For a war correspondent to miss an invasion is like refusing a date with Lana Turner.

During the war in which several of our embedded correspondents were able to report from moving vehicles crossing the Iraqi desert the use of technology made news gathering safer.

The most important thing I learned as a foreign correspondent in about 80 countries is that it takes a very shallow knowledge of history to think that there are solutions to most problems.

The great thing about being a print journalist is that you are permitted to duck. Cameramen get killed while the writers are flat on the floor. A war correspondent for the BBC dedicated his memoir to 50 fallen colleagues and I guarantee you they were all taking pictures. I am only alive because I am such a chicken.

I would say that the war correspondent gets more drinks more girls better pay and greater freedom than the soldier but at this stage of the game having the freedom to choose his spot and being allowed to be a coward and not be executed for it is his torture.

Like all young reporters - brilliant or hopelessly incompetent - I dreamed of the glamorous life of the foreign correspondent: prowling Vienna in a Burberry trench coat speaking a dozen languages to dangerous women narrowly escaping Sardinian bandits - the usual stuff that newspaper dreams are made of.