The Week That War Hit Home; the Hostage: Hundreds of Soldiers Have Died, Thousands of Iraqis Have Been Killed, and at Least 20 Foreign Nationals Are Still Being Heldhostage in Iraq but It has Taken the Anguish of a British Hostage and His Family to Waken Up the Country to the Price of Ousting Saddam Hussein

Summary

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Minutes become hours, and the hours flow into days of tortured waiting on Bedford Road. Ten days ago most people in Walton wouldn't have been able to locate this street in the rows of terraced houses built almost a century ago for the workers in the port, then Liverpool's gateway to the world.

Now the red-bricked facades have become a main stage for the most brutal political theatre of the age. Bedford Road is an amphitheatre in which every agonising wince and twist of the British hostage saga is played out and amplified into the next act of a drama with a global reach.

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Extract

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The Week That War Hit Home; the Hostage: Hundreds of Soldiers Have Died, Thousands of Iraqis Have Been Killed, and at Least 20 Foreign Nationals Are Still Being Heldhostage in Iraq but It has Taken the Anguish of a British Hostage and His Family to Waken Up the Country to the Price of Ousting Saddam Hussein

The satellite trucks, one flanking the road on either side of the chip shop at the end of the street, relay the images to the horrified fireside audience, the steely policy makers in Western capitals and the very hostage takers themselves, who act as directors and horrific central players in the piece.

Yesterday morning the tension on Bedford Road was ratcheted up again. Extra police officers were posted outside the door of number 54, where Ken Bigley's mother Lil lies shielded behind flimsy blinds, as out of the ether a posting on an Islamic website claimed the British hostage had been k...

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