In the Line of Fire: Memories of a Documentary Filmmaker

In the Line of Fire is the personal memoir of Antony Thomas, a documentary filmmaker whose work has won international acclaim and many prestigious awards. From the full range of documentaries made over a fifty-two-year career, the author focuses on subjects that affected him deeply and remain relevant to this day; the pernicious effects of racism, the ‘seamless border’ between intelligence and crime, the last colonial wars in Africa, the conflicts in the Middle East, the rise of Islamic extremism, the politicisation of Evangelical Christians in the United States and the origins of fake news – to mention just a few. Thomas brings these disparate experiences together by taking a very personal approach and using every opportunity to take the reader ‘behind the camera’ where he shares the difficulties, the moral problems and the dangers that he and his colleagues sometimes faced, including the moment when the entire team was condemned to death in a military camp in Zambia. Eleven years later, Thomas was back in the line of fire, coping with vicious attacks from MPs and sectors of the press, following the broadcast of his controversial docudrama Death of a Princess.