You have to respect the titanium gonads of anyone who chooses to report from a battle zone, and I must preface this review by noting that any criticism comes from someone who watched the war comfortably ensconced in a newsroom several thousand kilometres from the action.

That said, this otherwise excellent diary suffers from a few shortcomings. Some are almost certainly products of the rush to get the book into print (for instance, The Guardian's Suzanne Goldenberg is mis-named as Goldberg). Other errors of fact are a little harder to swallow (detail freaks will delight in pointing out that the A-10 Warthog is not propeller-driven). Above all, the book is let down by a dull opening. This runs from the opening salvoes of the war to the fall of Baghdad, each day recounted in parallel passages: McGeough's original stories filed to the Sydney Morning Herald and an accompanying diary detailing the day's events.

Dip in at random and you are soon fascinated, but start at the beginning and the slow pace is a turn-off. McGeough's style early on is plodding, filled with often tedious detail. Perhaps a preface - there is none - could have been used to deliver a punchy start.

McGeough is also repetitious: we are told many times over that John F. Burs writes for The New York Times. This may not have been evident in daily stories filed to a newspaper, but in book form it glares.

Still, those who persevere will find rewarding insight into journalism in a battle zone, the machinations of the Iraqi authorities and the unfolding of the war itself.

Fans of information minister Moham- med Said al-Sahhaf ('possibly the only adult male in Iraq without a moustache') will be pleased to know that he pops up in the book as frequently as he did in the war, at one point comparing the US position to that of the French at Dien Bien Phu as American artillery shakes the ground beneath his feet.

Other amusing details are sprinkled throughout. One group of journalists bought microwave ovens to protect their electronic equipment from being fried by a US 'e-bomb' attack, the logic being that if the ovens can keep microwaves in they must also keep them out.

The problems journalists encountered trying to report while Baghdad was under attack make for fascinating reading. Could you rig a power supply to your laptop from a broken light-bulb fitting? Or arrange for your company to send you US$100,000 via wives and fixers?

But none of this detail detracts from McGeough's ability to articulate the full horror of war. He visits hospitals filled with the human toll of conflict, depicting the misery without letting emotion cloud his reports. Seeing the orphaned, armless Ali Ismail, physically and metaphorically ripped apart by a US missile, he notes that someone still has to explain to him what the word 'liberation' means.

For anyone interested in current affairs, In Baghdad is a worthwhile read.