As happened with me and Nirvana, I found Marie Colvin too late. After a childhood spent in the Soviet Union and early teens in the periphery of the newly independent Estonia, I only really found out about Nirvana once Kurt Cobain died. I went on to listen to them obsessively and learn the words to everything from Polly to Where Did You Sleep Last Night, but I never quite got over the fact I had missed them in real time. And so it was with Colvin. I vaguely remember seeing her on TV a couple of times, but I only really became aware of her in 2012, when she was killed in Homs.

I have always been drawn to fields that are described as ‘traditionally masculine’ or ‘male-dominated’ and felt affinity with women who have operated in these environments. Colvin is one of the most extraordinary examples of the latter. A war correspondent of outstanding bravery and ambition, she covered everything from Middle East to Chechnya to East Timor to Sri Lanka to Syria. Lindsey Hilsum’s book looks at both her astonishing career and difficult personal life – war, death, starvation, suffering, lovers, drinking, glamour, PTSD, heartache, comraderie, more war.

It is a very good book. It is good partly because the story itself is so dramatic and Colvin’s personality so magnetic. A female war correspondent with an eye patch (she lost an eye in Sri Lanka) who out-drinks and out-braves all the men and sleeps with whom she wants sounds too cool to be true. And it was. For every award, there were hundreds of nightmares; alongside all the fun there was alcoholism and depression; and she was almost constantly unlucky in love – something we like to think shouldn’t matter for an independent, accomplished woman, but of course it does. Or to avoid generalisations – it did for her.

It is, however, a very good book also because Lindsey Hilsum has worked so hard on it. She knew Colvin and had access to her diaries and documents and also pretty much everyone important in her life who wasn’t dead. She is a war correspondent herself and therefore someone who could understand Marie better than most. Her background comes through in the book: it reads like a very long, very thorough and very good reportage on Marie’s life; scrupulous, balanced and heartfelt.

Sometimes, this becomes a bit too much – there are so many names and places, so much happening, that I craved a change of pace and more reflection. Then again, there simply was so much to Colvin’s story and considering that she always saw herself as a reporter rather than an analyst, Hilsum’s seems a fitting approach. It’s not like there is no reflection at all, there is, although Hilsum refrains from passing almost any kind of judgement, presenting different sides in a way that seems extremely fair.

While the book doesn’t go into depth on broader issues, it does illuminate many of them: the role of journalists and war journalism in particular, addiction and mental fragility, the motivations of people who do work like this. One interesting theme is Colvin’s gender. It is fascinating to see that in her work, it never really seemed to be an impediment. Sometimes, it worked in her favour. Where she struggled was her private life: not fitting into the traditional feminine template, she suffered. Occasionally it feels like it did her as much damage as all the horrors she experienced when working. She didn’t fit the stereotypes in her relationships with women, either: it is an extremely common prejudice that ambitious women hate other accomplished women and view them as rivals. All evidence suggests that Colvin had many strong and lasting female friendships in her life and took many female reporters under her wing. It is the most heartwarming aspect of the book.

Reading In Extremis reminded me of something I have been thinking about a lot lately. It is no news that for hundreds, thousands of years of patriarchy, it’s been difficult for women to do their thing. Still, they have often succeeded, sometimes spectacularly so. Despite all the obstacles, women have been great leaders, scientists and fighters and the more carefully you read your history, the more evidence of this emerges. What is interesting (or maybe the right word is depressing), is how little we remember this and how little effect this seems to have on how we view women, men and the world. If the society doesn’t manage, despite its best efforts, to prevent women from doing ‘unwomanly’ things, it will certainly make us forget, to see this as some sort of anomaly or aberration. This constant erasure has come to bother me even more than straight-up discrimination. Women just aren’t leaders, we are told, despite Hatshepsut, Cixi and Angela Merkel. Women don’t have a scientific mind, despite Ada Lovelace, Barbara McClintock and Lise Meitner. And women are not, of course, war correspondents, despite Martha Gellhorn, Clare Hollingworth and Marie Colvin.

PS There is a very recent movie about Colvin’s life, A Private War, that looks very good as well.