[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/workingwithal-qa-eda/media.mp3″ title=”Ahmed Rashid and Douglas Murray discuss how the West is working with al-Qa’eda” startat=38] Listen [/audioplayer]After plunging Syria into five years of a bloody civil war that has killed 300,000 and displaced 10 million, Bashar al-Assad is preparing for the endgame. He has been digging a bunker for himself, creating an enclave in
[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/workingwithal-qa-eda/media.mp3″ title=”Mark Greaves discusses the Church of England’s plans for growth” startat=1513] Listen [/audioplayer]A new mood has taken hold of Lambeth Palace. Officials call it urgency; critics say it is panic. The Church of England, the thinking goes, is about to shrink rapidly, even vanish in some areas, unless urgent action is taken. This
Blue collars are all the rage in the Tory party these days, which makes Stephen Crabb a very fashionable cabinet minister. He was brought up in a Welsh council house by his mother, a single parent. His political views were shaped by seeing the way in which Thatcher’s reforms transformed his neighbourhood. He still believes
Sir Christopher Lee, who died last month aged 93, knew how to play a part. One of the consummate actors of his generation, whose career spanned nearly seven decades, his versatility on stage and screen was legendary. At first glance his military career during the second world war was similarly versatile. According to some reports
It’s Saturday morning in the courtyard of the Al-Zawiyah detention centre on the outskirts of Tripoli and Colonel Nourdeen Mishaal of Libya’s Ministry of Interior’s Department for Combating Illegal Immigration is about to have his weekend ruined. The Colonel has delivered an impassioned speech praising his own government and exhorting the West to do more
Wolves have powerful symbolic meanings for humans. They are part of the mythology that defines us: Little Red Riding Hood, Romulus and Remus, the wargs in Tolkien, Mother Wolf in The Jungle Book, Maugrim in The Chronicles of Narnia. Wolves have profound resonance for us all. Wolves intermittently break out in the stories we tell
At the weekend, I tried — and failed — to get some money out of an empty cashpoint near Omonia Square. The Eurobank cashpoint was covered in fresh anti-German graffiti: ‘No to the new German fascism,’ it read in Greek, ‘No to the “dosilogous”.’ That’s the Greek for Nazi collaborators in the war. For any
My first reaction on hearing of Margaret Thatcher’s death in 2013 was: ‘Great — now my autograph from her will go up in value.’ This wasn’t callous. It was a simple application of demand and supply. As a child of the 1980s I had learned my lesson well. The Lady wouldn’t have objected to me
