I Brought the War with Me

"Remarkable" — Andrew Motion

"Revelatory" — Carol Ann Duffy

"Movingly profound" — William Boyd

From one of our greatest war correspondents, a unique collection of memories from over 40 years of reporting from conflict zones, set aside war poems from all over the world.

I was standing outside an apartment block that had been split apart by a missile. The words of a poem came to me when I could no longer find my own.

Throughout nearly four decades as a journalist covering conflicts Lindsey Hilsum has always carried a book of poetry. In Ukraine she posted a poem a day and people began to read, to share, to ask for more.

Here, Hilsum collects her favourite poems from ancient times to modern and alongside each she recalls a memory from her own work. Vital, authentic, an anthology like no other, this is the first account Hilsum has written of her own experience, accompanied by the voices of poets through the ages who have fought in wars, witnessed terror or fled their homes, yet found the words to capture their humanity.

"Lindsey Hilsum has woven poems and war stories together to bring us darkness and light in the most moving, magical way" — Christina Lamb

"A book of great power and poignancy" — Fergal Keane