A classic of war reportage. A defining book about the experience of conflict, for those living through it and those reporting it, distilled from a decade and a half on the world’s frontlines.

War has changed. In the past, states clashed and battles were fought between armies. Today superpowers are pitted against warlords.The Observer’s chief foreign correspondent Peter Beaumont, takes us into the guts of modern conflict. He visits the bombed and abandoned home of Mullah Omar; discovers a deserted Al Qaeda camp where he finds documents describing a plan to attack London; talks to young bomb-throwers in a Rafah refugee camp.Unflinching and utterly gripping, The Secret Life of War is a deeply personal and defining vision of the inner, secret nature of modern war.