Hazhir Teimourian

Bob Of Arabia

The War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East

By

Fourth Estate 1300pp £25 order from our bookshop

This tombstone of a book will make Robert Fisk an even greater star. Only a few of us will wonder whether he should have written it at all. It is deeply moving in places, maddening in others – just like the man himself.

I first met Fisk soon after Saddam Hussein started his ‘Whirlwind War’ against Iran in September 1980, a war that was to last eight years and kill between 700,000 and a million people. The late Charles Douglas-Home of The Times called me into his office to ask where Fisk ought to go next. I said ‘Baghdad’ and Fisk fell down in a mock faint to show he had yet to recover from his previous exertions.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'The 19th-century German sage is not my idea of a pleasant travel companion' goes hiking with Friedr… ,
    • If you want ideas about what to read next, sign up to our free email newsletter, and get book reviews, archive mate… ,
    • 'The heroic male nude could not, I think, be used today to signify civic pride and glory', as Michelangelo’s 'David… ,
    • 'Munch’s later works show us a man liberated from the torments that gave rise to some of the best-known early works… ,
    • 'We read from left to right and from start to finish. Or do we?' Stuart Hannabus considers the merits of reading i… ,
    • Domestic scandal, sexual abuse and serial killers are on the menu in April's crime round-up. revie… ,
    • What did Samuel Johnson, Joshua Reynolds, James Boswell and Edmund Burke all have in common? Clare Bucknell reveal… ,
    Follow Us