In 2018, the VII Foundation asked more than a dozen renowned reporters and photojournalists to revisit countries with which they had become achingly familiar during times of brutal conflict. The task was to see peace through the prism of their journalistic experience; to survey familiar towns and villages; to reconnect with women, men, soldiers, civilians, statesmen, and students who had survived the conflict or grown up in the postwar society; to discover what the lived experience of “peace” feels like. To augment this reportage, the VII Foundation sought input from academics and peacemakers. And they invited citizens of those countries to give their very personal narratives, in their own voices. Hard edges were not softened nor unpalatable impressions deleted. They wanted to show the truth as seen and experienced by those that lived and those that reported on seemingly intractable civil wars in Bosnia and Herzegovina Cambodia, Colombia, Lebanon, Northern Ireland, and Rwanda. The result is Imagine: Reflections on Peace - a curation of searing images and trenchant essays that show both micro and macro views of peace, with its uneven degrees of economic success, political stability, and social harmony. In this stunning collection, worldrenown journalists and authors take us into societies that have suffered searing conflict - and survived. Photographic essays make the stakes during war and peace grippingly palpable. Compelling backstories about negotiations, tales of survival, and accounts of the search for inner peace make the big picture personal. Imagine offers a rare glimpse into the unvarnished story of peace, a window into what it takes for societies and individuals to move forward after unspeakable brutality.

Born to a distinguished family steeped in military tradition, raised on stories of wartime and ancestral heroes, Anthony Loyd longed to experience war from the front lines--so he left England at the age of twenty-six to document the conflict in Bosnia. For the following three years he witnessed the killings of one of the most callous and chaotic clashes on European soil, in the midst of a lethal struggle among the Serbs, Croatians, and Bosnian Muslims. Addicted to the adrenaline of armed combat, he returned home to wage a longstanding personal battle against substance abuse.
These harrowing accounts from the trenches show humanity at its worst and best, through daily tragedies in city streets and mountain villages during Yugoslavia's brutal dissolution. Shocking, violent, yet lyrical and ultimately redemptive, this book is a breathtaking feat of reportage, and an uncompromising look at the terrifyingly seductive power of war.

My War Gone By, I Miss It So is a uniquely powerful piece of writing, unparalleled in the genre. Ex-infantry officer Anthony Loyd arrived in the Balkans hoping to become a war correspondent. He wanted to see `a real war', and in Bosnia he found one. The cruelty and chaos of the conflict both appalled and embraced him - the adrenaline lure of the action perhaps the loudest siren call of all. In the midst of the daily life-and-death struggle among the Serbs, Croatians and Bosnian Muslims he was inspired by the extraordinary human fortitude he discovered. But returning home, empty and craving adrenaline, he faced his own frailties until he could bear it no longer.

Critically acclaimed writer and award-winning foreign correspondent, Anthony Loyd is also an ex-heroin addict. Another Bloody Love Letter exposes the thrilling and brutal reality of life as a war journalist - from the climax of war in Kosovo and the reignited battles between Ethiopia and Eritrea, to tracking ambush commanders in Sierra Leone, confronting the danger and confusion of northern Afghanistan at the start of the 'war on terror', and the harsh realities of life in Iraq during the Second Gulf War. But it is also the very human story of a man fighting to beat a heroin addiction and coming to terms with the death of a father-figure, friend and colleague murdered by the RUF in Sierra Leone, and the death of his mother from a terminal illness at home. Another Bloody Love Letter takes the reader into the mind of a man who has chased war and death for more than half his life, and shows the price he has paid for it. It is a moving and powerful memoir of love and friendship, betrayal and loss, war and faith.