Author

After 1945, shamefully, we Brits seemed dedicated to punishing the heroic Poles at every turn for their wartime loyalty.

From Alistair Horne

In the 17th century, Barbados was regarded in London as 'the brightest jewel in the English crown'.

From Alistair Horne

Though Barbados has been independent since 1966, its capital, Bridgetown, still has elements of a thriving British colonial port.

From Alistair Horne

Aung San Suu Kyi's late husband, Michael Aris, was a good friend of mine at St Antony's, Oxford. The gentlest of gentle academics, he helped establish a centre in Tibetan studies at Oxford and converted to Buddhism.

From Alistair Horne

On 6 October 1973, the Yom Kippur war broke out between a coalition of Arab states and Israel. At 6 A.M. that morning, Kissinger, asleep in the Waldorf, was taken by surprise by the Arab attack - as were the CIA and the rest of the world.

From Alistair Horne

Over the past years, I have lectured many times on the Cuban missile crisis, most provocatively to 200 senior officers of the former Soviet army in Moscow in 1991, among them KGB generals. There, my knowledge of Penkovsky's role was thoroughly confirmed, and so was the Soviet military men's residual sense of humiliation at Khrushchev's 'blink'.

From Alistair Horne

The eight-year-long Algerian war was to bring down six French prime ministers, open the door to de Gaulle - and come close to destroying him, too. The war was the last of the grand-style colonial struggles, but, perhaps more to the point, it was also the first campaign in which poorly equipped Muslim mujahedin licked one of the top Western armies.

From Alistair Horne

In the late 1980s, a new revolt broke out, this time led by the fundamentalist FIS (Islamic Salvation Front). Many of its leaders were the kind of young Algerians who joined the struggle against the French occupiers in the 1950s.

From Alistair Horne

By the end of 2001, between 100,000 to 150,000 Algerians had died in the civil war, as well as 120 foreigners. The cost to the economy ran into billions of dollars. And all this in spite of a tough, 120,000-strong army backed by 80,000 police.

From Alistair Horne

Following 9/11, intelligence indicated numerous links between al-Qa'eda and Algeria. It began to look as though the roots of jihad could be traced back to the war in Algeria that began 50 years ago.

From Alistair Horne

Alistair Horne

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