All of These People: A Memoir

London: HarperCollins, 2005 0007176929. Hardback. First Edition. First Printing. Number 1. Very Good/Fine. DW is not price clipped. No annotations or inscriptions. xvi + 396 pages. Size: 9.5 x 6.25 inches. 31 illustrations. Book is not rated as fine because the inside of the front cover is a bit ragged but you would never know this if you didn't look hard as the inside flap of the DW hides it.. Journalist Fergal Keane's memoir is the account of a journey, a story about bearing witness to horror but also confronting the ghosts within. At its heart is the story of a son's journey in search of his father and the reconciliation that is possible even after death. In this book, Fergal Keane addresses his experience of wars of different kinds, some very public and others acutely personal. Often deeply moving and painful, but equally often ruefully funny, he describes intimately a life uneasily shadowed by the spectre of alcohol. As a nephew of a famous writer and son to a much-loved actor his was a family of storytellers, from whom Keane inherited a love of words and adventure. Growing up in Ireland in the 60s and 70s the country of myth and reverence was being dismantled in front of his eyes with the first stirrings of a sexual revolution; later he became a cub reporter in an atmosphere filled with the smells of drink and cloudy with cigarette smoke, then followed his childhood dream to go to Africa. Here he witnessed the violence of the South African townships and the terror in Rwanda, the most extreme kinds of human behaviour. Keane's life as one of Britain's leading war reporters is all that we imagine: journeys across landscapes traumatised by death and hunger, encounters with some of the most evil figures of the last half century. Life in such vulnerable areas of the globe is emotionally draining, but can be illuminated with astonishing moments of camaraderie and human bravery. And so this is also a memoir of the human connections, at once simple and complex, that are made in extreme circumstance. .