Keane has not just the courage to risk death so that the most important stories can be told, as well as the eye to tell them with vivid subtlety, but also the humility to reveal the havoc that this task visits on the beholder' Spectator The Madness is engaging without resorting to sensation. Fluent prose follows the decline of the political situation - and of Keane’s own mental health - in chilling, compelling detail” - Observer I could never do this book justice in a review to equal those excellently and in-depth written by Canadian Reader and Nat K.

The Madness: A Memoir of War, Fear and PTSD from Sunday Times The Madness: A Memoir of War, Fear and PTSD from Sunday Times

This is a book that can be read without following its chapter chronology. One of the writers is Barbara McCann, a broadcast journalist with a career that stretches beyond 40 years. She knows the story of this place and other places, and she shares something I have not read before. What does he hope the book achieves? “I hope the book continues what the film started, a conversation,” he says. “I think we’re in more emotionally literate times ... And the interesting thing about the film was that the reaction was entirely positive. It was often people saying, ‘Yeah, I think I know what you’re talking about.’ And that wasn’t just soldiers or other journalists but nurses, people in emergency services, people who’ve had troubled childhoods.”

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Fergal Keane’s torments might be as nothing compared to the sufferings he has observed, and his work can do nothing to alleviate those sufferings, but what chance is there of any restitution, no matter how inadequate it may be, without witnesses to the crimes of the truly guilty?” - TLS The drinking culture has gone. It was romanticised, along with the broken soul, but there’s no tolerance for it now. The other good thing is it’s no longer possible for foreign correspondents to drop into people’s countries, write whatever they want, go away, and not get called on it if it’s bullshit. It was an almost neo-colonial form of journalism. But the shrinking of foreign coverage and foreign bureaux is worrying. The telling of the story of Britain and Ireland has been dominated by narratives of conquest and rebellion in which a powerful empire attempts to subdue an indomitable native spirit – two different identities colliding throughout history. Fergal presents a more complex narrative. He begins with the old kingdoms of the Irish Sea, and travels through the time of the Vikings to the 19th and 20th century migrations, all the way to present day. Throughout the Irish have shaped literature, culture, politics and the physical landscape.

The Madness by Fergal Keane review – the BBC war

I will return to it because this is important work; the experiences of correspondents, reporters, camera operators and photographers that take the reader outside the often strict boundaries of news. Fergal Keane's unflinching account of the effects of trauma on his own life is the source of his book's profound capacity to move its reader. With radical honesty and openness, and a vulnerability that I suspect required no small amount of courage, he more than fulfils the aim he sets out for himself in the prologue: to let others who bear similar burdens know they are not alone.' Kevin Powers, bestselling and prize-winning author of The Yellow Birds Things have changed. Media organisations are much more conscious of the mental health of their journalists now. Recently, he says, “the old addict in me was saying, ‘Maybe I could get the train across to Kyiv’”. A colleague said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea, do you?” He laughs. “It was calm, deliberate. He was right ... Now you’re offered assessment the minute you’re out of a conflict zone. You’re also encouraged to take time off to just decompress.” Some years ago he promised not to go to any “hot wars”, by which he meant he wouldn’t go near the frontline. Even this, he thinks, suggests some denial about the trauma of covering war at all. “It’s a f**king rationalisation. I admit it. I’ll never get better from this thing if I don’t admit it.” Why would anyone want to be a war correspondent? And yet without them, how do we learn the truth of what’s going on in the world?

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In this programme, we’ll be hearing about the extraordinary life of BBC war correspondent, Fergal Keane. His reporting helped his television audiences make sense of the horrors of war, but underneath there were more personal reasons attracting him to the frontline. Was he 'addicted' to war? Listen to his story and learn new vocabulary along the way. This week's question

The Madness by Fergal Keane | Waterstones

There are other ways his perspective on the job has changed. “When I was much younger, I would pop up at the scene of a massacre or an assassination and I was just totally focused. ‘Get the quotes, get the facts and file it.’ As the years have gone on, I just find it harder and harder to do.He knows his initial impulse to be a reporter was a good one. He felt strongly about “people with power beating up people without power. Do you know The Grapes of Wrath, where Tom Joad is saying goodbye to his mother? She says: ‘Where will I find you?’ I’ll get emotional saying this, but he says, ‘You’ll see me everywhere, wherever there’s a people fighting for their rights, wherever there’s a cop beating up on a guy.’ I read that when I was in my teens, and it just really hit home.” He dreads writing about Rwanda. Of course, he does. What happened there. What it did to him. What it does to him. Remembering the fear and the anxiety of being there.

BBC Radio 4 FM - Schedules, 3 - 9 July 2023 BBC Radio 4 FM - Schedules, 3 - 9 July 2023

For a number of years, we worked in the same BBC newsroom in Belfast, when the story from the North was still its fighting and, at a time when peace felt like a pipe dream. I stayed in that newsroom — stayed too long. But not everyone developed PTSD. What does he think was different about how he processed his experiences? “I think it would be interesting to do a study [of PTSD] and ask how many came from functional, or happy families ... There is, in my case, this ‘hero child’ thing, this sense that I should be responsible, that I am responsible ... I carried that with me into war zones. I still carry it in my life all the time. ‘I should be able to fix this. I should be able to save that person.’” A brutally honest exploration of what motivates Keane to keep reporting on atrocities despite the toll on his mental health... Gentle but unflinching' Guardian, Book of the DayAnother book that left me with this level of discomfort and unease was Francisco Cantú’s The Line Becomes A River. Another book filled with immense intensity. To me, it’s unfathomable what people are capable of. And continue to be capable of. If you’re a drug addict or an alcoholic killing yourself people will say, ‘Oh, my God, stop.’ War is the only addiction that people will come up to you and say, ‘That was brilliant’ — Fergal Keane and I began to have nightmares of Rwanda. And of course, at that stage, you know, it was obvious that I was traumatised but, again, did I go to a psychiatrist? No, I didn't. I kept doing the job.