A Political Refugee From The Global Village

Joseph De Maistre said that nations are not made of ink. In the future they will be. Made of values, anyway, which come to the same thing. ...

Joe, the Englishman who lived twelve years in Damascus, sent me these comments, which he says are quick and garbled, on yesterday's pos...

I was in Syria in 2007 and this is what I saw.   I was also in Beirut last October. I had a couple of interesting conversations. My taxi ...

This is a link to two exceptionally important interviews , one with Peter Oborne, an unusually fair-minded journalist with no axe to grind,...

I recommend you click on this very interesting article   by Alastair Crooke  in the Huffington Post about the sudden recent successes of t...

"If you know your enemy and you know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the ...

I was arguing with a Romanian friend (Romanians are often tremendous intellectual snobs) who insisted that Donald Trump, Sarah Palin and Ge...

I was sorry to hear last week that Peter Tweedie has died, aged 68, though I didn't know him. I think I met him three times and not si...

Feminists, I hope, will be reminded of Cologne every time they talk about rape for many years to come. I hope worse things do not happen fo...

I am very pleased that migrants committed the  Cologne mass sexual assaults  this New Year's Eve and not in two or three years' tim...

I thought of several distant countries to visit at Christmas time when nothing happens for two or three weeks. In the end England seemed mo...

Find out what you like doing best, and get someone to pay you for it. Katharine Whitehorn If you plan on being anything less than you are c...

I always go to Spain or Greece thinking I am 40 years too late, France 50 years too late but when I came to Romania in 1990 I said to mysel...

To my American friends celebrating Thanksgiving I wish them a happy occasion and remind them of a joke of Garrison Keillor, whom I love.  ...

According to Harold Macmillan's diary, Winston Churchill told his cabinet in January 1955 that Keep England White  would be a good...

I thought walking through the streets between Cismigiu and Buzesti, decaying 1880s buildings, trees bright brown with autumn leaves, that B...

I remember my history master of genius, Dr Alan White, mentioned this history exam question 'Asquith was the last British Prime Min...

I was on a bus - my ticket cost $1- going from Palmyra to Damascus and they were showing a BBC thriller with Arabic subtitles. TV in a bus ...

Romanian women can be dangerous but the two most dangerous were in fact ethnic Hungarians.  So it is said at least. I have blogged befo...

I told my boiled egg story just now for the first time in over 20 years and Andrei at the office laughed uncontrollably. Apart from him and...