Paul Wood

Look down from the mountains outside Beirut and, on most days, you’ll see a grey blanket of smog choking the city. The smog comes from diesel generators: almost every building in Lebanon is hooked up to one because of rolling power cuts. This isn’t because Israel bombed one of the country’s few power stations in

The special counsel, like Garbo, just wants to be left alone. But his report leaves some very important questions unanswered

Beirut: At seven in the morning of June 5th, 1967, Israeli warplanes took off to launch a surprise attack that would destroy the air forces of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq while they were still on the ground. The Syrian defence minister, Hafez al Assad, ordered a counterattack by his ground forces, tanks rumbling down from

The Daily Telegraph this week has a ‘scoop’ about the UK government giving permission for the Mueller inquiry to talk to former MI6 officer Christopher Steele about his evidence, which said Donald Trump was compromised by the Kremlin. The Telegraph story certainly sets the mood for President Trump’s state visit to Britain in eleven days’

In the 1990s film The Usual Suspects, the detective character explains how to spot a murderer. You arrest three men for the same killing and put them in jail. The next morning, whoever’s sleeping is your killer. That’s because the nightmare of being on the run is over. It’s a relief to be caught. ‘You

290 people have been killed in what is believed to be a series of Islamist attacks in Sri Lanka. Writing in The Spectator last month, Paul Wood says that while Isis’ territory has gone, the threat from jihadis has not gone away:  Beirut As I write, Isis is still holding out on a few hundred