Efraim Karsh's book on the creation of the modern Middle East is timely but overstates his case

"The refusal to accept any domination of the Continent by one power has been the biggest British contribution to European peace and prosperity"

"What should one make intellectually of the emotional contemplation of life on the Western Front? What is there to learn?"

‘It is tempting to pretend that the mayhem unleashed by the Arab Spring will somehow not affect us. It will. It already does’