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On All Things Considered this week (Sunday 11 November at 8.32am, repeated Wednesday 14 November at 6.32pm) Roy Jenkins' guest is a journalist who's been described as 'the foremost broadcaster of his generation' and 'a national treasure'.

Not, however, by some prominent public figures who've been on the receiving end of his terrier-like questioning; nor by some listeners who reckon he shows insufficient deference to the allegedly great and the dubitably good.

John Humphrys, brought up in the Cardiff suburb of Splott, left school at 15, and worked for a number of newspapers in South Wales before embarking on his illustrious broadcasting career.

He was the Â鶹Éç's youngest television foreign correspondent, when he covered the Watergate saga in the United States. He was in Southern Africa when Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, spent long periods reporting the troubles in Northern Ireland, and has witnessed assorted wars, revolutions and disasters around the world.

He was main presenter of the Nine O'Clock News before moving, 20 years ago, to the Radio 4 Today programme, where his interviews with politicians have become legendary.

His most recent book has a self-explanatory title: In God we doubt: confessions of a failed atheist.