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Video: Sunday Times foreign correspondent Christina Lamb on her ‘addictive’ job

By William Turvill

Sunday Times foreign correspondent Christina Lamb has spoken of her “addiction” to war correspondence while talking about her job.

In a short film, Bringing The World To Britain, directed by Channel 4’s Liz Unna, Lamb speaks of her love for Afghanistan in particular and of her most “frightening” experience in Helmand in 2006, which led to five pages of coverage in The Sunday Times.

The story was headlined “Have you ever used a pistol?” – a question asked to her by a soldier as they were under attack. “I really, really didn’t want to die in a muddy field in Helmand,” she said.

“Sometimes when I’m packing this [bag] you do think, you know, most people they [want to] leave war, why am I going to where wars are? But once I’m on the plane then I’m thinking about the story.”

She added: “I’m incredibly curious – my mum would say I’m nosy. I want to see things for myself and I’m really determined, like there’s no where I haven’t got into. ‘No’ Is like a starting point for me and I want to tell the stories of people who have no way of getting their own stories told. If I see something that’s really shocking that’s happened I want people outside to know about it and I want to know about it because I hope that that will change.”

On why her love for the job, Lamb said: “I hate that stereotype of the hard drinking, drug addicted correspondent that comes backing and tells war stories in the car. Having said that, it is addictive, I admit that. I have had far more than my nine lives already.”

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