Colonial threads combine to strangle a sectarian Syria

Twenty-five years ago, I travelled by land through what geographers called Greater Syria to write a book. I began in…

Afghanistan’s Endless Private-Security War

The week of March 20 was supposed to have been Afghanistan’s first without private-security companies on its soil since the…

The April 2012 issue of Harper’s Magazine includes “The Warrior Class,” a feature by Charles Glass on the rise of…

Tim Spicer’s career as a soldier of fortune seemed over by 2001, when he attended a lunch at the Royal…

It started in France in 1894, when a Viennese journalist covered the Paris treason trial of Captain Alfred Dreyfus. “In…

Review of Levant: Splendour and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean by Philip Mansel John Murray, 480 pp, £10.99, September 2011, ISBN…

Review of Patriot of Persia by Christopher de Bellaigue Bodley Head, 310pp, £20

Nigeria buried the remains this week of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, who died last November in Britain, in his village of Nweni.…

Aleppo is a town of eminent consequence, and in all ages its fame has flown high. The kings who have…

Syria’s leading poet Ali Ahmad Said Asbar, better known by his nom de plume Adonis, spoke for many in his…