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

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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.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Brian talks of personal experiences during the troubles not just his own but how others were affected. 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.

He goes deep into his contacts with the IRA, the loyalist organisations, MI5, Special Branch, the army, and the many other players in the conflict period. Brian Rowan’s intense new book, Living with Ghosts, might be said to be in disagreement with the title of the earlier work. Brian argues that we cannot create a seamless narrative of the past, a full and agreed account of the past is not achievable, but, as he argues in the chapter on amnesty, there is a way out of it, albeit messy and never complete.

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.The depiction tells little of the real story of the events and concentrates on his personal feelings and psyche, which frankly, are his own business. 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. He makes radical, but important recommendations regarding dealing with the pain of our province's past. Rowan, a former longstanding BBC Northern Ireland security correspondent, was ever-present on TV screens during the final bloody years of the Troubles, then through tortuous years of wrangling over decommissioning. Blood and Oil is the explosive untold story of how Mohammed bin Salman and his entourage grabbed power in the Middle East and acquired a network of Western allies - including well-known US bankers, Hollywood figures, and politicians - all eager to help the charming and crafty crown prince.

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. He goes deep into his contacts with the IRA, the loyalist organisations, MI5, Special Branch, the Army and the many other players in the conflict period, and he joins the dots on a journey out of 'war' that has not yet found peace of mind. 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!Since the late 1980s, he has reported on all the major developments on Northern Ireland’s journey from war to peace; stories he has told using a range of sources – IRA, loyalist, police, military, intelligence, political, Church and others. Ferdinand Mount opens up a fascinating exploration of how and why Caesars seize power and why they fall.