‘This book’, Boutros Boutros-Ghali intones in its closing pages, ‘has been about the loss of an opportunity to construct an agreed-upon post-Cold War structure for international peace and security.’ Rarely, even in memoirs, do authors fall quite so foul of the Trades Descriptions Act. Boutros-Ghali was United Nations Secretary-General from 1992 to 1996; and it […]
In the late 1970s, I had a colleague in the World Service of the BBC by the name of Feyyaz Fergar. We all loved him, especially in the basement bar of Bush House on Aldwych, but alas many of us did not discover until too late that, as well as being an uplifting companion, he […]
In April 1996, a group called Dignity for Colombia abducted the brother of a former president and demanded that García Márquez be installed as head of state. The Nobel Laureate begged them to release the hostage, insisting he would be ‘the worst president ever’. The episode is as surreal as anything in his novels. Imagine […]
A DECADE OR so ago, I was invited by the Foreign Office to a seminar at Ditchley Park, a grand mansion in the country, to promote understanding between the West and the world of Islam. There were, as expected, the usual senior diplomats (the Foreign Office ‘Arabists’), becoming dewy-eyed whenever they heard the names of […]
UNLIKE MANY OF those whose tiers-mondiste sympathies are merely gestural or rhetorical, the philosopher Roger Scruton has an honourable record of opposing totalitarian tyranny and standing up for unfashionable causes, as both the Czechs and the Lebanese Maronites have reason to know.
A ‘JARHEAD’ IS a US Marine, so named because his head looks like a jar, with his scalp completely shaved on the back and sides, leaving only a flat, no 1 buzz-cut circle on top. Anthony Swofford was a jarhead, a lance corporal in a Marine sniper platoon, a third-generation soldler, and at the age […]
‘It is time’, writes Robert Kagan, ‘to stop pretendng that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world.’
WE ARE NOW familiar with the horrors of the two world wars and of the breakup of Yugoslavia; but the two Chechen wars of the mid-to-late 1990s, std continuing into the twenty-first century, are truly a foreign country to us, despite some excellent books by journalists who covered the conflicts. They are important for various […]
HISTORY IS ARGUABLY the most pernicious weapon in the hands of the protagonists in the Arab-Israeli conflict. It can be unsheathed at any moment to lop the head off a promising peace initiative when one side feels, as invariably happens, that the deal falls short of expectations. So it is a brave man or woman […]
A COUPLE OF months ago, at a formal dinner at a club in Pall Mall of which John Simpson was a member until a couple of years ago, a British officer told of his experiences in the recent war in Iraq. Because of the vastness of the subject, the speaker’s normal time of twenty minutes […]
Words assume an enormous significance in warfare. The First and Second World Wars or the Cold War each got right what was at stake, in a way that ‘war on terror’ doesn’t. At present, many policymakers are desperately searching for an alternative since ‘terror’ is a tactic, and many of the activities we routinely place […]
Ali Allawi’s credentials for writing The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace are unimpeachable. Born an Iraqi Shi’a, Allawi spent most of his life in exile from his native country, pursuing careers in banking and academia (paralleled by his role as a leader of the Iraqi exile community), before his return to […]
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Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm