The capture of Saddam Hussein on 13 December at a farmhouse not far from his birthplace well summarises a life that, for all its bombast and violence, ended up where it started.

John Simpson, the BBC's World Affairs editor, recounts this slow-motion catastrophe from Saddam Hussein's obscure beginnings in the village of Awja on the Tigris in the late 1930s to the orgy of looting that followed the capture of Baghdad by US forces last 7 April.

As Simpson tells the diplomatic and military story, he confesses how he managed to 'get things wrong': that is, to underestimate both the strengths of Iraqi nationalism and the weaknesses of the United States military. Simpson himself paid a price on Sunday 6 April when his television crew and its escorts were mistakenly attacked north-west of Kirkuk by two US Navy F-14 aircraft armed with Maverick missiles. Simpson was hit by shrapnel and he lost his young Kurdish translator, Kamaran Abdurrazzak Mohammed.

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