Chris 'risk averse' Ayres saw journalism as his ticket to schmoozing with celebrities and penning pompous opinion pieces. Instead he landed a plane ticket to Iraq. Chris Ayres is a self-confessed coward, born of a proud line of shirkers and well-versed in taking the cushy option. After a bad start in New York during 9/11 and the anthrax attacks, life seemed to be improving when, as a young reporter, he was promptly promoted to Los Angeles correspondent. The thrill of foreign reporting couched in the comforts of the Golden State. What could go wrong? But everything goes wrong. One day his boss calls to offer him an assignment as a war reporter, 'embedded' with US Marines on the front line of the Iraq War. Too cowardly to say no, Chris soon finds himself camped in the desert, blinded by sandstorms, caught in the crossfire, surrounded by military machismo on all sides. He decides he wants out - proud to be the first embedded reporter to bottle it. But this, his greatest act of cowardice, will almost kill him...War Reporting for Cowards is an extraordinary true story and the debut of a brilliant new voice - wry, intelligent, honest and deeply human. Hilarious, like a latter-day Scoop, it offers a seditious insight into the political events that have defined the century.