in extremis the life of war correspondent marie colvin

She also suffered from PTSD, had issues with alcohol and her relationships were unstable. The contrasts of this lifestyle have undoubtedly attracted those wishing to traffic in the myth of the tortured soul. In addition to her bravery in the face of fire, she lived a life where she drew people in by the power of her charisma- Marie Brenner talks of how “guerrilla fighters, refugees, movie stars, and writers” would appear at her parties.

Lindsey Hilsum's memoir In Extremis is another attempt at dealing with this legacy and in its biography, attempts to disentangle the myth of Marie Colvin- a myth which she at times participated in the creation of- from the reality of her correspondence on the ground.Ĭolvin was distinguished as a journalist by her willingness to put herself through more than her colleagues in Hilsum's words, “She always went in farther and stayed longer.” In part, this is a biography aimed at getting to the bottom of why Colvin would subject herself to these risks, daring even by the standards of other war correspondents. Colvin is a scriptwriters’ dream. In recent years, Colvin's death has been memorialised in two films the documentary Under the Wire, based on a book by Paul Conroy, and the Hollywood adaptation A Private War. Due to Colvin’s death, The Sunday Times, the paper for which Colvin had worked and which had over the previous years pursued a high-risk strategy in conflict reporting announced that it would no longer be accepting commissions from freelancers working inside Syria. Soon after, Colvin had been killed along with French photojournalist Remi Ochlik, amidst shelling by the Assad regime of Homs. Hilsum decided that the level of risk was too high. Lindsey Hilsum's In Extremis begins with a dinner in Beirut where she and Marie Colvin debated the merits of entering Syria in early 2012.

In extremis the life of war correspondent marie colvin