In Harm’s Way: Bosnia: A War Reporter’s Story

First published in September 1995, In Harm’s Way established itself rapidly as a classic of war reporting. Martin Bell’s was BBC TV’s principal correspondent during the war in Bosnia from 1992 to 1995. The original version of this passionate and personal account of the conflict was written while the war was still going on, some of it late at night in the Holiday Inn in Sarajevo. In Harm’s Way is not only about the progress of the war; it is about its origins, how it began and how it could have been avoided; it is about the human costs of war in which all the peoples of Bosnia became the victims; it is about a massive failure by the United Nations, beginning with an inadequate peace-keeping mandate and ending with the Srebrenica massacre; and it is about the practices of war reporting itself. In the introduction to this new edition, marking the twentieth anniversary of the outbreak of hostilities, Martin Bell reflects on the impact of what he calls the most consequential war of our time.