No Greater Love...



 Marie Colvin - Photo courtesy of The Times newspaper

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  Gerald Weaver was inspired by Colvin to write his first novel Jack Hill/The Times
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  Colvin met Weaver at Yale University in 1975 Cat Colvin

A true love story  emerged this week - a story far greater than fiction.

 

When Marie Colvin, the Sunday Times war correspondent, set out on her fatal assignment to Syria three years ago, she carried with her a  heavy manuscript contained in a small knapsack.  After she was killed in a rocket attack  the 387-page unpublished novel, Gospel Prism by Gerald Weaver, was recovered with  her few belongings.

In her role as war correspondent for the Sunday Times Marie was regarded by her peers as unsurpassable.  Despite losing her left eye when she was hit by a Sri Lankan  rocket-propelled grenade in 2001,  she still managed to file her report on time. From then on she wore the black eye patch which became her trademark.

In a remarkably honest podcast  Weaver, who has been described as Marie's first love and lifelong friend, talks about her with deep affection.  She was, he says, the one who encouraged him to write  about  'our friendship and our relationship' adding 'Marie was the father of the book and I was the mother.'

The author  describes his debut novel as ' a detective story with a spiritual aspect' but it is clearly so much more than this.

'I carry Marie around inside me a lot' he says simply.

 Gospel Prism was  published on May 23 2015 and  is dedicated to Marie Colvin's memory.



http://www.gospelprism.com/gerald-weaver-on-marie-colvin-impact-on-gospel-prism/

What price a dead hero?

I grew up thinking that all journalists were equal - ok, more than that - that they were all noble people trying to bring the news to the outside world for the greater good of us all. Or something like that.  Looking back I suppose it was inevitable that I thought that way, really. I was naive, easily swayed and, most importantly, my father was a journalist. Dads are always right - ok?

When I began my own journalists' training I soon realised that nothing was as  I had imagined. In one of my  early roles as court reporter on  the local evening newspaper, I was frequently sworn at, often berated and once threatened ( by the six foot-plus brother of a thief who had just been jailed.)

Soon after, I was asked to interview a woman whose three-year-old daughter was born with spina bifida,a condition that leaves part of the spine exposed and comes with many complications, including water on the brain or hydrocephalus. The mother had been told that her daughter would never walk, but then, without warning, a miracle happened.

'One day I just looked at her and said, 'Come to Mummy, '  the mother told me, 'and she did.'

That story touched so many hearts (including mine) and gave me my first sense of the ability to share something powerful and good.

Last summer's closure of the News of the World seemed almost inevitable after it was revealed that reporters had hacked into the voice-mail of murdered Milly Dowler. Journalists, it seemed, had reached rock-bottom  in their quest for a 'scoop.' It was easy for any of us, in or out of the 'profession' to label all red-top journalists as worse than scum.  Not least because, initially, they denied their crime. Shrieks of 'It wasn't me - it was him, sir,' bring me on to moral issues I have no room to discuss here.

But just when the world of journalism can sink no lower, we hear of Marie Colvin, an extremely brave and exceptionally dedicated war reporter who regularly confronted the dangers of telling the truth. She wanted to bring the Syrian atrocities to the notice of the entire world and she paid the highest price

I can never hope to have a tiny speck of her courage, or understand why she was prepared to sacrifice so much, but it heartens me to think that she represents a small minority of people who believe that this world is still worth fighting for.