For decades, television was the undisputed king of news. And here in the UK, the men and women who delivered that news – from Trevor McDonald to Fiona Bruce, Moira Stuart to Angela Rippon – held an almost unique position of trust with the British public. On Channel 4, one man defined their coverage: Jon Snow. Over the course of 50 years in broadcasting, Snow became a familiar face, blending his signature low-key delivery with an expression that could switch subtly between curiosity and cynicism. Now he returns to Channel 4, five years after his retirement, to front a feature-length documentary, Jon Snow: A Last Big Story.
“Strange old business, life,” Snow muses at the outset. He has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, a degenerative neurological disorder that causes, among numerous symptoms, short-term memory loss. As he looks back at clips from his broadcasting career – standing among the rubble of the World Trade Center or the Bhopal pesticide plant, interviewing the Israeli ambassador Mark Regev or the freed South African leader, Nelson Mandela – he looks sharp and engaged. “I feel I’ve witnessed a great deal,” he observes with classic understatement. But the show unfurls a portrait of someone increasingly lost in the current moment. At a consultation with his neurologist, Jonathan Rohrer, he is asked to retain the words “bus, door and rose” for a few minutes. But when asked to repeat them, they have disappeared. The contrast between the long view, backwards, of his career, and this new perpetual present, is stark.
