The Conversation: Fergal Keane

(Tuesday 15th April 2025)

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The Madness

The Conversation is a series of weekly events talking about conflict and empathy, inequality and power, climate crisis and wonder through storytelling and action. The first half of the evening is an interview, which is followed by the host and guest joining the audience around tables to take the conversation further.  Everyone is welcome.

BBC correspondent Fergal Keane has covered conflict and brutality across the world for more than thirty years, from Bosnia, Rwanda, Sudan, South Africa, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, to Ukraine, Gaza and many more killing zones. Driven by an irresistible compulsion to be where the night is darkest, he reports with humanity and empathy from places where death and serious injury are not abstractions, and tragedy often just a moment away.

All this time he struggled not to be overwhelmed by another story, his acute ‘complex post-traumatic stress disorder’, a condition arising from exposure to multiple instances of trauma experienced over a long period. This condition has caused him to suffer a number of mental breakdowns and hospitalisations. Despite this, and countless promises to do otherwise, he has gone back to the wars again and again.

Why?

Fergal Keane’s books include Wounds, Road of Bones, All of These People, Letters Home, A Stranger’s Eye and The Madness: A Memoir of War, Fear and PTSD.

Chaired by Peter Florence.