I suspect that Kate Adie is not fond of the word “schoolmarmish” – a word one newspaper used to describe her when she was reporting for the BBC. But as she turns, with her pearls and her perfect vowels, to address the coach party, it is precisely the word that comes to mind. She kneels on her seat; the group sits to attention. There is, almost needless to say, no talking at the back. Ms Adie, one senses, is not the sort to tolerate misbehaviour.

Not that you would want to talk over this. Adie’s appearance may have the whiff of home-counties headmistress to it but her words definitely do not. “This is Sniper Alley,” she says, before adding, with the kind of casualness that indicates quite the reverse, that here was where her vehicle “took a spray of bullets. One went through. I got bullet fragments in my foot.” Ms Adie sits back. The class digests. School trips were never like this.

For those who are not familiar with her career, Adie was, for more than a decade, probably the BBC’s best-known news correspondent, reporting on the Rwandan genocide, the Gulf war and, most famously, the siege of Sarajevo. She was also one of its hardest. The foot wound is just one of three bullet wounds she has sustained. According to the BBC, British squaddies used to joke that “when Kate Adie arrived on the scene ... they knew they were in trouble”.