Love in a Time of War: My Years with Robert Fisk

by Lara Marlowe

A love affair against a background of war, revolution, and invasion: two passionate, committed foreign correspondents find each other as the Middle East falls apart.

When Lara Marlowe met Robert Fisk in 1983 in Damascus, he was already a famous war correspondent. She was a young American reporter who would become a renowned journalist in her own right. For the next twenty years, they were lovers, husband and wife and friends, occasionally angry and estranged from one another, but ultimately reconciled.

They learned from each other and from the people in the ruined world they reported from: Lebanon, torn apart by a vicious civil war as well as Israeli and Syrian occupations; Iran, where they were the only journalists to interview the Middle East's chief hostage-taker and dispatcher of suicide bombers; the Islamist revolt that claimed up to 200,000 lives in Algeria; the disintegration of former Yugoslavia and two US-led wars on Iraq.

This is at once a portrait of a remarkable man, the story of a Middle East broken by its own divisions and outside powers, and a moving account of a relationship in dark times.

Genres: Biography, History, Memoir, War, Nonfiction, Journalism, Audiobook

448 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2021

About the author

Lara Marlowe is an American journalist and author, who is currently US correspondent for The Irish Times, after having spent many years as the paper's Paris correspondent. Marlowe also spend 15 years as a journalist for Time Magazine.

Born in California, Marlowe holds a B.A. in French from UCLA, a master's in international relations from Oxford, and also spent a year of study at the Sorbonne.

She often reported from Iraq following the 2003 US-led invasion. She worked previously for Time Magazine as their Beirut correspondent, and has been a guest for many other broadcast and print media. For her work she was made Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur in 2006.

She is a regular contributor to Newstalk 106 in Ireland.

Reviews

[Marina · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intimate portrait of a genius war correspondent as seen through his first wife’s lens. The book is both Lara Marlow’s memoir of her career in journalism and of her relationship with Robert Fisk, and how the two developed in parallel.

I was somewhat fatigued by the historical present tense and found the chronology confusing as the narration jumped back and forth. I also wish that the events recounted in Chapter 11 which describes the breakdown of their marriage had instead been interwoven in the earlier narrative.

But overall I very much enjoyed the book. Marlow’s voice is tender and sensitive. Her portrayal of Fisk as a ladies’ man and a hopeless romantic came as a suprise. It was fascinating to see that side of this intrepid journalist. The insider’s view of how governments as well as media operate filled me with dismay. (I regretted subscribing to TIME magazine for several years in the past.) And their experiences reporting from war-torn countries confirm Fisk’s view of war as the total failure of the human spirit.

[Ted Farrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not a biography of Robert Fisk, nor an autobiography, but it throws a lot of light on both remarkable characters.excelleng book, hard to stomach some of the awful scenes described. Leaves one wondering how could anyone be a war correspondent, but we owe a lot to the honest ones like Robert and Lara.

[David White · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 2010, Irish Times foreign correspondent Lara Marlowe brought out a memoir called “The Things I’ve Seen”. While delighted Marlowe had brought out a book, I was disappointed it was mostly reprints of previously published articles, rather than a truer memoir.

I was interested in reading more from Marlowe as she is an excellent reporter, and illuminated multiple conflicts in the Middle East for “Irish Times” readers. She was also married to Robert Fisk, probably THE outstanding Middle East journalist, and the two travailed the various conflicts together for their respective outlets.

Fisk, who passed away in 2020, was a brilliant journalist and an authority on the Middle East. He was truly on the side of the oppressed and didn’t care what institutional feathers he ruffled. As Marlowe quotes him “As a journalist, you have got to be neutral and unbiased on the side of those who suffer”.

I’ve now got the book I wanted in 2010. It’s a brilliant account of Marlowe’s career in journalism but also of her time with Fisk, both professionally and personally. It charts the ups and downs on both fronts. The horrors of unjust wars with terrible civilian casualties in Lebanon and Iraq, to their own romance and ultimate divorce.

The book chronicles Marlowe and Fisk’s extensive time in Lebanon in the 1980’s, where the threat of kidnapping is ever present. Both then cover Desert Storm in 1991, and subsequently Algeria in the 1990s, during the complex and devastating civil war (“The Black Decade). Fisk and Marlowe then cover the dreadful wars in the Balkans after the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Post 9/11 they chart the illegal and calamitous Iraq war.

Weaved throughout these conflicts is the story of their own relationship and it’s ultimate downfall. Even after they separated, they remained friends and wrote and spoke to each other with affection.

