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Tag Archives: Afghanistan

On Uncertain Ground

In which I, ASH Smyth, High Anglican atheist, descendant of Huguenots, dissenters, Presbyterians, Church of Ireland types, and maybe even Quakers, make my Catholic press debut, on Phil Klay’s Uncertain Ground: Citizenship in an Age of Endless, Invisible War. — For The Catholic Herald

A Hitch in time

On the late, great Christopher Hitchens, and the role the Falklands may have played in his political development. — For The Critic

On Commonwealth Day

… my diaries relate a (very positive) diplomatic incident from 15 years ago. — For The Emigre

Beneath the mountains

Review of Alexandria: the Quest for the Lost City, by Edmund Richardson. — For The Spectator

The Gentleman’s Marathon

On my attempt to run 26.2 miles, in Pheidippides’ footsteps. — For The Critic

NEWS AT A GLANCE

. An architect named Firth was found at a Weymouth inquest to have shot himself in the side with a toy cannon while temporarily insane. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Tuesday, December 22 1908 . The SAS have killed some people in Afghanistan. The Veneziana pizza was invented in the 1970s by Pizza Express. In […]

Two thoughts – for Robert Twigger

. ‘A man on a straight path never got lost.’ — Idries Shah . ‘The trouble with the straight and the narrow ..Is it’s so thin, I keep sliding off to the side.’ — Jason Spaceman .

Did The English Patient send me to Afghanistan?

Two nights from now, by way of (ahem) a birthday present, I will be attending a live-orchestra screening of The English Patient at the Albert Hall. I had invited an old friend, a raven-haired young lady (named in Debrett’s) of impossibly romantic tendency, who first exposed me to the film in, I’d say, about 1998 […]

Intelligence review

‘For centuries before the Second World War, educated British people knew far more about intelligence operations recorded in the Bible than they did about the role of intelligence at any moment in their own history.’ Nowadays, one might think, few would even know that. But that’s where Christopher Andrew – Emeritus Professor of Modern and […]

I ink, therefore I am

On the choice and acquisition of my one and only tattoo. — For The Oldie