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It took me a long time to bring myself to write this book. A journalist tells other people's lives, seldom his own. But after hearing "you really should write all this down" often enough, I finally sat down to it.

I started out in the working-class eastern suburbs of Paris, where nothing pointed me towards this trade. A chain of luck and nerve led me to Agence France-Presse, and then to the places that made the history of the second half of the century: Senegal and Mali at the hour of decolonisation, Vietnam at war, Biafra. Then Italy in its Years of Lead, and the Vatican, where I watched three popes succeed one another in a matter of weeks. And in between, the anchor's chair on the evening news in the 1970s, when all of France gathered in front of the set at eight o'clock.

Seven lives

Cats, the French say, have seven lives. I have had mine, and nearly lost a few. This book is a gallery of characters, some dangerous, some fascinating, often both. It is also a portrait of a profession as it was then practised: no mobile phone, no Internet, just a telex machine, a plane ticket and the duty to go and see for yourself.

Published by L'Harmattan in the "Graveurs de mémoire" series, it is available in bookshops in print and as an e-book. It is the book that gave this website its structure.