This is Marlowe’s tribute to Fisk, but a wonderful and fitting memoir to them both. An excellent read.

[Bernie · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took me six weeks to read because it was hard to read about the atrocities of wars covered by the author and her then husband, Robert Fisk. This should be included on history syllabus for this is the reality of modern warfare. Hats off to Lara Marlowe for her Frank account of their life together. Don’t be put off by the detailed accounts of wars in the Middle East mostly, though the Bosnian/Serbian conflict is also included. Read it at whatever pace is comfortable— for me I had to put it down often but I’m so glad I didn’t abandon it. Most definitely this is an anti-war tale. One we should all take to heart.

[Ciara · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5
The opening chapters don’t paint the author in the best light (Fisk’s second wife is never mentioned by name) and I wasn’t sure if I could stick with it initially.
I was glad I did however - Marlowe gives a very honest and personal look into herself and Fisk’s relationship and pulls no punches on either side.

[Matt Schiavenza · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the late 1970s until his death in 2020, no journalist achieved as much fame or notoriety in covering the Middle East as Robert Fisk. Passionate, opinionated, indefatigable, and well-informed, Fisk wrote about every conflict from the Lebanese civil war to COVID-19 with a signature style. About a decade before his death, Fisk published The Great War for Civilization, a nearly 1,000-page memoir of his years in the region. One thing he didn't write about was the fact that for many of these years, Fisk had a wife: Lara Marlowe, a fellow foreign correspondent.

Now, Marlowe has written a memoir of her own. Unlike Fisk, who chose to omit her from his magnum opus, Marlowe has dedicated her volume to her deceased ex-husband. What results is an often fascinating account of a journalist's life that nonetheless remains far too circumspect about the putative subject of the book: their relationship.

Marlowe, an American, met the British Fisk in the early 1980s, when she was a young stringer in Lebanon and he an already-established star. Based in Beirut, a city then at the height of civil war, the two covered every conflict in the broader Middle East for the next two decades while maintaining a passionate, if tempestuous, relationship. The strongest sections of Marlowe's memoir don't involve Fisk at all, but consist of a gripping account of the Iran-Iraq War, U.S.-Iraq War, civil conflicts in Algeria and Yugoslavia, and numerous other conflicts. Marlowe wrote how her work for Time magazine was undermined by incompetent editors in New York, determined to squelch every last ounce of opinion from her dispatches.

For several chapters, Fisk appears here and there, an enigmatic figure who writes longingly of being with Marlowe yet refuses to commit to the marriage. Only later in the book do we learn much about their actual relationship, and the infidelity, on both sides, that tore it apart. Even after their split, in the early part of this century, Fisk and Marlowe remained friends for the rest of his life.

Love in the Time of War is caught uneasily between two books: a valuable reporter's memoir of covering the world's most volatile region, and an account of a failed marriage between two journalists. My sense is that Marlowe might have preferred to focus on the former, but was persuaded that Fisk's outsized fame made his inclusion better for marketing. The result is a book that may only be of interest to readers of a certain persuasion: those familiar with Fisk and the era of journalism he personified.

[Fionnuala · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mostly enjoyable, though unfortunately slightly guilty of one of my pet peeves. I don't mind being taken on journeys adjacent to the main subject matter, but a) it has to be good and b) it has to be written well. The personal parts of this book, no matter what they concerned, were engaging and deeply, deeply touching. The context of the wars and politics not so much.

Listen. I don't mind those things. I have read a lot of memoirs by war journalists and now work as one myself (thanks entirely to all this reading, no less). I know that in any story about war, there's... well. Information about the war. Go figure. Plenty of journalists combine their memoirs with this context, but some are better at it than others. With this book, it sometimes felt like two seperate writers. I think Marlowe slipped a little too easily into a journalistic style, and let's just say it's clear that she spent a lot of her formative years writing for publications that preferred cold fact over informational prose.

Having said that, this book contains some of the most profound love I have ever seen replicated on the page. It's a level of adoration, nostalgia, and pain that I'm used to finding only in poetry, because prose so easily constricts and confuses such things. It's remarkable, and I enjoyed every moment of these parts. It makes it even more disappointing that chunks of the book progress as a fact-heavy memoir with no mention of the relationship between Marlowe and Fisk. Sometimes a quote from one of their many love letters is slapped on the end of a section, but it doesn't change the fact that this book feels like two seperate pieces of work running parallel. If I was being really cynical, I would say that Marlowe perhaps worried that her straightforward memoir would never sell without a hook, which is blatantly false as war journalists' memoirs have been selling ever since they first starting being written. The only reason I refrain from being so cynical is because the rest of this book is so genuine and sincere; if anything it proves that some of Marlowe's previous employers were wrong to not allow her more freedom with her copy. When she writes freestyle she is excellent: truthful, unflinching, and intelligent. Straightforward, mechanical facts restrain her.

