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

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My 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. Keane is gentle but unflinching in describing an obsession that had its roots in a difficult childhood, overshadowed by an alcoholic, sometimes violent father. He felt himself unlovable, desperate for the validation he imagined would come from going to war: “The melancholy boy on the edge of the playground was thinking of the days when he could show himself unafraid and have the world applaud him for it.” I had the pleasure of meeting Keane in China some twenty years ago: I served as his fixer while he came to Beijing for a reporting trip. But this was not the case he gave me a free copy and I returned the fabour by promoting the book. I bought my own audio edition. I decided to write this little review because it touched me. If I had read the book, I am sure it would have been a rewarding experience, but listening to it was very special. Keane read the book himself. Listening to his silvery voice, with an Irish touch, I felt like he was telling me the story from the bottom of his heart. An intimate experience. Ask Leona O’Neill to put peace into words after seeing what she saw on the cold ground of Creggan in Derry in April 2019.

The Madness by Fergal Keane | Book review | The TLS The Madness by Fergal Keane | Book review | The TLS

The Madness is engaging without resorting to sensation. Fluent prose follows the decline of the political situation - and of Keane's own mental health - in chilling, compelling detail' Observer PDF / EPUB File Name: The_Madness_A_Memoir_of_War_Fear_and_PTSD_-_Fergal_Keane.pdf, The_Madness_A_Memoir_of_War_Fear_and_PTSD_-_Fergal_Keane.epub I could never do this book justice in a review to equal those excellently and in-depth written by Canadian Reader and Nat K. Yes, it’s about the conquest of Ireland by the Elizabethans – basically the beginning of Empire. So much of history, to me, is about people who don’t see the ground shifting under their feet, and this new book is very much about that. It’s called The Golden World, from The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser. Why would anyone want to be a war correspondent? And yet without them, how do we learn the truth of what’s going on in the world?

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He looks haunted. His eyes fill with tears and he has difficulty talking for a moment. “You feel like a bit of a freak,” he says quietly.

Fergal Keane, war addict: ‘You feel like a bit of a freak Fergal Keane, war addict: ‘You feel like a bit of a freak

What is it like when PTSD symptoms get bad? “What happens is my mood starts to get lower and lower. All the time I’m hypervigilant and twitching and stuff like that ... I noticed when I’m sliding, because I start forgetting things. I misplace things. And then I start fixating on an idea, a worry ... a particular fear.” Not devastation in a foreign field but on our own doorstep, with people dying and suffering all around us.”The Madness is a powerful account of the brutality of conflict and the horrors of war - both across the world and inside the self. In sharp prose, Keane writes compellingly about where his thirst for truth comes from, and takes him to the frontline of the some of the most infamous violence of our times. Unsettled ghosts rise from the bogs of Kerry; unmarked graves in Northern Ireland; Rwandan soil; a cellar in Palestine - what's clear is man's inhumanity to man is relentless and haunts the writer, driving him to understand our most base motivations, to rationalise terror, to witness and report conflict at close range and ultimately, to do no harm. The Madness is an extraordinary, captivating account of one man's journey in search of truth, as he excavates the human story from chaos.' Elaine Feeney

BBC Radio 4 - How the Irish Shaped Britain, Kingdoms of the BBC Radio 4 - How the Irish Shaped Britain, Kingdoms of the

I 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: Moral wounds have this peculiarity – they may be hidden, but they never close; always painful, always ready to bleed when touched, they remain fresh and open in the heart. Keane tells many stories about the hot spots he’s reported from. He also considers the nature of evil and provides cynical but illuminating commentary on the entire journalistic enterprise. As might be expected, a significant part of the book is dedicated to describing how he attempted to run from, then wrestle with, his demons, including his hospitalizations, his interactions with his Alcoholics Anonymous advisor and his psychotherapist, a specialist in the treatment of PTSD.Fergal Keane opens doors into closed places. He lets us look inside those complex compartments where fear, anxiety, anger and panic lurk, and he tells a story of being afraid all of his life... beautifully written... This is an important book' Irish Times So did other struggles. Fergal’s father was a talented actor, a self-taught man of letters and a lifelong alcoholic. Searching for his drunken father in pubs and alleyways, the young Keane developed a bone-deep sense that something was wrong with the world and that it was his responsibility to put it right. Growing up in an alcoholic’s home made Keane anxious, hyper-alert and keen to escape. That escape arrived in the early 1980s, when his budding journalistic career took him from Ireland to South Africa. 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.