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!
April 24, 2026
Gaza Terror and Tragedy
It is hot on the road by the beach. A tanker crawls slowly past the glistening white minarets of the Al Khaldi mosque. On its dusty white flanks, the Arabic word for water, in uneven letters, advertises its contents. Over …
April 21, 2026
Israel – The crucible of Independence
(* the following is a fictional reconstruction of events) The Massacre at Deir Yassin – ‘Proud, generous and cruel’i They lie on their bellies in the starlit valley. They are angry young men, members of the Irgun group. They are …
April 17, 2026
Israel – The Hamas attacks
Whitehall, London 7 October 2023. It is an unseasonably warm mid-autumn in London. The trees in the great parks are a blur of orange and russet and the bright green grass is pockmarked by fallen leaves. Clear blue skies suspend …
April 15, 2026
Israel’s 100th birthday
(* The following is n imagined a reconstruction based on documented accounts of Netanyahu’s Bible study gatherings.) It is a mild late autumn day and the yellow Jerusalem stone of the Prime Minister’s angular residence on Balfour street is bathed …
April 7, 2026
Israel’s Mossad – an assassination too far
Amman, Jordan The skies over Jordan’s capital city are a shimmering blue, the temperature hovering at a comfortable 24 degrees Celsius. Khaled Meshal gazes thoughtfully from the window of his Mercedes at the traffic teeming between the tightly packed residences …
April 3, 2026
Understanding the Conflict between Arabs and Persians in the Middle East
When the West ventures east, it ventures east with all the preconceptions borne of hundreds of years of its own development pathway. It meets, on arrival in the hot and dusty airports of Dubai, of Baghdad, Amman or Beirut, a …
March 31, 2026
The Shia Revival – Israel’s real problem
At 6 foot 6 inches tall Seyyid Musa al Sadr is a striking figure. The black turban he wears is adjusted at a jaunty angle, tipped back on his head, a fringe of dark hair curling from its edge. His …
March 27, 2026
Palestine Action – Freedom to protest
Everyone’s arguing about Palestine. Reality: the UK government just criminalised protest, got slapped down by the High Court, and showed us exactly how freedom dies. Pay attention.” In the aftermath of 911, the Bush administration ordered the FBI to hand …
March 24, 2026
Alex Pretti
Alex Pretti was on the ground, disarmed, pepper-sprayed, restrained by multiple ICE agents. Then he was shot dead. One question changes everything: why? Those who regard the death – now formally declared a homicide – of Alex Pretti on a …
March 20, 2026
Gordon Brown and Honour
Gordon Brown says we need better systems to clean up politics. One question: Why did you give Mandelson a peerage after he’d already resigned twice? Systems don’t fix dishonour. Values do. Gordon Brown has for long functioned as a sort …