I enjoyed this book well enough, but at the same time I am glad I found it for much cheaper than its full asking price. Even so, parts of this book will stick with me. I am always on the lookout for books that capture the sweet heartbreak of nostalgia, and this book is a brilliant example.

[David Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am fortunate to read so many wonderful books. Books that stimulate my mind and force me to question the world in which I live. Lara Marlowe's Love in a Time of War is one such book. I knew I would be captivated before reading the first page, simply because she spent most of her professional life with one of my favourite journalists, Robert Fisk. It wasn't easy to read about the deterioration of their marriage, few people like to witness such things. The professional relationship thankfully did not suffer - Marlowe and Fisk were on the same page. I am also on their page. In not quite the same detail as Fisk, in his marvelous books The Great War for Civilisation and Pity the Nation, Marlowe recounts the horror of war she witnessed time and time again, notably in the Middle East but in Algeria and Yugoslavia as well. As correspondent for the Irish Times (she would quit Time magazine following the censoring of her content about Israel), Marlowe, alongside Fisk, was on the frontline,that is, not embedded with the US and UK military as was the case with most Western journalists in Iraq, reported on the war crimes committed by the coalition forces. In Lebanon, where she was based for many years, Marlowe and Fisk were the world's witness to, amongst other things, Israeli murderous attacks on UN peacekeeping facilities housing refugees in South Lebanon. Both worked tirelessly for the release of hostages in the Middle East. As western English-language journalists go, Marlowe and Fisk had few equals. The were and remain inspirations. Lara - many thanks for your vital and important historical record.

[Sinead Warren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love in a Time of War: My Years with Robert Fisk by Lara Marlowe, read by the author, is one of my niche favourite genres of book: memoirs of journalists who I know and quite like. I don’t know why I am always drawn to this category of writing - perhaps my subconscious sees it as a peek behind the veil of what could have been had I not decided, halfway through my own journalism degree, that I absolutely did not want to be a journalist? Who knows.

This is a memoir of two halves that are intricately and inextricably intertwined. Marlowe, an esteemed war correspondent, details her storied career in parallel with that of her life with fellow correspondent Robert Fisk. It is an incredibly intimate and raw recollection of the relationship that shaped her life, revisited in the wake of Fisk’s death in 2020. Through the sharing of letters, poems, memories and articles, Marlowe recounts how Fisk courted her despite her being married, their life in Beirut and Paris and Dublin, their presence at some of the world’s worst atrocities, their individual infidelities, and the eventual breakdown of their marriage. 

While I appreciated Marlowe’s willingness to cast herself in not-so-favourable light when required, I came away feeling surprised by how selfish, petulant and cruel both she and Fisk seemed to have been to each other throughout their long relationship. Zero judgement on how they wanted to live, love and hurt privately, but it was jarring to hear these behaviours recounted in the same breath as the massacres and famines, wars and rebellions that decimated much of the world at that time. 

I feel that both stories, valuable in their own right, may have been better served by being told separately. Marlowe’s valuable reporting oftentimes ended up lost in drama of Fisk and their troubled marriage, and the juxtaposition of events like the Qana massacre or the fall of Saddam with their arguments about what windows to get for their Dalkey fixer-upper felt surprisingly tone deaf.

[Joe O'Donnell · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Love in a Time of War” is a harrowing, frequently gut-wrenching, but intensely sensitive account of life as a war correspondent, and the difficulties of maintaining a marriage under such stressful conditions (especially when your partner is a fellow correspondent). Lara Marlowe and her husband, the late veteran foreign correspondent Robert Fisk, reported together from practically every conflict zone in the Middle East over the last four decades. “Love in a Time of War” takes in the horrors of the Algerian Civil War, the chaos of the internecine conflict in Lebanon, the disintegration of Yugoslavia into ethnic carnage, and America’s catastrophically misjudged adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Marlowe is unsparing about the brutality that characterises many Middle Eastern societies, but neither does she excuse The West’s complicity in allowing such countries descend into political turmoil and, crucially, she always shines a light on the horrific effect that war has on the ordinary citizens caught up in such chaos. The overwhelming feelings you are left with after reading “Love in a Time of War” are revulsion at man’s capacity to inflict unspeakable suffering on fellow man, how appalling are the conditions of so much of the world we live in, but also gratitude that we have journalists as courageous as Robert Fisk and Lara Marlow to chronicle it.

