The Great War for Civilisation: the conquest of the Middle East, by Robert Fisk

October 14, 2005

This brilliant but enormous book (no less than 1,366 pages) has been sixteen years in the making. Its obvious ingredients are 328,000 notes, documents and dispatches and Robert Fisk’s thirty years’ experience of reporting the Middle East. But there is also a hidden element – the author’s ethical, philosophical and moral approach to his life’s work.

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Lawrence of Arabia rides again

October 5, 2005

After watching the England v India one day cricket match at Lords last summer, I had a drink with Peter O’Toole and then walked with him to his car. Outside Lords Tavern we passed a large group of young Indians having a few beers to celebrate their team’s victory. The moment they spotted O’Toole they broke into a chant of “Lawrence. . . Lawrence . . Lawrence.” Thinking about it later I realised how extraordinary this was. It was not O’Toole’s presence as an actor that excited them but the image of Lawrence of Arabia, a man who had lived and died before they were even born.

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Four years in, how is the war on terror going?

September 7, 2005

It is four years since President Bush declared a global war on terror so it is fair to ask: how is it going? Well, the first point to make is that it is not a war on terror anymore. One of Washington’s sneakier tactics is that if a crucial policy begins to lose public support, you don’t change the policy, you just change its name and carry on. So it is no longer the war on terror. It is the “global struggle against violent extremists”.

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England and Australia are trading places

September 7, 2005

It does not matter whether England or Australia triumphs in the fifth Test which begins at the Oval tomorrow–the significance of this clash of two cricketing titans has already been established. England is again a power in the game and Australia is the struggling underdog. I see this this an early sign that England and Australia are trading places, not just in sport but in other walks of life as well.

England has been regarded as a class-ridden, arrogant, unreliable, condescending nation, in mourning for its lost greatness. Its sporting efforts have invariably ended in disappointment. Australia was the young, forward-looking, egalitarian country and its many sporting triumphs a symbol of its confidence.

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Swingeing Pom. Christopher Hitchens and the road to curmudgeonhood.

September 1, 2005

A couple of years ago at Britain’s premier literary festival, Hay-on-Wye, two star performers dominated the programme: ex-President Bill Clinton and journalist/author/commentator Christopher Hitchens. Clinton arrived in his Secret Service car, attended a few parties, hit a few golf balls, made a politically-stirring speech and departed to a boo or two for keeping a crowd of well-wishes waiting.

Hitchens arrived jet-lagged after a seven-hour plane trip from America and four-hour car journey from London, dishevelled and clearly under the spell of an indeterminate number of whiskies. To the barely-concealed alarm of the festival organisers, he went to the performers’ hospitality room and ordered more. It was going to be a long-night.

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All of These People: a memoir by Fergal Keane

March 18, 2005

This is a book about two Fergal Keanes. The first part tells in lyrical terms of his boyhood in an Ireland that has since disappeared. His father Eamonn was an actor whose talent was sabotaged by a lifelong love of drink that ruined his marriage and alienated him for many years from his son.

In fact, drink runs like a leitmotif through the book. In Keane’s early days in journalism, one gets the impression that there was hardly a reporter on the Irish papers who was sober long enough to write a story. Practical jokes were common, the victims usually junior journalists. One was sent to a council meeting to deliver to the city manager an important letter about the approaching St Patrick’s Day celebrations. The manager interrupted a speech, heaved with laughter and passed the letter back to the reporter. It read, “My name is John Breen and I want my arse painted green for St Patrick’s Day.”

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The First Casualty (2004)

September 1, 2004

The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist and Myth-Maker is recognised as the definitive book on war reporting and war propaganda.

From William Howard Russell who blew the whistle on the appalling conditions of the British forces in the Crimea, to the correspondents who lifted the lid on the reality of the Vietnam War, through to the modern day, it is a story of heroism and manipulation, censorship and espionage.

Buy The First Casualty — UK | US

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How frightened are you?

August 8, 2004

There are no tanks at Heathrow – yet. There is no ring of troops around London’s financial district – yet. But Britain is on a “heightened” state of alert as police at Paddington Green station continue to question terrorist suspects arrested at gunpoint in raids across the country earlier in the week.

Across the Atlantic, the Americans are on “orange” (the second highest) alert as the Homeland Security chief, Tom Ridge, said new intelligence suggested that al Qaeda planned car or truck bomb attacks on the Citicorp building, the New York Stock Exchange, and the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank buildings in Washington. American banks in London could also be targets.

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A great reporter is dead. Who are the campaigners now?

July 25, 2004

Paul Foot’s death last week is an even greater tragedy than realised: it marked the end of investigative reporting in Britain as we have known it. Foot’s working life spanned what can now be seen as a golden age for investigative and campaigning journalism, before greedy proprietors and their cost-cutting accountants killed it off.

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