“It took 20 years,” writes Fergal Keane in The Madness, “before I came to the point of accepting I was addicted to war.” It was a bitter realisation for the Irish journalist. Feted for his decades of reporting at the sharp end of disaster, Keane built a career on his capacity to take in the worst of human nature – and keep going. Until one day, tormented by his experience of the Rwandan genocide, he couldn’t keep going any longer. This book tells the story of how Keane began to unpick a lifetime of trauma, addiction and fear, traits that made him an alcoholic, a mental wreck – and a star.
Keane made his name writing back from distant war zones: Kosovo, Iraq, Ukraine. But growing up in 1960s Ireland, bloodshed was never far away. The Irish war of independence had ended in 1921, 40 years before his birth. As a child, it was present everywhere, Keane recalls: in family stories and public memorials, in culture, politics – and the brewing conflict in the north. All were seeds carefully planted, Keane thinks. War – or a romanticised idea of it – made him who he was.
