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

Reviews

George Larmour

He doesn’t shy away from writing about his ‘addiction’ to war reporting and his honesty about how alcohol, another addiction that has touched his life, provides only short term relief as he deals with the haunting images that are filed away in his memory. With today’s sophisticated communications technology we have grown to expect instant news reports from war zones across the world and view the front lines of conflicts from the comfort of our cosy armchairs.

My own experience of PTSD is nothing compared to what Fergal Keane outlines in graphic and honest detail in his book. Ever ready to re-appear without warning. He is a master of his craft – a journalist who can conjure up words on screen that succinctly bring the horrors of war into our living rooms and he has done the same here in his book.

But for those like Fergal those harrowing images and nauseating aromas of death live on in their minds and continue to invade their lives. We are thankfully spared the sights and sounds and decaying smell of death up close in those few minutes of news footage on our television screens before we go about our normal lives, relatively untouched by what we have seen. George Larmour(Author of ‘They Killed the Ice Cream Man’) We have come to recognise the familiar faces of many of those who talk to us on screen as they report what is unfolding against a backdrop of bullets and bomb blasts.

A book that everyone should read to understand and appreciate the price those journalists pay, some with their lives, to bring the cruelty and evil that is happening daily somewhere in the world, to our screens. The subject matter of his book is harrowing and to say I enjoyed reading it is the wrong phrase but I appreciated Fergal Keane’s honesty in baring his soul in print and providing us all with a better understanding of PTSD. But after finishing Fergal Keane’s book it confirms to me that we only see a sanitised, edited version of the carnage that such reporters and journalists have witnessed to bring us that news report.