Living with Ghosts: The Inside Story from a 'Troubles' Mind

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He makes radical, but important recommendations regarding dealing with the pain of our province's past. Brian Rowan’s intense new book, Living with Ghosts, might be said to be in disagreement with the title of the earlier work. I hope that our political leaders do something, even at those late stage to address this, but I am no more convinced that they will do so, than the author will seek the help he needs! This is as close to the truth, to the real story of the corruption, vulgarities, horrors, and lies of the Kingdom and its current despot as we are likely to get. But his highest profile was during the period covered by this book, one of furtive meetings with a succession of IRA spokesmen dubbed “P O’Neill”, operators from shady reaches of the security services and loyalist brigadiers in Shankill and east Belfast safe houses.

If you've ever wondered what would happen if limitless money met limitless power, wonder no longer, it's all here. There is no doubt that, in many ways, this is a written form of PTSD, but I suspect Barney recognises that this, and the circumstances that produced it are not, and should not be accepted as normal, even though he might wonder what life would be like without these ghosts. Living With Ghosts is a memoir of Brian Rowan's journalistic encounters during the Troubles and an analysis of their meaning at many years’ remove. Living with Ghosts is a moving and deeply personal account of one man's doubts and decisions, and the challenges of reporting a war on his doorstep.For many of us who have lived through the troubles, the past is something we’ve tried to forget, move on from, suppress. The minuscule geography of Northern Ireland is also ever present, the pressure of moving around Belfast – by any measure not a big city – surrounded in the 1980s and 1990s not just by looming hills, but army watchtowers and helicopters. Living with Ghosts is a deeply personal account of one man’s doubts and decisions, and the challenges of reporting a war on his doorstep. The sense from reading Rowan’s memoir of reporting on the conflict, its resolution and aftermath is that it might never make sense. This book is a memoir of those encounters and analysis of their meaning at many years’ remove, but also an insight into their psychological impact on the author.

Through astonishing interviews with powerful insiders, Blood and Oil tells how MBS's cabal played the Saudi economy and capitalised on the omnipotence of feudal power while effectively stamping out dissent, before allegations of his extreme brutality and excess began to slip out. Living with Ghosts is a moving and deeply personal account of one man's doubts and decisions, and the challenges of reporting a war on his doorstep. This is a highly subjective, personal account of his interactions during key events, but as such, is probably interesting to only him.

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I have long respected Brian Rowan’s work and enjoyed this book which explores the unreported world of the troubles; the secrets, the corruption, the lies, and the struggles.The saga of Boris Johnson and Brexit frequently crops up in this author's narrative as a vivid, if Lilliputian instance of the same phenomenon. A story of breath-taking dealings that range from Riyadh to London, Paris to America, this is a thrilling and brutal investigation into extreme wealth, one of the world's most decisive and dangerous new leaders, and the bid for Saudi transformation that is reverberating around the world. In his career Rowan walks along the thinnest of lines on a path where morals and ethics and principles are blurred, and his mind becomes tortured. In reality, every democracy, however sophisticated or stable it may look, has been attacked or actually destroyed by a would-be Caesar, from Ancient Greece to the present day. In Living With Ghosts renowned veteran journalist Brian Rowan retraces his steps through Northern Ireland’s conflict years, as he bravely delves into the darkness of those times.