frontlineclub

On Monday Wikileaks released a mountain of documents on the war in Afghanistan through the Guardian, the New York Times and German weekly Der Spiegel.

The picture painted is chaotic: failed attempts to win the 'hearts and minds' of the Afghan people, numerous incidences of civilian casualties and evidence that both Iran and Pakistan are helping the Taliban.

For a journalist who’s spent decades reporting from the world’s most dangerous and war-torn places, Jeremy Bowen is surprisingly jovial. Reflecting on his life in the trade, stories of drunken blunders and catastrophic cock-ups punctuated the evening last Tuesday, in his  conversation with Vin Ray at the Frontline club.

His life reporting from the front-lines, though, has been no laughing matter. Since graduating from Geneva, “the nursery slopes of foreign reporting”, he has covered some of the defining events of the post-Cold War era.