I had no idea that I was writing a book, let alone a memoir.
I had already been covering the wars in Syria and Iraq for a couple of years when I found myself in London over a weekend with my girlfriend, Lea, whom everyone calls Chui. We’d decided to wander the National Portrait Gallery on an uneventful Saturday afternoon and I soon found her standing in front of a picture of the 18th-century British writer Edmund Burke, who is widely known for his book
Reflections on the Revolution in France. The portrait of Burke, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, has a dark composition and Burke himself seems vexed, as if someone just out of the frame were delivering him bad news...