As the Foreign Office confirms that a charter flight has left London’s Gatwick Airport to collect those Britons currently stranded in Libya, the journalistic race towards the sound of gunfire to provide on-location coverage of the unrest is in full swing. One journalist well-accustomed to the often treacherous journey to the frontline is freelance war correspondent and military analyst Paul Moorcraft, whose recent book Inside the Danger Zones offers fascinating vignettes on his time spent in all the major war zones of the last three decades.
This is the gripping chronicle of a war hack’s gung-ho escapades – or, in his words ‘tours of purgatory’ – in locations so volatile that Sir John Keegan of the Daily Telegraph is ‘amazed he’s still alive’.
In a book which is as much about personal discovery and the nature of the white, Western journalist’s engagement with post-colonial conflicts as about the conflicts themselves, Moorcraft takes us on a thrilling journey through locations such as Rhodesia, Pakistan and Zimbabwe. The appeal of such locales to someone who writes that ‘the best stories involve drama, action, and often bang-bang’ is clear, and this view certainly permeates our thrill-seeking author’s action-man writing. Yet nestled between macho descriptions (of a ‘voluptuous blonde lift-operator’ in Romania for example), we find what Adrian Johnson, reviewing Moorcraft’s book in this month’s RUSI Journal, calls ‘a refreshingly self-effacing account’.
Moorcraft’s sensitive and insightful read is available now, priced £9.99 .