The Madness: A Memoir of War, Fear and PTSD from Sunday Times Bestselling Author and BBC Correspondent Fergal Keane

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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. MyHome.ie (Opens in new window) • Top 1000 • The Gloss (Opens in new window) • Recruit Ireland (Opens in new window) • Irish Times Training (Opens in new window)

The Madness By Fergal Keane | Used | 9780008420437 | World of The Madness By Fergal Keane | Used | 9780008420437 | World of

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 Martha Gellhorn. There’s a sense of empathy and of being present with people that really moves me. I was going to say Ryszard Kapuściński, but though he writes magnificently, I’m not sure how much of it I can believe. Woman's Hour — Weekend Woman’s Hour: Caitlin Moran, Trichotillomania, Prison Officers, TikTok Nans, Olivia DeanI recently came upon a 2013 NPR interview in which Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning American journalist/war correspondent and self-described “adrenaline junkie,” commented on the psychology of those who report from conflict zones:

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He dives into his family history for the roots of his twin addiction – to alcohol and war reporting. His father was a talented actor, but alcoholic and sometimes violent. His father cast a long shadow in his childhood. 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.’”In the prologue of his book, he writes of a conversation in which he says: “I should have stopped after Belfast.” He knows, of course, that he was not going to stop then. Those of us who knew him then knew he was not going to stop. Belfast, and Northern Ireland in its wider frame, has not stopped — that imperfect peace I described still makes too many headlines; the stories we read in the book Breaking: Trauma in the Newsroom, edited by journalists Leona O’Neill and Chris Lindsay.

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

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 Keane forced himself to be there. That is what news is about. Being in those places of the biggest headlines. Places of great danger. Being with the fighting and the dead. It is a type of addiction. 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 DayMy review falls short mostly, I think, because I approached the book from a totally different mindset: One where I am forever in search of, but perhaps will never understand, and thus ever in awe of the motivation that leads journalists, war correspondents, news photographers and reporters to do what they do – and they should rightly find recognition for their craft. When Fergal returned home from Rwanda, he started having nightmares– upsetting and frightening dreams. It was obvious he was traumatised from the violence he had seen, but still Fergal didn’t go to a psychiatrist – a medical doctor who specialises in treating mental illness.