very readable account of the Kurds and their plight across Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Azerbaijan and Armenia.

A particularly interesting later work, Water Wars: Coming Conflicts in the Middle East, written in 1993 with Adel Darwish, revealed the depth and breadth of Bulloch's insight into the region. As he put it: "Now, most borders have been set, oil fields mapped and reserves accurately estimated - unlike the water resources, which are still often unknown. From Turkey, the southern bastion of Nato, down to Oman, looking out over the Indian Ocean, the countries of the Middle East are worrying today about how they will satisfy the needs of their burgeoning industries, or find drinking water for the extra millions born each year."

Mercifully, science has since found peaceful means of substantially quenching this threat, but Bulloch and Darwish's account remains a fascinating analysis.

He is survived by his third wife, two sons and two daughters.

Born April 15, 1928; died November 18, 2010