Covid and Contempt for Syrian Lives

Reading Syrian state media, you might be left with the impression that the country’s coronavirus outbreak was wholly steady and under control.

Iraq’s Year of Assassination

Just over a month ago, the Iraqi scholar and historian Hisham al-Hashimi was murdered in Baghdad. His killers, two of them, arrived on a motorbike and did not hang around. They are yet to be identified.

What Is History?

An old headmaster of mine, who kindly lent me his copy of E. H. Carr’s What Is History?, had an answer for the question posed by its title. He fondly said that history is ‘the house in which all other subjects live’. That is the natural perspective of an educator, and of a man who read the subject himself and was keen to assert its importance.