Thoughtful and melancholy … If this book helps to exorcise at least some of their demons, it will certainly have served a valuable purpose. This is a highly subjective, personal account of his interactions during key events, but as such, is probably interesting to only him. Brian argues that we cannot create a seamless narrative of the past, a full and agreed account of the past is not achievable, but, as he argues in the chapter on amnesty, there is a way out of it, albeit messy and never complete. Rowan, a former longstanding BBC Northern Ireland security correspondent, was ever-present on TV screens during the final bloody years of the Troubles, then through tortuous years of wrangling over decommissioning.

Through astonishing interviews with powerful insiders, Blood and Oil tells how MBS's cabal played the Saudi economy and capitalised on the omnipotence of feudal power while effectively stamping out dissent, before allegations of his extreme brutality and excess began to slip out.His story takes us beyond the often strict boundaries of the news into the very real dilemmas and fears behind its scenes. Exploring everything from eradicated black history to the inextricable link between class and race, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race is the essential handbook for anyone who wants to understand race relations in Britain today.

Brian Rowan’s intense new book, Living with Ghosts, might be said to be in disagreement with the title of the earlier work. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.

This book is a memoir of those encounters and analysis of their meaning at many years’ remove, but also an insight into their psychological impact on the author.

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. There are Big Caesars who set out to achieve total social control and Little Caesars who merely want to run an agreeable kleptocracy without opposition: from Julius Caesar and Oliver Cromwell through Napoleon and Bolivar, to Mussolini, Salazar, De Gaulle and Trump.Living with Ghosts is a moving and deeply personal account of one man's doubts and decisions, and the challenges of reporting a war on his doorstep. Published not long after the signing of the Belfast Agreement, David McVea and David McKittrick’s Making Sense of the Troubles has become a staple general history of the three-decade-long Northern Ireland conflict. The minuscule geography of Northern Ireland is also ever present, the pressure of moving around Belfast – by any measure not a big city – surrounded in the 1980s and 1990s not just by looming hills, but army watchtowers and helicopters. He goes deep into his contacts with the IRA, the loyalist organisations, MI5, Special Branch, the army and the many other players in the conflict period.