''Bombs were being dropped on civilians that had nothing to do with September 11 and I remember shouting at the TV, 'Stop it! Stop it!,''' says the 82-year-old social commentator, author and former journalist, who was a pioneer in documentary filmmaking in Australia and famous 40 years ago as the ''Omo lady'' after making TV ads for the washing powder.

Deveson was strongly opposed to the Howard government's involvement in Iraq, and had joined 250,000 anti-war protesters in Hyde Park on February 16, 2003. But the anger she felt about Iraq stirred memories of her own war experiences, which began when she was a young girl living in England during World War II. It was also the catalyst for writing her recently published memoir, Waging Peace: Reflections on Peace and War from an Unconventional Woman.

In the book, Deveson argues that we need ''to wage'' peace with the same passion that we wage war.

''I think the origin of this book had a lot to do with my background, growing up in the war, making films about war,'' she says. ''I was always conscious of the horrors of war and the damage it inflicts on people.''

Although her family were English, Deveson was born in Malaya, where her father was a rubber planter. Later they moved back to England. Her father ran a hotel but was a poor business manager and had to return to Malaya, while Deveson remained in England. Soon after, war erupted in Europe.

Deveson remembers being bewildered by the war. ''It was bewilderment about what war means and why our lives were in danger. And how people could be so cruel.''

The family eventually reunited in Malaya, where Deveson attended a convent boarding school in the Cameron Highlands. But then the Japanese invaded, and in 1942 the family had to evacuate to Australia, where they lived as refugees on a farm outside Perth.

After the war the family returned again to England. Deveson became a journalist, but missed Australia and returned here permanently in 1956. She now lives in the Sydney beachside suburb of Clovelly. ''I missed the spaces, the landscape, the friendliness we'd found in Australia,'' she says.

Married for 20 years to broadcaster Ellis Blain, with whom she had three children (one of whom is the novelist Georgia Blain), Deveson eventually made her name in Australia as a filmmaker. She was also a panellist on the TV show Beauty and the Beast and ran a current affairs radio program on 2GB.

In 1974 she was appointed to the Royal Commission on Human Relationships, which Gough Whitlam set up to examine changes emerging from Australian society's postwar conservatism. She made award-winning films about social justice issues, such as hospitals taking newborn babies away from unmarried mothers and vulnerable people being cheated by the funeral industry.

Her interest in filmmaking took her around the world, particularly to African countries such as Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia. It exposed her again to the savagery of war. The worst, she says, was Rwanda's conflict between the Tutsis and Hutus.

''It was seeing the accumulation of death and cruelty there. There were walls of dead people, including children, lining the roadway when we arrived at the checkpoint going into Rwanda.''

She recounts these horrific experiences in Waging Peace to draw our attention to the waste and futility of military conflict.

However, personal tragedy often shadowed her career. In 1991 she wrote the book Tell Me I'm Here about her eldest son, Jonathan, who developed schizophrenia and died of a drug overdose. When the man she fell in love with after her marriage ended, English economist Robert Theobald, died suddenly of cancer in 1999 she wrote Resilience, about how we can grow despite adversity. She has also published a novel, Lines in the Sand.

It might seem incongruous now that an anti-war campaigner with strong views on social justice once made commercials for washing powder. ''I had to answer for being the Omo lady,'' she says, laughing.

Once, to escape her unwanted Omo fame, Deveson and Theobald holidayed at Dunk Island in north Queensland. ''After we found a peaceful beach, we suddenly heard the roar of a speedboat coming towards us and leaning over the bow were three very large women who then ran up to us and said, 'Oh, there's the Omo lady.'''

Waging Peace by Anne Deveson is published by Allen & Unwin, $29.99.

Anne Deveson will be a guest at the Sydney Writers' Festival, May 20-26 (swf.org.au).