A Peace to End All Peace
13 October '14
Peopled with larger-than-life figures such as Winston Churchill (around whom the story is structured), General Kitchener and T.E. Lawrence, Gertrude Bell, Attaturk, Emir Feisal and Lloyd George the book describes the showdown with the Ottoman Empire which erupted into the devastating Eastern campaign of World War I and led to the formation – by bureaucracy […]
A Line In The Sand
17 April '14
In 1916, in the middle of the First World War, two men secretly agreed to divide the Middle East between them. Sir Mark Sykes was a visionary politician; Francois Georges-Picot a diplomat with a grudge. The deal they struck, which was designed to relieve tensions that threatened to engulf the Entente Cordiale, drew a line […]
The Arabs and the Holocaust
17 April '14
The Arab-Israeli conflict goes far beyond the wars waged in the Middle East. There is a war of narratives revolving around the two defining traumas of the conflict: the Holocaust and the Nakba. Middle East expert Gilbert Achcar critically assesses Arab attitudes to the Holocaust, which he argues are closely related to the dynamics of […]
Shifting Lines In The Sand
17 April '14
An account of how the frontier between Iraq and Kuwait – the key cause of the Gulf war – was decided. In the 19th century Britain became aware of Kuwait’s strategic importance and used both diplomacy and gunboats to help its ruler ward off Ottoman territorial claims.
Britain and the Arabs
29 January '14
Crusades Through Arab Eyes, The
29 January '14
European and Arab versions of the Crusades have little in common. For Arabs, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were years of strenuous efforts to repel a brutal and destructive invasion by barbarian hordes. Under Saladin, an unstoppable Muslim army inspired by prophets and poets finally succeeded in destroying the most powerful Crusader kingdoms. The memory […]