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Description of Desperate Glory

His mates watch, and giggle, when tracer bullets from Spongebob's machine gun rip through a Taleban fighter. A wounded colonel high on morphine mistakes a helicopter for a train. Young men and teenagers fight the toughest battles for fifty years. Then play like puppies in the sand of their isolated bases, cooling off in paddling pools. Almost no one out there understands why Britain is at war in Helmand. They would not have missed it. Sam Kiley joined 16 Air Assault Brigade and got unescorted and unrestricted access to the front line for a full six month tour of duty. .

Title Information

ISBN:

9780747599968

Format:

Hardback

Product Code:

435903

Publisher:

Bloomsbury Publishing

Published:

07/09/2009

Press and Industry Reviews

'I have known Sam Kiley since we were young men racing around Africa's war zones. He is one of the few originals in modern journalism - a legend among his peers, not just for his sometimes insane bravery but for the force of his understanding and the originality of his journalism.' Fergal Keane 'There is no one better to tell this story than Sam Kiley. One of the most intrepid foreign correspondents of our generation, he delves into the heart and soul of battle. Kiley has never been afraid to tell the truth - his long career in Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East is a testament to that. If you want to know why men wage war - read this' Janine di Giovanni

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About Sam Kiley

Award-winning journalist Sam Kiley has covered wars and insurgencies in more than thirty countries over the last twenty years. Educated at Oxford University, he joined The Times in 1987, and since 1990 has worked as a foreign correspondent all over the world, most notably in Africa, where he won acclaim for his coverage of conflicts in the Congo, Somalia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone. He has worked extensively in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taleban and has made more than twenty television films for Channel Four, Sky 1 and the BBC. He is a frequent contributor to the Mail on Sunday, the Evening Standard, the Observer, The Times and the Spectator. Married and a father of two, Sam Kiley lives in the countryside of East Anglia.

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