Syria
What would you do if you were a Syrian migrant?
‘Put yourself in their shoes,’ says Zahra Mackaoui, a British-Lebanese journalist who has been following the stories of refugees from…
What one activist’s death tells us about war crimes in Syria
In the 1990s film The Usual Suspects, the detective character explains how to spot a murderer. You arrest three men…
Vice vs vice: Cheney barbecues Pence in Georgia
It was no cakewalk for Vice President Mike Pence. He had showed up in Sea Island, Ga., reckoning that he…
I always come away more confused after listening to Moral Maze
Is it me or are we now faced (or perhaps I should say fazed?) much more often by stories in…
![Ivory plaque of a lioness mauling a man, ivory, gold, cornelian, lapis lazuli, Nimrud, 900 BC–700 BC. [© The Trustees of the British Museum]](https://spectatorau.imgix.net/content/uploads/2018/11/lioness_plaque.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=410&h=275)
The Assyrians of Ashurbanipal’s time were just as into pillage and destruction as Isis
The Assyrians placed sculptures of winged human-headed bulls (lamassus) at the entrances to their capital at Nineveh, in modern Mosul,…
How did mild-mannered eye doctor Bashar al-Assad end up a mass murderer?
‘How did this mild-mannered eye doctor end up killing hundreds of thousands of people?’ someone wondered about Bashar al-Assad in…
As Assad recovers, Syria is returning to stability
In order to avoid the Labour conference and yet more predictable media attacks on Jeremy Corbyn, I escaped late last…
In Idlib, the final chapter in Syria’s civil war has begun
Beirut The customs man wore a white linen suit. He had a large moustache. His ample belly touched the edge…
Assad is back for good in Syria – and with Trump’s blessing
Amid the confusion and the almost deafening cries of treachery and collusion over Donald Trump’s relations with Russia, few noticed…
Putin says he’s making Russia great again. In reality, it’s crumbling
This is Putin’s time. Next week, the Fifa World Cup kicks off in Moscow, and the Kremlin has spared no…
Only Radio 4 would allow Ian McKellan and Joanna Lumley to play Mr and Mrs God
One sphere that podcasts have so far not much penetrated is drama. Audible.co.uk is itching to develop its own brand…
Portrait of the Week: Allied air strikes on Syria and the Windrush scandal
Home Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, apologised in Parliament for the treatment of immigrants from the Commonwealth from before 1971,…
Bombs away: Trump and Macron’s bromance is getting serious
Remember the never-ending handshake? It was 14 July 2017, Bastille Day, and Emmanuel Macron and Donald Trump opened their formal…
From a Low and Quiet Sea: making art from a perilous journey
Donal Ryan is one of the most notable Irish writers to emerge this decade. So far he has produced five…
A day of reckoning is coming for America’s muddled Middle East policies
Beirut ‘If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense,’ said Alice. ‘Nothing would be what it…
How can any intelligent person have faith?
Ten years ago, I had a strange debate about faith with a famous Jesuit and an agnostic psychoanalyst in a…
Britain and its allies are opening the way for yet another Iraq war
After the most intensive street-by-street combat since 1945, Isis’s so-called caliphate is no more. Last weekend, the Iraqi government won…
Putin the peacemaker
When Russia entered the Syrian civil war in September 2015 the then US secretary of defense, Ash Carter, predicted catastrophe…
Seeing the light
‘You can’t lie… on radio,’ says Liza Tarbuck. The Radio 2 DJ was being interviewed for the network’s birthday portrait,…
Straight to hell
No, The State (Channel 4) wasn’t a recruiting manual for the Islamic State, though I did feel uneasy about it…
The many sides of satire
Brexit the Musical is a peppy satire written by Chris Bryant (not the MP, he’s a lawyer). Musically the show…
Dark night of the soul
As bombs fall everywhere in Syria and IS fighters destroy Palmyra, a musicologist in Vienna lies awake all night thinking…
How Recep Erdogan became the most powerful man in Europe
Update: Since this article was published Ahmet Davutoglu has resigned as Turkey’s Prime Minister. Reports suggest this comes as a…
Further dispatches from Syria’s maelstrom
The mechanic, blinded in one eye by shrapnel, spent three days searching for his family in the destroyed buildings and…
Could radio save Syria?
Could radio, and in particular a weekly soap, have a role to play in the Syrian crisis? You might think,…
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