For most of his ministry Canon Andrew White has been involved in reconciliation.

'The kind of people I engage with are not usually very nice,' he writes. 'On the whole, nice people do not cause wars.' In Baghdad he lives daily with violence, and has conducted too many funerals. He knows what peacemaking costs. Before he left for Baghdad in 2005 Andrew was Director of the International Centre for Reconciliation in Coventry. He bases his book on Coventry's Litany of Reconciliation, which asks God's forgiveness for the hatred, greed, envy, indifference, lust and pride which corrupt our world.