Quotes from Kate Adie

But in the first Gulf war the United Kingdom was not under any threat from Iraq, and is still less so in the second one. Then there is no justification for obstructing freedom of information, particularly as nations have a right to know what their soldiers are being used for.

I was timid and frightened as a child. Yours truly did not shin up mountains or do any other kind of adventurous stuff.

People always seem to assume that we have a full, back-up support team - make-up, costume and a driver - but usually, in a war zone, there's only me and the cameraman.

Twenty-four hour news delivers people who stand and talk to camera rather than deliver reported packages with their own camera crew where it's happening.

Hair is also a problem. I remember once, when I was reporting from Beirut at the height of the civil war, someone wrote in to the BBC complaining about my appearance.

No two wars are identical.

War zones are dangerous, protests can be violent, also, natural disasters are difficult to cover, so there are going to be risks.

I never desired to go into war zones. I never had any thought about it. It sort of just happened as part of the job.

In any war, there is a concealment of certain kinds of setbacks because it's propaganda for the enemy.

On the whole, when the unexpected danger happens to you, you're thinking so fast, you're thinking so hard, every bit of you is alive to 'What should I do?' 'What can I do?' There isn't a lot of time for contemplation.

But in the first Gulf war the United Kingdom was not under any threat from Iraq, and is still less so in the second one. Then there is no justification for obstructing freedom of information, particularly as nations have a right to know what their soldiers are being used for.

Beslan, where the Russian authorities stopped live coverage of the school being stormed, was an illustration of the progress we still have to make.

When you are covering a life-or-death struggle, as British reporters were in 1940, it is legitimate and right to go along with military censorship, and in fact in situations like that there wouldn't be any press without the censorship.

In Sierra Leone last year there was just the two of us hanging out of a helicopter and, when we were in Bosnia, I drove an armoured vehicle, thousands of miles.

My job is to get to the heart of a story, to find out what's really going on; to get it verified and, then, to get it out to as many people as possible as fast as.

It wasn't glamorous in my day. In the regions, reporters were seen as such low life that they didn't merit their name in the Radio Times. Now people are interested in being famous. I never gave it a thought.

I have never been attracted to any kind of violence.