Lynne O'Donnell
Author
Lynne O’Donnell is an author, award-winning journalist and war reporter.
High Tea in Mosul, her highly praised book on Iraq, was published by Marshall Cavendish in 2008.
She has worked for newspapers, magazines, radio and was bureau chief in Kabul for the Associated Press.
She won the 2010 Amnesty International Human Rights Press Award for her series of stories on Afghan women. In 2017 she became a fellow of the Dart Center at the Colombia Journalism School. She has an MA in War Studies from King’s...
Latest Release
High Tea in Mosul by Lynne O'Donnell
Iraq, 2003. Three women sit down to tea in the war-torn country.
When Lynne O’Donnell met Pauline and Margaret in Iraq she could never have guessed the wealth of stories she’d discover. Over tea the two women tell Lynne of their lives in the country: each having married Iraqi men had then relocated from England more than thirty years before.
Far more than simply a story of a new life elsewhere, High Tea in Mosul describes how daily life slowly turned into a fight for survival. As war and political tensions slowly tore the country apart, the two women carried on in amongst the chaos. Under Saddam’s regime, peace was lost and the backdrop of ‘violence, terror and dictatorship’ played constantly in the background. Time spent in their adopted homeland slowly became a time spent in isolation, under imposed regulations and sanctions, and shunned by prejudice.
While news screens across the globe played out the latest tragic news for audiences watching from the comfort of their living rooms, High Tea in Mosul brings the reader into the heart of the horror and shows what everyday life was really like for those whose lives were affected irreparably.
One of the first Western journalists in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, Lynne O’Donnell provides a unique insight and first-hand account into a war-torn country, as well as a riveting portrayal of two women’s will against all odds. A story of resilience in its purest form.
