Justin Marozzi
Angry Young Seyyed
The last adventure Rory Stewart wrote about was his walk across Afghanistan. This time, in Iraq, his aim is more ambitious. He is working for the Foreign Office, as representative of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in the southern province of Maysan.
‘My mission’, he writes, ‘was to create “a democratic Iraq at peace with itself and with its neighbours” or in the jargon popular in Baghdad, “a multi-ethnic, decentralised, prosperous state, based on human rights, a just constitution, a vibrant civil society and the rule of law”.’ He acknowledges that this seems a little overambitious.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
This 'jaunty narrative raises fundamental questions about the role of popular history. Should this just be a matter of telling tales, as the general public often seems to think?'
@DrLRoach weighs up Charles Spencer's account of the White Ship Disaster.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/wholl-take-the-helm
'Amis clearly belongs to the do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do school of pedagogy. More or less everything he says is demonstrably contradicted by elements of his own work, be they here or elsewhere.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/never-without-a-hitch
'The bar is set high at the outset, and readers are primed to wonder if Mikhail can make his case.'
Does Alan Mikhail's new life of the Sultan Selim I really overturn 'shibboleths that have held sway for a millennium'? Caroline Finkel investigates.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/master-of-the-universe-3