Working at The Spectator brings you into contact with intriguing people. One who stands out is John R. Bradley. He started writing for this magazine in 2011 in the wake of the Arab Spring, having accurately predicted the Egyptian uprising three years earlier in his 2008 book Inside Egypt: The Road to Revolution in the Land of the Pharaohs.
If the West had assumed that democracy would follow the revolution, John believed otherwise, and instead suggested that Islamism would triumph across the Middle East. He quickly became an invaluable contributor to The Spectator. ‘The situation has developed almost exactly along the lines that John R. Bradley predicted,’ wrote Fraser Nelson in 2011.
John’s knowledge of the Middle East was impressive. He was fluent in Arabic and seemed prepared to write on matters others might feel were best avoided. In 2010, he published Behind the Veil of Vice: The Business and Culture of Sex in the Middle East, challenging the post-9/11 narrative that sexual repression was fuelling Islamist extremism. ‘I offer a more nuanced account than is usually presented of the social world that shapes Arabs’ sex lives,’ John wrote. ‘Rent boys are to be found everywhere in the Middle East, and homosexuality and prostitution are very much two sides of the same coin,’ he told Salon magazine in 2010. ‘Gay sex is as ubiquitous as the call to prayer, and for many men, of course, bedding a boy is a far more appealing prospect than bending over in the mosque.’
His insights into Saudi Arabia were particularly sharp. From June 2001, he had worked for the English-language daily newspaper Arab News in Saudi Arabia and was one of the few western journalists with access to the kingdom.
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