Bell is a familiar face on British television, usually reporting courageously from war zones - Bosnia in particular. He had long years of war coverage in Vietnam, Angola, etc. before that but the Bosnian atrocities and racial hatred were something else, and they obviously have shaken him deeply. Another grim assignment he was given was to report on the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. But it is Bosnia which still obsesses him: "I have believed from the start that this is a crisis which will end in two ways: either the stability of the rest of Europe will spread to the Balkans, or the instability of the Balkans will spread to the rest of Europe. It can still go either way."