On March 16, 1986 a young television journalist named John McCarthy set off for a month’s assignment for Worldwide Television News (WTN) in the divided city of Beirut.
At Heathrow he reassured his tearful girlfriend Jill Morrell: ‘It’s only a month, Jilly.’ They were planning to buy a house and get married.
Soon after John arrived in Beirut, two British teachers — Leigh Douglas and Philip Padfield — and an Irish teacher named Brian Keenan were kidnapped.
The British ambassador urged British citizens to leave. John, with a few days of his assignment remaining, had a nagging feeling that things were closing in around him.