But even these great ones had to yield from time to time to the inadequacies of war reporting; imperfect vision, hasty interpretation, fatigue, frustration, drudgery, cynicism. Phillip Knightley's history of war reporting, The First Casualty (see Robin Lustig's review of a revised edition page 75) deals with this very well. But for reasons which escape me, Max Hastings gets into a bit of a lather about Knightley in this book about his own war experiences. In what is almost a throw-away paragraph, and at the end of a chapter on his coverage of the Yom Kippur War, Hastings has this to say:

“[Knightley's] principal theme was that journalists in battle have generally got it wrong, often contemptibly so. The author sought to make a virtue of the fact that he himself had never reported a war. Yet I have always thought his book profoundly flawed, because it ignores the fundamental problem of writing about conflict. One is seeking to assemble a jigsaw, from which most of the pieces are missing. The choice for the war correspondent is not between retailing truth and falsehood, but between reporting a fragment of the reality or nothing at all. All journalists must compete with official deceit, in war and peace. In war, not only do commanders tell reporters lies, often they themselves do not know the truth. I have always been conscious, never more so than during the Yom Kippur War, that I was transmitting to London news of mere fractions of the great events unfolding around me, some accurate, some misleading, together with snapshots, cameos of scenes I had been able to observe at particular times and places.

This too strikes me as fairly obvious, so I'm puzzled by the author's passionate diversion from his war memoirs. These are both entertaining and instructive. He clearly is a brave – if not foolhardy – chronicler of dangerous events. But every good war correspondent has, in large part, to make his own rules and decide which of others to break. In the June 1967 Middle East War, my life was saved by a group of Israeli soldiers who nonchalantly warned me that, beyond the next corner of the road on which I was driving, I would meet instant death from Jordanian land mines. Max Hastings, I note, had a similar reprieve elsewhere. It is part of a learning curve one hopes will not be interrupted.

Hastings avoids the tendency of some veteran war correspondents, however accomplished, to present their memoirs as reminiscences hazed by pipe smoke, dandruff and sofa mites. This is possibly because he is only 55 and without tremor, but more probably because of an almost boyish enthusiasm which insists on leapfrogging over the gravitas appropriate to his position: Editor of London's Evening Standard, former editor-in-chief of The Daily Telegraph and Fellow of both the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Literature. One is struck by a feeling of immediacy on reading his account of violent events, some of which happened more than a quarter-century ago – Ulster, Biafra, Cambodia, Vietnam, Middle East wars, the Falklands. And for those who thought that “gung-ho” had passed from the language, well, think again! Hastings is famous for having walked alone into Port Stanley ahead of the British landing force.

“By now, fierce and selfish ambitions were crowding into my mind. There was a chance, just a chance, that we could be first into Stanley. It would be the greatest scoop of my professional life...I wandered down the road. It stretched empty, the cathedral clearly visible perhaps half a mile ahead. It was a peerless opportunity. I thought, very consciously: if I can walk down that road and live, I can bore everybody to death for the next 20 years talking about it.”

There follows a hilariously entertaining passage, as the lanky Standard man goes walkies towards the Argentinian forces, wearing a blue anorak and carrying a walking stick. “Good morning!”, he calls out as the enemy soldiers appear, regarding him with bafflement. He dreams up a wheeze as he is about to greet an Argentine colonel. “I introduced myself to him untruthfully as the correspondent of The Times, because it seemed the only English newspaper he might have heard of. “Will you surrender West and East Falkland?” he asks. “I think so,” the colonel replies. “But it is best to wait until your general meets General Menendez.” Nothing boring there.

I have never met Max Hastings, but having read his book, I believe I know him well. He is – or was – impetuous, describing his war reporting as a “strange compulsive trade.” He takes – or has taken – his impetuosity with him into battle zones, along with his conscience, his civic duty, his honour, his exuberance and his fear (In the South Atlantic with the Scottish Commando from Arbroath and Ian Bruce of the Glasgow Herald, “I lay muttering and cursing incessantly, as always when I am terrified.”) When he fibbed about being The Times man, I fancy he had in mind what that most famous warrior, Napoleon Bonaparte, said: “Les mesonges passent, la vérité reste.” (Lies perish, truth abides).

He is, for an Englishman, deeply passionate about people he encounters, and speaks his loves and his hatreds unmincingly. He doesn't mention Ian Paisley without the adjective “evil”. He “hates” Ulster Unionism, but “loves” Ulster, as well as other unexpected things: Nigerian clothing, Vietnam, airline stewardess and Jewish soldiers. His passions are quite infectious, and it is this,not to mention the vivifying touch of his sympathies, that makes the book a gripping read. He has little time for the petulant Dave Sparts among television cameramen who thought covering wars in foreign lands a “racist” activity. So he decided to tease them by ordering a “huge hamper” from Fortnum and Mason, as a comfort while covering the East Pakistan crisis in 1971. “The lefties were outraged all right,” but the joke was on him when he tried to eat paté de foie gras gone rancid in temperatures reaching 110 degrees. Nevertheless, Hastings seems genuinely shocked at the self-indulgence and expenses fiddling of television people reporting abroad. “It was an ITN staffer who told me that he bought a wine bar with his proceeds from one Vietnamese campaign.”

Filming in Vietnam, he wandered around carrying a shooting stick, and worried that this might be thought a “silly affectation”. He explains: “My height rendered me an awkward spectacle in any full-length shot, and required almost any Asian interviewee to gaze steeply upwards to catch my eyeline, until I learned to avoid two-shots in which I stood talking down to some tiny Vietnamese figure, and to sit on a shooting stick to lower me to his horizon.” Francis Xavier had a similar problem with the Malays. When he died at Malacca, his stunted converts forced his body into a small tomb with a mallet. This is unlikely to happen to Max Hastings, for his war lust and wanderings appear to be over as he employs his shooting stick on the British grouse moor for which it was intended.