Archive: Marie Colvin - In Her Own Words

Truth at All Costs

St. Bride’s Church, London, 2010

Address by Marie about the importance of war reporting during a service for war wounded.

“Your Royal Highness, ladies and gentlemen, I am honoured and humbled to be speaking to you at this service tonight to remember the journalists and their support staff who gave their lives to report from the war zones of the 21st Century. I have been a war correspondent for most of my professional life. It has always been a hard calling. But the need for front line, objective reporting has never been more compelling.”

Courage Knows No Gender

The Sunday Times, October 10, 1999

Do women report wars differently from men? The question used to make me bristle. It irritated me to think that I would be judged as a woman war correspondent rather than as a writer, taking the same risks and covering the same story as my male colleagues.My feelings were hardly new. “Feminists nark me,” wrote Martha Gellhorn, one of the great war correspondents of the century. “I think they’ve done a terrible disservice to women, branding us as ‘women’s writers’. Nobody says men writers; before, we were all simply writers.”

Mad Dog and Me

The Sunday Times, August 28, 2011

Marie, who knew Gadaffi for 25 years, offers an insight into the mind of Libya’s fallen tyrant, including his love for Madeleine Albright.

When I saw the looted chaos of the Bab al-Aziziya compound in the centre of Tripoli after its capture by rebels last week, I had a flashback to a night quarter of a century ago — the first time I met Muammar Gadaffi... I was nervous. Gadaffi was in a tense stand-off with Ronald Reagan, the American president, who had called him “the mad dog of the Middle East.”

We Live in Fear of a Massacre

The Sunday Times, February 19, 2012

The only British newspaper journalist inside the besieged Syrian enclave of Baba Amr reports on the terrible cost of the uprising against President Assad.

They call it the widows’ basement. Crammed amid makeshift beds and scattered belongings are frightened women and children trapped in the horror of Homs, the Syrian city shaken by two weeks of relentless bombardment.

The Shot Hit Me

The Sunday Times, April 22, 2001

It was the most difficult decision of my life. I was lying in an open field with a clump of tall weeds on a slight rise for cover. The moon had not yet risen and the night was pitch black. Every five minutes or so a flare, fired from the nearby Sri Lankan army base, seemed to expose every blade of grass. Advancing soldiers intermittently raked the field with automatic weapons fire. They had to be as scared as I was.

Massacre in a Spring Meadow

The Sunday Times, May 2, 1999

In a war of numerous atrocities, Marie Colvin talks to over 100 witnesses of the most horrifying slaughter Kosovo has endured.

Seven-year-old Egzon Zyberi interrupted adult conversation late last week with a childish monotone. “Long live Milosevic!” he chanted. “Kosovo is Serbian!” The little boy in orange trousers seemed to want an explanation, his brown eyes darting about for a reaction.

“Our mission is to speak the truth to power. We send home that first rough draft of history. We can and do make a difference in exposing the horrors of war and especially the atrocities that befall civilians.”

— Marie Colvin

Marie Colvin Center for International Reporting: Speaker Series

Christiane Amanpour speaks as the inaugural speaker of the Marie Colvin Distinguished Lecture Series.

International editor of Channel 4 News London Lindey Hilsum speaks as part of the Marie Colvin Distinguished Lecture Series on December 6, 2016.

Ann Curry's Lecture for the Marie Colvin Center at Stony Brook University. Go to mariecolvincenter.org for more information.

Rukmini Callimachi, a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, presents as part of the Marie Colvin Distinguished Lecture series at Stony Brook.

The Marie Colvin Center for International Reporting at Stony Brook's School of Journalism is pleased to present the annual Marie Colvin Lecture.

News Articles

Videos

Rescued British photographer Paul Conroy tells of “slaughter in Homs”

March 2, 2012

Marie Colvin On Martha Gellhorn - the first female war reporter

The Last Column

Cat Colvin, sister of Marie Colvin, discusses what The Last Column means to her. The Last Column was created in partnership with the Committee to Protect Journalists.