Living with Ghosts - The Inside Story from a 'Troubles' Mind

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The book’s chapters contain ragged stories. Some contributors have applied polish and thrown in amusing anecdotes. Others read like raw confessions, cathartic admissions of dark baggage that has troubled them for decades. Some chapters end with a plea for colleagues and news organisations to take mental health more seriously. A few note how rare it is for a colleague to ask “how are you?” in the fray of a big news story. Sayee notes how RTÉ’s Tommie Gorman became “like a Daddy” to those covering the McAreavey trial in Mauritius once she’d got over her competitive streak. Barney Rowan’s closing argument for an amnesty for all conflict related actions places him firmly outside the box. While agreeing with him I am not sure his proposal will work. It requires the willingness of those with the knowledge to be amenable to sharing it. This is like trying to get an apple to float upwards once dropped from the hand. Truth will come in spite of many combatants on all sides, not because of them. Their self-interest and survival instinct renders them an immoveable object able to evade an unstoppable search for truth. Reputations, political careers and a sense of how they wish to be remembered have all become anchors to ensure truth will never spin out of their orbit and that in place there will only be spin. File picture dated 19/5/98 of Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble (left), U2 singer Bono, and SDLP leader John Hume on stage for the 'YES' concert at the Waterfront Hall in Belfast. In his journalistic career Rowan walked the thinnest of lines, where morals and principles were blurred, and as a result his mind became tortured. This book is an explanation, not a confession. Thoughtful and melancholy … If this book helps to exorcise at least some of their demons, it will certainly have served a valuable purpose.’ – Andrew Lynch, Sunday Business Post

Lindsay, a BBC journalist, writes the opening chapter — Hard Cover; his story from Ardoyne in north Belfast on 12 July 2005 — one of those days in the city when parade and protest meet. Like myself, Roy loved his golf, and returning home after every Irish Open Championship in places like Killarney or Mount Juliet (Kilkenny), I used to slip him – very quietly when nobody was looking – a sleeve of Titleist balls which carried the sponsor’s logo. Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams (L) joins the then US President Bill Clinton, Sinn Fein's Pat Doherty and Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness inside Stormont Parliament Buildings, Belfast. Not devastation in a foreign field but on our own doorstep, with people dying and suffering all around us.” We are stitched into the fabric of this place. We live in its hell and peace, and with its many pressures and ghosts.For a number of years, we worked in the same BBC newsroom in Belfast, when the story from the North was still its fighting and, at a time when peace felt like a pipe dream. I stayed in that newsroom — stayed too long. In all the detail, I could think inside this story — think about how those men were held and questioned by the IRA. Their answers and their fate. That there was no escape.

In Living With Ghosts renowned veteran journalist Brian Rowan retraces his steps through Northern Ireland’s conflict years, as he bravely delves into the darkness of those times. His story takes us beyond the often strict boundaries of the news into the very real dilemmas and fears behind its scenes.His words are a personal description of the physical and psychological wounds that come with Belfast’s reporting beat.