It is such a shame that he didn’t stay on and find himself a desk in a different part of the newsroom. Rowan thinks and writes inside a moral maze, and in this book he invites us into his nightmares of remembering and to times he will never forget.

They could have acted as my warning,” he writes. “Any one of their deaths might have persuaded me to stop there and then. Except none did.” At that moment in Ballycastle, I realised that I am not yet ready for the conversations that will flow from this book; not all of them, not yet ready to go as deep as some questions ask and demand. 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. In my book ‘Living With Ghosts’ (a personal reflection on reporting the conflict), I wrote: “When it lasts so long, you get used to war. You can become almost indifferent, detached. Not uncaring, but, at times, not caring enough.” Deric Henderson is the former Ireland Editor of the Press Association. He is the author of the best selling book, Let This Be Our Secret and co-edited Reporting The Troubles and Reporting The Troubles 2.In One Good Day, David Donoghue offers an insight into the complexities and precariousness of the negotiations leading to the Agreement. He walked away from Broadcasting House in 2005, and although he wasn’t the first BBC journalist from here to quit on his seat – a colleague declared he had enough in the aftermath of the 1987 Enniskillen Poppy Day bombing – Rowan wanted to regain some degree of normality in his life. On the calendar of 1993, as October turned into November, the headlines from here were about the rubble and the graves of war; about the trauma and the convulsions of conflict.

In his research, he is gathering the information for his next questions, about how trauma is shared, or how it spreads and travels. Where did it begin for him? He is excavating deep roots.File Archive: longroom, Stormont Belfast, 28th June 2010. Martin McGuinness, Ian Paisley and Peter Robinson at the portrait unveiling of Dr Paisley. His words are a personal description of the physical and psychological wounds that come with Belfast’s reporting beat. He thought long and hard before deciding to write this book but it gives a remarkable insight into the pressures he faced from all sides in Northern Ireland and the toll it took on his personal wellbeing. There is still no agreement on a legacy process to answer the questions of Northern Ireland’s past. But, eventually, when some story-telling archive is established, these contributions will add to understanding. That is the worth of this book. Its value. Why it is important. 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.

Brian Rowan is the author of Living with Ghosts: The Inside Story from a Troubles Mind (Merrion Press)Breaking: Trauma in the Newsroom tells stories of some people who have escaped their old profession. It tells the stories of some who have witnessed terrible things but, at face value, intimate that they walked away largely unscathed … though the reader may read between the lines and wonder. And it tells the stories of others who are still trapped in their dream profession and only now realising that they’ve mostly avoided processing the physical and mental health issues that they carry with them. We needed help. From Nelson Mandela and President Clinton. From the former President of Finland Martti Ahtisaari and Cyril Ramaphosa. Ceasefires, negotiations, informers, spooks, IRA, UVF, UDA, bits of paper, hurried phone calls, family holidays upended, corpses at the side of the road, broken bodies in the midst of rubble - all standard fare for the author. And did dissident republicans definitely kill Denis Donaldson? I get the impression Rowan may have his doubts about who was responsible.