In January 1990, Alec Russell had the offer of a free flight to Bucharest. The plane stopped 700 miles short but he made it eventually and soon afterwards found himself covering the Romanion Revolution for the Daily Telegraph. During the next three years, the author saw the Gulf War from Turkey, the Kurdish uprisings, the coup in the Soviet Union from St Petersburg and the endless upheavals in the Balkans. His reports from the city of Dubrovnik won him a 1991 UK Press Award.