Fergal Keane was born in London and educated in Ireland. He is one of the BBC's most distinguished correspondents and an award-winning broadcaster and author. He has reported for the corporation from Northern Ireland, South Africa, Asia and the Balkans. He has been awarded a BAFTA, been named reporter of the year on television and radio, winning honours from the Royal Television Society and the Sony Radio Awards, most recently for his Radio 4 series 'Taking a Stand'. Keane has won the George Orwell prize for literature, the James Cameron Prize and the Edward R. Murrow Award from the US Overseas Press Association. He is the author of a number of bestselling books including 'Letter to Daniel' and his memoir 'All of These People.' He lives in London with his wife and two children.
Praise for The Madness 'Keane has not just the courage to risk death so that the most important stories can be told, as well as the eye to tell them with vivid subtlety, but also the humility to reveal the havoc that this task visits on the beholder' Spectator 'A brutally honest exploration of what motivates Keane to keep reporting on atrocities despite the toll on his mental health... Gentle but unflinching' Guardian, Book of the Day 'Fergal Keane opens doors into closed places. He lets us look inside those complex compartments where fear, anxiety, anger and panic lurk, and he tells a story of being afraid all of his life... beautifully written... This is an important book' Irish Times 'The Madness is a heady reckoning with trauma, adrenaline and that mixture of moral courage and compulsion that drives the news cycle, Fergal Keane tells difficult, sometimes horrible truths about the world, but it is the truths he finds about himself that make this book a necessary read' Annie Enright 'Brutally honest... part journalistic memoir, part exorcism, the veteran BBC correspondent explores the roots of his own suffering and sounds a warning bell for others... compelling' Irish Independent 'A really important piece of work' Susanna Reid, on Good Morning Britain 'An immensely brave book' Tortoise 'Powerful, and heartbreaking' Audrey Magee 'With radical honesty and openness, and a vulnerability that I suspect required no small amount of courage, he more than fulfils the aim he sets out for himself in the prologue: to let others who bear similar burdens know they are not alone.' Kevin Powers 'The Madness is an extraordinary, captivating account of one man's journey in search of truth, as he excavates the human story from chaos' Elaine Feeney