Diary of a Human Shield

Five-year-old British hostage Stuart Lockwood became a media hero when, on television in August 1990, he resisted Saddam Hussein's patronizing attentions and attempt to score a propaganda point. Here his mother relates the broader story of the family's travail as hostages detained in Baghdad under Iraq's ``human shield'' policy. She is no stylist, nor does the book contain major revelations, but it is a fast-paced, inside look at the hostage crisis. The Lockwood family found their comfortable life in Kuwait, where the author's engineer husband worked as a technical advisor to the Kuwaiti government, interrupted by Iraqi invaders who took the men to Baghdad and occupied their British enclave. The women and children were soon moved to the Kuwait International Hotel and then to Baghdad, where they were reunited with the men and dubbed ``guests'' by Hussein. The normally outgoing Stuart, his mother believes, ``had a sixth sense'' to resist Hussein's entreaties. Less than 10 days later, the women and children were freed; Lockwood describes how Jesse Jackson, whose efforts she appreciated, scored his own propaganda points on the return to London. She then recalls the family's readjustment after a media siege that suggested ``I had swapped the house arrest of a dictatorship for the house arrest of a democracy.'' Photos. (May)