Hazhir Teimourian
Conquest In Double Time
The Iraq War
By John Keegan
Hutchinson 254pp £18.99 order from our bookshop
In The Company of Soldiers: A Chronicle of Combat in Iraq
By Rick Atkinson
Little, Brown 320pp £9.99 order from our bookshop
IT MAY SURPRISE readers to learn that this reviewer, who was born in the highlands of Iranian Kurdistan during the Blitz, has been associated with the British army all his life, though always remotely and with long interruptions. My small market town of Sahneh, on the ancient Royal Road between Persepolis and Sardis, was grateful to find itself in the British-occupied sector of Iran, rather than the Soviet part, and, to show that gratitude, my father regularly invited British officers to lunch.
Later on, of course, I found out that the presence of a British garrison near by had not been without its tensions. The soldiers had bought too much grain and prices had soared. But at least they had acted l a d y , and their presence had even helped
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
'He is persuaded by the idea that coffee, the most widely used psychoactive substance in the world, changed 18th-century European minds, catalysing a new material rationalism.'
@ajlees on Michael Pollan's new book, 'This is Your Mind on Plants'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/never-mind-the-neurobollocks
'A publicist interviewed by Fairrie praises Collins and her heroines ... because these were "women who behaved like men". Is that supposed to be good, given how men behaved towards Collins?'
Peter Conrad reviews a new documentary about Jackie Collins.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/easy-writer
'Walk down your supermarket pet food aisle and you’ll be hard pressed to find a single brand that claims to be made with high-welfare meat. More expensive pet food should not be about spoiling our cats but about sparing the farmed beasts we feed them.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/meattoo