The consummate war reporter, Colvin was kind, funny, brave and empathetic
BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen knew Sunday Times war reporter Marie Colvin through their work in numerous conflict zones over the past 30 years.
Marie Colvin left a big gap in a lot of lives. She was kind, funny, brave and talented, with big reserves of empathy, which is vital for a reporter, especially in wars. The best kind of war reporting, and Marie was an expert, does not just deal in why, what and when. It also gives a sense of what it is like to be someone caught up in a nightmare. She told the stories of people who might otherwise have been ignored and nameless victims.
Marie found plenty of nightmares to write about on her last assignment, in Homs. About 24 hours before she was killed on 22 February she sent me an email that was typical in that it showed her dedication and the way she could extract some black humour out of a time and a place that wasn't at all promising.
I am in Syria, freezing in Baba Amr… I thought yesterday's piece was one of those we got into journalism for. They are killing with impunity here, it is sickening and anger-making.
Are you coming this way again? I had to get smuggled over the border, no visa for the weary. Was kind of fun speeding across the fields on a dirt bike, as long as you didn't look left to the Syria post about 200 yards away.
Hope to see you soon. Mx
When the news that Marie had been killed came through, it was desperately sad, but to me at least it was not a big surprise. From the first time I met her, in 1991, during the bombing of Baghdad in the Gulf war, she was prepared to take big risks to do stories she believed were important. She never seemed gung-ho, just determined. After she lost the sight in one eye in Sri Lanka in 2001 I thought she might want to try journalism that was less demanding. But not so long afterwards Marie, with her eye patch, was sitting in the garden bar of the American Colony hotel in Jerusalem, reporting back, over a few drinks, about the time she spent in hospital with post-traumatic stress disorder, and the way that sailing had helped her recover enough to get back to work.
Marie had a lot of time for young journalists who needed some advice and help. And she could be just as generous to her friends. When the Libyans let journalists into Tripoli after the uprising against the Gaddafi regime started in February 2011, the big prize was an interview with the colonel. Everyone was working every connection they had to get it. In the end they offered the audience with Gaddafi to Marie, who had the best contacts with the regime of any journalist. The Libyans wanted American television and an international broadcaster there too, and left it to Marie to choose. So she invited along two friends, Christiane Amanpour of ABC News, and me. Lesser people might have been tempted to try to hold on to the interview for themselves. Almost exactly a year after we sat down with Colonel Gaddafi for what turned out to be his last big interview, she was dead.
I miss turning up at some hotel in the Middle East and finding Marie there, with her notebook and appetite for the story and for life. I miss her laugh, and the way that she deflated the pompous, gently. But she worked in the cruellest parts of the world, and in the end the cruelty caught up with her.
Read the Guardian obituary here