MICHAEL NICHOLSON

"The worst moment in a war was my fear I would not be sent to it." So wrote the young Michael Nicholson, a reporter whose astonishing career has covered eighteen major conflicts. Published to coincide with the thirtieth anniversary of the Falklands War, A State of War Exists sees the veteran journalist pondering what made him want to risk life and limb travelling to the most dangerous parts of the world, at the most dangerous times - over 200 journalists have been killed in the last three years alone. Was it machismo or masochism that encouraged him so compulsively and repeatedly to risk his life? Nicholson introduces us to trailblazers who have inspired him and countless others with their bravery, wisdom and skill in presenting the pity of war.

Published to coincide with the release of the Miramax Film, the heart-breaking true account of how one reporter broke the rules of journalistic detachment and saved a Yugoslavian orphan from approaching Serbs. Michael Nicholson's nightly reports from Bosnia alerted Britain and the world to the horrors of the war in the former Yugoslavia. But when the ITN war correspondent found 200 orphan children living unprotected on the outskirts of Sarajevo, in the path of the approaching Serbs, he could no longer watch and do nothing. Fired by anger and despair, he broke the cardinal rule of journalistic detachment. He forged the name of one of the children on his own passport and smuggled her back to Britain to live with his family. For this 9-year-old girl it was the start of an exciting, sometimes bewildering, new life, a thousand miles away from the suffering and destruction of her homeland. Now, in this book, Michael Nicholson tells the full story of her ordeal.

Dark Rosaleen is a story of love, murder and betrayal, of a failed rebellion and a national scandal. Sir William McCauley was appointed Director of the Famine Relief Programme at a time when hunger raged across Ireland and antipathy towards the plight of the Irish infused the politics of Britain. Kathryn, Williams daughter, was forced to join her father, and felt no sympathy until the very scale of the tragedy became all too obvious. Joining the underground, she preached insurrection, stole food for the starving and became the lover of the leader of the rebellion. Known as Dark Rosaleen, the heroine of banned nationalist poem, she was branded both traitor and cause celebre. This is her story.