[Deirdre Clancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are a few reasons that it took me a long time to read this book and that I could only stand to go through it in small bursts. The first is that it often reads like a catalogue of war atrocities, and that's fairly tough going. But reading these accounts seems to be one of the few things one can do to honour the war victims, when a journalist of such integrity has taken the trouble to record their fates in such forensic detail.

Every page screams: this is what modern war looks like. It demands that you deal with that reality before cheering the war profiteers from the sidelines. The second is that it brought back a lot of memories for reprocessing of the invasion of Iraq and the opposition to it, in which I was involved. And finally, the third reason is that it's definitely a book that deserves to be read properly and carefully.

I've been a reader of the journalism of both Robert Fisk and Lara Marlowe for a long time, avidly following their accounts from war zones long before I even knew they were a couple. In fact, by the time someone prone to gossip from the world of journalism mentioned in casual conversation that this was the case, they had probably separated.

In the months running up to the invasion of Iraq, I decided to do something to register my opposition to it. For those who knew about the catastrophic effects of the U.N. sanctions, the dramatic rise in cancers in Iraq due to the use of depleted uranium in the 1991 invasion, a further bombardment of this country seemed to promise unspeakable suffering to a populous that was already at breaking point.

This clip of Madeline Albright, calmly stating in relation to 10 years of sanctions on Iraq that killed at least 500,000 children that the price was 'worth it', while Saddam Hussein and his cronies in their palaces remained largely unaffected by these measures, was often cited at anti-war meetings. It became a symbol of the cold, utilitarian detachment of powerbrokers in relation to the humanitarian crises their decisions perpetrated.

Much of the coverage of the war on Iraq, and the War on Terror generally, was biased in favour of the Western coalition. Many journalists were embedded with troops. In fact, when Robert Fisk died, obituaries referred to him as 'controversial'. At the time, he was regarded by many as one of the few trustworthy journalists on the issue, as was Marlowe, when she covered it. It strikes me as strange that some journalists were still referring to Fisk as controversial. The Chilcot report was pretty clear in its findings, so it turns out Fisk, the U.N., and a large proportion of the world's international lawyers, were correct. It remains a source of amusement to me that people still have an issue admitting this. But then, when self-isolating recently, I was browsing through Masterclasses.com courses, and saw a course entitled 'Authentic Leadership', given by George W. Bush. I guess some people's thought processes will always escape me. (No, I didn't do the course, but there was a good one on authentic communication by Robin Roberts that I went through.)

While there are many vignettes in Marlowe's sections describing time spent with Fisk in Iraq that are fascinating and disturbing, the most disturbing aspect for me was the description of the Algerian Civil War, which was clearly a sickening humanitarian dystopia. There was almost no Western intervention in this, needless to say, there being no resources to exploit.

Lara Marlowe is a really terrific writer: I find her prose probably more affecting than that of Fisk himself. It's hard to do the book justice, really, as it covers a huge amount of territory. I cannot claim to understand how either of them conducted their romantic relationships, but reading the book, it somehow makes slight sense in the context of the work that they were engaged in throughout their time together.

War correspondents do not live like regular people. I could see how they might find lovers quickly in settings in which life is cheap and tomorrow is not promised. It's not really for me to judge this, though I couldn't live like this. I'm old fashioned in relation to fidelity: being on the receiving end of infidelity is deeply hurtful and I cannot understand how anybody would do this to a person and continually lie about it. It's a lesson I learned early in life (from being on the receiving end) and vowed never to do it to anybody because the suffering and confusion it causes is quite acute.

Robert Fisk comes across as a serial womanizer in the book, though this is not stated explicitly by Marlowe. The sheer numbers of women named would suggest this, however. It also seems he had a penchant for younger female journalists who could be mentored. Reading between the lines, it looks to me as if, once Marlowe becomes his professional equal in toughness and accomplishment, he starts to look elsewhere. Indeed, he ended up marrying a young woman who wrote admiring letters to him when she was a journalism major at university.

