David Pryce-Jones
1979 & All That
Revolutionary Iran: A History of the Islamic Republic
By Michael Axworthy
Allen Lane/The Penguin Press 496pp £25 order from our bookshop
Events at the close of the 20th century illustrate what has been called the cunning of history. The coincidence of Ayatollah Khomeini’s seizure of power in Iran in 1979 and the end of the Cold War a decade later brought about a shift in the international order. Hitherto passive and seemingly marginalised, Muslims were now able to operate politically and militarily in a world suddenly freed from former restraints, sometimes confronting each other and sometimes engaged in a clash of civilisations with non-Muslims.
Public opinion in the West was not prepared for anything so unpredictable. Out of either ignorance or a misguided sense of superiority, most people in the West had never felt the need to sort out quite basic facts about the Muslim world: for instance,
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
'There are at least two dozen members of the House of Commons today whose names I cannot read without laughing because I know what poseurs and place-seekers they are.'
From the archive, Christopher Hitchens on the Oxford Union.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/mother-of-unions
Chuffed to be on the Curiosity Pill 2020 round-up for my @Lit_Review piece on swimming, which I cannot wait to get back to after 10+ months away https://literaryreview.co.uk/different-strokes https://twitter.com/RNGCrit/status/1351922254687383553
'The authors do not shrink from spelling out the scale of the killings when the Rhodesians made long-distance raids on guerrilla camps in Mozambique and Zambia.'
Xan Smiley on how Rhodesia became Zimbabwe.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/what-the-secret-agent-saw