The end of the beginning has been reached with modern Iraq pulverized into a virtual country.
All that was settled with the dismemberment of the Ottoman empire after the First World War is now undone with the emergence of ethnic and cultural boundaries overridden then by the interests and deliberate divide and rule politics of the victorious western powers.
The Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Iraq are agglomerations of ethnic diversity, of the deepest-rooted cultural and historical difference. The post 1918 frontiers were imposed but never accepted or even formally recognized by many of the peoples involved, not least by Turkey forced by the British to cede Mosul and its region (and its oil), but that concession never ratified by the Turks.
Now is the beginning of the end of a century of uneasy settlement and once more, as the Turkish parliament authorises the Turkish army to act against the Kurds regardless of modern frontiers, the history examination chestnut 'What were the causes of the First World War?' can be asked but terrifyingly recast as "what were the causes of the Third World War?'
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You think HG; there was a rather good article in prospect this month saying that actually things were going quite well.
I was once in Oh What A Lovely War. I played Sir John French , the comedy Seargeant and the comedy vicar, and a squaddie.
I did a bewilderingly melodic diembodied vicar`s voice that was the toast of St. Albans school having been based on the Chaplain . He really did speak to the tune of "Oh god our help in ages past" in a high register useful for piercing the Cathdedral`s vastness
I could not resist telling you this irrelevant autobiographical fact.Perhaps I should have tried harder
We were both at school in St Albans N so all accounts that bring it back
'a high register useful for piercing the Cathdedral`s vastness' are welcome; why is the cathedral so big? I can understand Ely, but St Albans?
It seems Kissinger once suggested, in the seventies, a bout of ethnic cleansing and rearranging in the Ottoman empire area and was thought beyond the pale; but then destroying modern Iraq was not conceived then either.
We were both at school in St Albans N so all accounts that bring it back
I `m fascinated ...you were at theGHighschool , the Grammar?... One iof thwe Church schools , they were all pretty good really . You could easily know relatives of mine .
St. Albans Cathedral is actually the largest in the country by some measure Never quite got it myself .
'You could easily know relatives of mine' .
To some degree, I know you, N.
(And how do you know I am not a relative of yours?)
Perhaps the cathedral was laid out on some sort of pagan ground plan - like the Christian church, so to speak?
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