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Tag Archives: Iraq

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

The Gentleman’s Marathon

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

Veterans of modern wars

In a mid-September interview with the Sunday Telegraph, Baron Richards of Herstmonceux (GCB, CBE, DSO, DL – better known as General David Richards, former Chief of the Defence Staff) made a comment to the effect that “a part-time soldier cannot be as effective as someone who’s devoted his life to it and puts on a […]

NEWS AT A GLANCE

. Fifty-one per cent of the foreigners in England live in London. — The Nelson Evening Mail, July 28 1906 . International rugby union referee Nigel Owens wears Superman pants while he’s officiating. The Iraqi army is about to defeat Islamic State. There’s no playbook for how to be a guy. In 1947 a United States […]

Heroes in error

Review of War Porn. — For The Spectator

Flak Jacket to Dust Jacket

Men at War: What Fiction Tells Us About Conflict, from The Iliad to Catch-22 By Christopher Coker (Hurst 325pp £25) My Life as a Foreign Country By Brian Turner (Jonathan Cape 240pp £16.99) Seamus Heaney once remarked upon the heroes of antiquity that it is ‘not so much their procedures on the page which are […]

Feats of Klay

Redeployment By Phil Klay (Canongate, 291pp, £15) ‘Nobody wants to do a year in Iraq’, mutters one of the narrators in Phil Klay’s Redeployment, ‘and come back with nothing but stories about the soft-serve ice-cream machine at the embassy cafeteria.’ No kidding. And Klay (rhymes with ‘guy’) will not have been the first soldier, American […]