'Peerless' Colvin Was Driven By Conscience

She was not rare. Women who cover conflicts are frequently better at it than men. But Marie Colvin, who has been killed in Syria, was peerless.

Women handle the stress better, can be more compassionate towards their subjects and more effective in beguiling warriors on the front line

For more than 20 years Marie led the field in international coverage and was often so far ahead that her competitors gave up worrying about what she would come up with next, simply accepting that if they were good, very good, they might follow in her wake.

We all lost count of her national and international awards. Marie never mentioned them, brushing off congratulations with a demand for celebratory drinks and a hearty laugh.

She was, as she often observed, a Yank. But she was a Yank who represented the best in British journalism.

I confess to often having been baffled by how Marie could slip between front lines, charm warlords and dictators like Muammar Gadaffi (we used to tease her that he had a crush on her), and then eviscerate them in print.

Her exposure of their atrocities, vanities and absurdities did little to dampen the delight they would show in hearing that she was in good health - especially after she lost an eye in a grenade attack crossing from Tamil Tiger territory into government lines in Sri Lanka.

Marie was driven. But not by the sort of ego and bravado which finds its value in awards ceremonies and back-patting in the newsroom.

Marie made no secret that she loved the adventure of her job, she loved her colleagues (marrying and divorcing two of them), but above all she genuinely felt the imperative to expose the horrors that mankind inflicts upon itself.

It was, perhaps, inevitable that she would die doing this - but that does not make the pain of her loss any easier to bear.

It's unfashionable, even mawkish, in these dark days of revelations emerging from the Leveson Inquiry, to suggest that there are journalists who do what they do, and take the risks that go with it because they do, really, want to make the world a better place.

Some hacks of our generation have given up on that old clich?retreating into cynicism. Marie was never among them. Life was much too fun to curl a lip at.

Marie could party harder and longer than most and drank with a glorious abandon when it suited her.

She chain-smoked and her laughter decorated some of the finest bars in the weirdest parts of the world, such as the Gandamak Lodge in Kabul, the al Sahafi Hotel in Mogadishu, the Olympic Hotel, Beirut and everyone's favourite, the American Colony in Jerusalem.

She was, however, never coarse. Always elegant. She did not get around to having children but yearned for them without bitterness.

Her maternal warmth was so gentle and magnetic than when she played with my toddlers years ago in Jerusalem, it was all I could do to resist giving her one to take home.