TROUBLE and strife in African life was the subject being discussed during day two of the Swindon Literature Festival yesterday.

Lindsey Hillum, Channel 4 News international editor and award winning foreign correspondent, was joined on stage at the Arts Centre by prize-winning American author Naomi Benaron as the pair delivered a captivating talk on the civil unrest in Africa which has been particularly severe in recent years.

Lindsey has covered major conflicts throughout the continent including Zimbabwe, Rwanda and most recently Egypt and Libya.

Her enlightening talk focused on her newly-published book Sandstorm: Libya In The Time Of Revolution which sees her, as eyewitness to the revolution, trace the history of the Libyan regime, from its charismatic leader’s popular beginning to his chaotic hate-filled end.

Her fascinating tales had the audience captivated and particularly keen to find out more about the female population in Libya, who are rarely seen in media coverage from the country.

It was clear from her talk that her fascinating career is still something she thrives on, but would not describe herself as an “adrenaline junkie”.

“Some of the stories I was hearing were extremely distressing but then some of them were incredibly uplifting and exciting because this was a revolution.

“Of course there were terrifying moments and it was scary, but people were expressing themselves for the first time and people were full of excitement about how they were bringing change for the country,” she said.

“I love what I do and I’m lucky to get to where history is happening. For me there can be nothing more exciting than being there and telling the story, but I don’t revel in violence – I get scared, you see a lot of horrible things in my job and I do not enjoy that.”

Naomi, a former field worker with genocide survivor groups in Rwanda, explained to the audience her motivation behind writing her book Running The Rift, which tells the story of a gifted young runner whose country is thrown into conflict, turmoil and large-scale killings.

“I write fiction because I was born a liar,” she said.

“I felt that people in the West didn’t know the story of Rwanda, and when I went there, I too didn’t know the story and you hear so much misinformation.

“I gave myself the task of learning as much as I could about the country and the reasons for genocide, how it happened, why it happened and what has happened since.

“Being Jewish I came from a family where my mother’s family were killed in the Holocaust but it was something that was never really talked about. Since then I was interested in the stories behind the silence.”