The secret agents had been buzzing around China Correspondent Stephen McDonell so intrusively he knew he had to make them a part of the story but the moment he made that decision they vanished. What did he do to ensure they'd come rushing back into view to star in his story? What happened when Mark Corcoran found himself in Egypt's Tahrir Square and at the centre of one of 2011's biggest stories and began to lose his voice? When Japan shook, Mark Willacy was on assignment in Japan's south far from his young family in a shaking, shuddering Tokyo. How did they cope? All the answers ahead as we take you behind some of the year's assignments.