I've never been one to sit around and eat my heart out. Life's too short.

I also read modern novels - I have just had to read 60 as I am one of the judges for the Orange Fiction Prize.

I wrote in the book very specifically what I wanted to write about, period, and left it at.

People always seem to assume that we have a full, back-up support team - make-up, costume and a driver - but usually, in a war zone, there's only me and the cameraman.

On the Northern Ireland question, for instance, the British and Irish governments prohibit media contact with members of the IRA, but we have always gone ahead, believing in the right to information.

But in the first Gulf war the United Kingdom was not under any threat from Iraq, and is still less so in the second one. Then there is no justification for obstructing freedom of information, particularly as nations have a right to know what their soldiers are being used for.

I don't want to be involved in endless media gossip.