Marlowe does say she doesn't want their relationship to be reduced to a cliche. And clearly it's a very unique love that they had in many respects. However, it's difficult to deny that to an extent, Fisk was a cliche in his approach to romantic relationships, and possibly stuck somewhere in adolescence in this respect. (I don't buy into the line about geniuses being unable to behave honourably in their personal relationships - it's BS that I've heard said in relation to others, including men in the anti-war movement, and I think it's just an excuse for bad behaviour. Additionally, Fisk was a gifted journalist, but a lot of time must pass before we know if the word 'genius' is appropriate.)

Lara Marlowe, on the other hand, should write more books. They'd almost certainly be worth reading. She is a thoughtful, impressive writer with a deep intellect. One can't help hoping she's found a more stable relationship in the meantime.

[Mark Lawry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned recently from a friend's post on Facebook (a photo of this book on her shelf) that she is a niece of Lara Marlowe. Out of respect for our friendship I figured it would be cool to at least audible a book written by a family member. A good way to learn about friends, try to read their books. Wow, a hell of a family to be part of. Lara and Robert are both award-winning journalists with impressive resumes. Clearly, they both know how to write. From the introduction and into chapter 1 it was beginning to look like some romance book. Not at all my kind of thing, but by the end of chapter 1 things escalate rather quickly and the violence doesn't stop. I'm married to a Bosnian and chapter 9 is of the Balkans. I tried to listen to this audible for a bit during a recent family trip. My wife lived chapter 9 and so when I looked over at her in the passenger seat I could see she had become quite emotional and demanded I turn it off. I had to listen to it later, alone. Marlowe does the Balkans justice, unfortunately, too much so.

[Peter Thew · Rating 4 out of 5]

The life of a war correspondent is a strange one, dealing and reporting on a daily, sometimes hourly basis with death and destruction. And then imagine what it's like when two of them are married and spend their lives reporting from ongoing wars in Lebanon, Kuwait, Iraq, Algeria and Syria. Lara Marlowe tells the tale of her love affair and subsequent marriage to the late Robert Fisk, undoubtedly the best of the war reporters of the two decades either side of the turn of the century. It's heartbreaking stuff, both on the citizens on the frontline that they're reporting on, but also on their own relationship with each other. Not an easy read but an important book.

[Patrick O'Connor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intimate portrait
Robert Fisk was a brilliant journalist with unsurpassed knowledge of the Middle East. I have read many of his reports and all his books. Lara paints an intimate portrait of the man, as against the journalist, and he comes across as human, imperfect but still a genius. I also read her reports regularly and she’s an outstanding journalist in her own right and I can see their partnership complemented each other. She deals with the end of their love sensitively. The book was a wonderful read.

[Síle · Rating 4 out of 5]

An amazing read particularly given the Middle East is still in turmoil in 2024. At times harrowing but always engaging it's an account of journalism that focuses on the wars but also on the life of the journalists that witness them. I'm not convinced the title of the book is the correct one though. Life in a time of war seems better, if you want the personal story of Lara and Robert's relationship skip to chapter 11 but I suggest forgetting the book title and learn about the wars of Iraq, Algeria, the Balkans and so much more.

[David Hickey · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exceptionally difficult read. In terms of content, not language. This book will rip you one way then another. It will appal and sicken you to your core. It will warm your heart but make you cry. Read it, it's a treasure but it'll will hurt.

[Barbara Burstall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book.it’s a beautifully written memoir, prompted by death of Robert Fisk in 2020, nineteen years after the author, Lisa Marlowe and Robert Fisk divorced. The book is both a biography and a love story, and is a superb account of the life and work of a Great War correspondent. Together they reported from the Middle East and Yugoslavia and reported truthfully on the real situation in various civil wars, defending the weak and powerless, and exposing the crimes of governments , and hypocrisy of western powers. Through it all they loved and respected each other, and remained friends even after the end of their relationship.

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written mix of the author's 30 year career as a correspondent in the Middle East intertwined with her relationship with fellow war journalist Robert Fisk.

[Gull · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, poignant and tragic

[Sheila · Rating 1 out of 5]

Could not get into this book at all.

[Ger Byrne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant!!

[Ida Lotman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book. I learned so much about Robert Fisk and the relationship between LaraMarlowe and Mr Fisk. They both lived to report the truth and help get justice.

[Garret Giblin · Rating 4 out of 5]

a book filled with the horrors of war but her description of the Qana massacre is easily the most horrifying thing I have ever read

[Maureen Meleady · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Debra Sabah Press · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly informative and deeply personal.

[Gabriela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gut wrenching.