Last man standing - The Sunday Story
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 1 March 2026
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Next week, the BBC launches a new three part documentary, Hostage, based on our award winning Times podcast series Last Man Standing. It's the story of British photojournalist John Cantlie who was kidnapped in Syria by Islamic State in 2012. While his fellow hostages were released or murdered, he remained captive. Then, a series of Isis propaganda videos emerged, fronted by Cantlie. He hasn’t been seen since. So what happened to him? In this episode, The Times War Correspondent, Anthony Lloyd, begins his investigation.
This episode was first published on 24 June 2022.
Listen to the whole series: Last Man Standing
Hosts: Manveen Rana and Anthony Lloyd, War Correspondent, The Times.
Clips: BBC, 5Live, CNN, NBC, BBC.
Further reading: The murky truth about Britain’s forgotten hostage John Cantlie
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From The Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story on Sunday. |
| 0:07.0 | I'm Manvina. |
| 0:09.0 | I'm Manvina. |
| 0:12.0 | At the height of the vicious and bloody civil war in Syria, the British journalist John Cantley was dragged from a car at gunpoint and kidnapped. |
| 0:28.6 | Two years later, his best friend and colleague James Foley became the first Western hostage to be beheaded by ISIS, live on camera. |
| 0:42.3 | John's fate was more complicated. |
| 0:46.3 | A few months later, he appeared in a very different ISIS video, |
| 0:53.3 | one that was seen as propaganda, raising questions about whether |
| 0:57.7 | he had turned or if he was playing an incredibly dangerous game to survive. What would you do |
| 1:06.0 | if your life depended on it. |
| 1:18.6 | As the Islamic State fell, John vanished without a trace, sparking an extraordinary investigation by the Times veteran war correspondent Anthony Lloyd |
| 1:24.6 | that spanned multiple years and continents to try to uncover the truth about what happened to John Cantley. |
| 1:33.6 | It spawned our eight-part podcast series, Last Man Standing, and a new three-part documentary series which will be launched on the BBC this Wednesday. |
| 1:57.0 | We have a new installment of Last Man Standing on its way, but as a reminder of the series, we're bringing you part one today and you can find the rest of the series online wherever you get your podcasts. Just search for Last Man Standing or Times Investigates. |
| 2:02.0 | Before we begin, a quick warning. |
| 2:05.5 | This series contains strong language and descriptions of brutality and violence. |
| 2:14.6 | Music Thank you. Our top story this morning, the White House is trying to verify a video which militants from the group of Islamic State claim shows the killing of a US journalist. |
| 2:50.5 | I heard it on the radio at first. |
| 2:53.4 | It was August the 19th, 2014. |
| 2:59.1 | James Foley, who was 40, went missing in Syria in late 2012. |
| 3:04.5 | His mother, Diane, said he gave his life trying to expose the suffering of the Syrian people. |
| 3:10.3 | When the news suddenly informed me that James Foley, the American journalist, had been beheaded by Islamic State in Syria. |
... |
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