Courage. Discipline. Respect for others. Integrity. Loyalty. Selfless commitment.
First are posts on my journey as a writer. The struggles, and what I have learnt. Maybe they will provide other authors with helpful insights. I do hope so.
May 1, 2026
The Beginnings
Like most, I came to writing by accident. Divorce was the first real spur. My sojourn in that particular wilderness gave me a great deal to get off my chest. And sitting in the frigid interior of the yacht to which life had banished me, hammering away at the keys of …
May 9, 2026
Aristotle
Aristotle The army has a habit of leaving soldiers in places where the stories make themselves. I started keeping notes. At the time it was for no particular reason. Now I am grateful, the notes jog my memory, fuel my writing. One late …
May 15, 2026
Knowledge Gap
There is another thing I have learnt from David Baboulene. It is a learning I immediately grasped. And have been unable to ignore ever since. Nowadays – post Bab, as I like to term it – I can hardly watch …
June 5, 2026
The Orphans of Aleppo
A story has to have a structure. A beginning, a middle, and an end. The cleverness – the joy of writing – is in the construction. Granting a reader his first awareness of a situation, teasing a realisation that all …
June 12, 2026
The Character
I met him in a room in Saddam’s Ba’ath Party Headquarters. Baghdadis called the building Qasr-al-nihayah – the castle of the end. It squatted like an angry potentate, scowling out over the oily filth of the Tigris. On its roof …
June 26, 2026
The Chinook
The aircraft was almost unbearably loud. A Chinook with the ramp half open and a loadmaster in a helmet with a mirrored visor staring wistfully into the desert. Engines that made any sort of conversation impossible. Ten of us on …
These are all my posts so far. They cover a wide range of topics in my area of interest. And some would say, expertise!
July 28, 2026
Iran – Iraq War Part 2
The background to war Saddam’s tolerance was quickly exhausted. The revolution was threatened. The logic for an invasion started to crystallise. Invading Iran would give Saddam’s pan Arab aspirations territorial reality and the 1975 Algiers accord had stung. Certainly it …
July 21, 2026
Iran – Iraq War Part 1
The Causes and consequences of the Iran Iraq war Introduction Britain’s withdrawal from the Middle East in the late 1960’s left unresolved territorial disputes between Iraq and Iran which led to the 1975 Algiers accord. But Iraq remained disgruntled and …
July 15, 2026
Iranian Foreign Policy Part 4
Iran’s growing Hegemony Hezbollah’s brief war with Israel in 2006 provided further affirmation of Iran’s growing hegemonic power. The conflict was interpreted on the Arab street as proof that an Iranian backed Arab nationalist movement was capable of holding even powerful Israel …
July 7, 2026
Iranian Foreign Policy Part 3
Enter the General. President Bush’s war on terror and ongoing US antipathy paved the way for the arrival of a new figure in Iranian foreign policy. Enter General Ghassem Soleimani, a key figure in Iran’s modern history and a central …
June 30, 2026
Iranian Foreign Policy Part 2
This is the second of four posts on how Iran’s foreign policy actually developed over the last hundred years, and how the attacks of 9/11 and the Global War on Terror transformed it completely. The Cold War and the Coup …
June 26, 2026
The Chinook
The aircraft was almost unbearably loud. A Chinook with the ramp half open and a loadmaster in a helmet with a mirrored visor staring wistfully into the desert. Engines that made any sort of conversation impossible. Ten of us on …
June 23, 2026
Iranian Foreign Policy Part 1
This is the first of four posts on how Iran’s foreign policy actually developed over the last hundred years, and how the attacks of 9/11 and the Global War on Terror transformed it completely. Iranian foreign policy in the 20th …
June 19, 2026
Conflict
He was a policeman. He worked at the airport. And he was the source of the most accurate intelligence we had. It was on the strength of his warnings that we were able to interdict the powerful 82 mm mortars …
June 16, 2026
Hizballah Formation Part 4
This is the fourth of four posts on how Hizballah actually came to exist. Last week I explained how Israel’s military heavy handedness forced what was initially “just” a Lebanese resistance group into the bosom of Iran’s energetic new islamic …
June 12, 2026
The Character
I met him in a room in Saddam’s Ba’ath Party Headquarters. Baghdadis called the building Qasr-al-nihayah – the castle of the end. It squatted like an angry potentate, scowling out over the oily filth of the Tigris. On its roof …