Justin Marozzi

Justin Marozzi is the author of Captives and Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World, published by Allen Lane on 9 July.

Thursday

Justin Marozzi

I’ve spent years in war zones. And the most terrifying moment of my life just happened in Norfolk

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_9_Oct_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Justin Marozzi and Caroline Kisko, Kennel Club Secretary, discuss vicious dogs” startat=1287] Listen [/audioplayer]It happened so quickly, as these things always do. My wife Julia and I were pootling about on Wells beach with our fluffy mongrel Maisie when suddenly two fighting dogs, English bull terriers, came flying towards us like calf-high missiles.

Thursday

Justin Marozzi

More derring dos and don’ts from Paddy Leigh Fermor

Recent years have seen the slim but splendid Patrick Leigh Fermor oeuvre swell considerably. In 2008 came In Tearing Haste, an entertaining collection of letters to and from Deborah Devonshire, followed last year by The Broken Road, the posthumously sparkling and long-awaited completion of the ‘Great Trudge’ trilogy, which finally delivered the 18-year-old Paddy from

Thursday

Thursday

Justin Marozzi

In defence of Herodotus

How many writers would give their eye teeth to have a book reissued 2,500 years after their death? It certainly beats being pulped after a year or two. And who better to receive the Penguin Hardback Classic treatment than Herodotus, the fifth-century BC ‘Father of History’, he to whom historians today owe so much, whether

Monday

Justin Marozzi

The Broken Road, by Patrick Leigh Fermor - review

Sound the trumpets. Let rip the Byzantine chorus of clattering bells and gongs, the thunder of cannons, drums and flashing Greek fire. Raid cellars and let champagne corks fly. Eighty years after Patrick Leigh Fermor’s epic trudge across Europe, 20 years after the death of his long-suffering publisher Jock Murray, ten years after the passing

Justin Marozzi

Revealed: Essays of a tyrant's son

Tripoli Someone somewhere must have decided it was worth keeping. Like many parents around the world, Colonel and Mrs Gaddafi were probably terribly proud of their child’s progress at school. But you can’t take everything with you when the mob is storming the barricades. So there it was strewn on a patch of sun-parched lawn,

Saturday

Justin Marozzi

Embattled dystopia

Pity the modern dictator. Time was he could bump off a recalcitrant opposition figure, take out a dissident stronghold, massacre the entire population of a town and the world would be none the wiser. There might be a pesky reporter trying to get to the truth, but that could be taken care of, as President

Saturday

Justin Marozzi

Travails with Auntie

He’s the Housewives’ Favourite, the Voice of Middle England on Radio 2, one moment discussing the perils of your other half leaving the gas on, the next slipping on an Elvis Costello track to liven up your lunch. Bit of a cheeky chappie, affable, engaging, amusing, doesn’t appear to take himself too seriously. We like

Thursday

Justin Marozzi

The post-Gaddafi future | 20 October 2011

We tweeted a link to this earlier, but thought CoffeeHousers would appreciate this Spectator article from August on the future of Libya. The question for Libyans, as they take their first momentous steps into the post-Gaddafi era, is whether they can now build a government and country worthy of their heroic struggle against one of

Thursday

Justin Marozzi

"Tripoli is our capital"

Tripoli East is East and West is West, as Kipling once reminded us, but in Libya at least the twain have certainly met. For the past six months Free Libya has been headquartered in eastern Libya, or ancient Cyrenaica. When Tripoli started sliding out of Gaddafi’s control on 20 August, the dribble from east to

Wednesday

Justin Marozzi

Black gold: the key to Libya's future

Tripoli The Roman theatre in Sabratha simmers in the afternoon sun, glowing a warm terracotta. It is a magnificent site as we head west from Tripoli to the Mellitah Oil and Gas Complex. Dating back to the irrepressibly commercial Phoenicians, who founded a trading post here sometime between the fourth and seventh centuries BC, Sabratha

Sunday

Justin Marozzi

A day out at Gaddafiland

Tripoli What to do on a weekend in revolutionary Tripoli? There’s no doubt about the city’s most popular family day out. Hundreds of cars and thousands of Tripolines drive into Bab al-Aziziya, the Gaddafi family fortress. A vast compound strictly off limits for ordinary Libyans until only a few days ago is now the scene

Friday

Justin Marozzi

Libya’s next battle

Tripoli Two months ago Mazin Ramadan, senior advisor to Ali Tarhuni, the oil and finance minister recently promoted to deputy prime minister, was, in his own words, fire-fighting a liquidity crisis in Benghazi. Today, after the first tranche of the £1.8 billion frozen Libyan dinars sitting in Britain finally reached Libya after five months, he’s

Thursday

Justin Marozzi

The warmest of welcomes

Tripoli It would probably be stretching the truth a little to say that the British prime minister runs Allah a close second when it comes to expressions of gratitude at checkpoints on the way into Tripoli from the Tunisian border, but there’s no doubting his popularity. “David Cameron, veery, veeeery good!” is a typical reaction

Saturday

Justin Marozzi

The post-Gaddafi future

The question for Libyans, as they take their first momentous steps into the post-Gaddafi era, is whether they can now build a government and country worthy of their heroic struggle against one of the world’s worst tyrants. For decades, conventional thinking about Arab nations, especially among the experts, argued that they were best ruled by

Saturday

Justin Marozzi

Ways of escape

When I compiled a list of the top dozen travel writers of the past century for an American magazine the other day, it required some effort not to come up with an entirely British cast. Freya Stark, Norman Lewis, Patrick Leigh Fermor and Jan Morris were musts. So too were V. S. Naipaul and Colin

Saturday

Justin Marozzi

Killer clowns

For 20 years I have seen Colonel Gaddafi every morning. He greets me with a faraway look in his eyes as I step into my study. It is one of those vast propaganda portraits, 5ft by 3ft, beloved by serial kleptocrat dictators. Looking youthful, almost serene, he sports a bouffant hairdo and military uniform with

Saturday

Justin Marozzi

Hand over fist

When King Abdullah first started work on this political memoir two years ago, he can hardly have imagined how different the Middle East would look by the time of its publication. Change in this region, which prizes stability above all else, mostly occurs at a glacial pace, if it happens at all. Yet the region

Saturday

Justin Marozzi

Can this man defeat al-Qa’eda?

Amr Khaled’s TV preaching has made him Islam’s answer to Billy Graham – and he’s mounting a direct attack on the terror camps of Yemen Aden, Yemen There’s a new weapon in the war on terror, ladies and gentlemen. Never mind drones and spies, surgical strikes and covert ops, they’re old hat. There’s a time

Saturday

Justin Marozzi

The poetry of everyday life

In an age when it is fashionable to travel with a fridge, Nicholas Jubber’s decision to take an 11th-century epic poem as his travelling companion to Iran and Afghanistan can only be admired. In an age when it is fashionable to travel with a fridge, Nicholas Jubber’s decision to take an 11th-century epic poem as