Max Hastings

A personal account of a journalist on the front line, written by one of the greatest war reporters of the twentieth century.

Max Hastings grew up with romantic dreams of a life amongst warriors. But after an embarrassing false start as a parachute soldier in 1963, he became a journalist instead. Before he was thirty he had reported on conflicts round the world, including the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the Biafra and Vietnam Wars. He covered the five years of fighting in Cambodia, leaving Saigon by the last helicopter out of the American Embassy as the city fell to the Khmer Rouge. He masqueraded as a game hunter to seek out the secrets of the Rhodesian civil war, was almost shot by marauding Turkish soldiers during the invasion of Cyprus, and took part in an amphibious landing at San Carlos with 40 Commando during the Falklands War.

Insightful and entertaining, Going to the Wars is also the story of a self-confessed coward with a love of adventure and determination to get the scoop.