Roger Hardy – författare

The conflicts and crises of today's Middle East are rooted in the colonial era. To better understand them, we need to acknowledge how Western imperialism negatively shaped the region and its destiny in the half-century between World War I and the happenings of the Cold War. That is the challenging argument of The Poisoned Well, which provides a vivid account of the struggle against European colonial rule in ten states stretching from North Africa to south Arabia. Drawing on a rich cast of eye-witnesses - ranging from nationalists and colonial administrators to soldiers, spies, and courtesans - The Poisoned Well brings to life the story of the making of the Middle East, highlighting the great dramas of decolonization such as the end of the Palestine mandate, the Suez crisis, the Algerian war of independence, and the retreat from Aden. It argues that imperialism sowed the seeds of future conflict - and poisoned relations between the Middle East and the West.Bolstered by firsthand accounts and interviews, readers will find a wise and humanistic account of the struggle for independence in the Middle East. Written by a former BBC journalist, it is a far-ranging, landmark work that will serve as the definitive history of Western imperialism in the Middle East for years to come.

'We fail to understand Islam,' writes Roger Hardy in the introduction to this book, 'and we are paying a high price for our failure.' "The Muslim Revolt" explains, in layman's language, a phenomenon that still seems to madden and perplex both the public and the policy-makers. In setting out to demystify Islamism and the forces that drive it, Hardy suggests that for the last two hundred years Muslims have been in revolt against Western domination - and against the failures and disappointments of modernisation. The book takes the form of a journey. Drawing on his travels and encounters as a journalist over the last thirty years, the author explains the political role of Islam in particular countries and regions - Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, south-east Asia, Europe - while at the same time telling the story of Islamism from its origins in the era of European colonialism to the emergence of Al-Qaeda and the global jihadists of today. In a challenging conclusion, Hardy warns that without a subtler grasp of Islamism and its discontents, the West will lose its much-vaunted battle for Muslim 'hearts and minds'.

Palestine, 1850: a backwater of the Ottoman Empire, but soon to become the focus of intense jealousies. Locally Arabs and Jews became increasingly polarised, internationally the vacuum left by the demise of the Ottoman Empire was filled with the rivalries of Western nations.This book is a vivid account, told through oral history and a wealth of photographs from the time, never previously published. They add new dimensions to our understanding of the history, the geography, and the human reality of Palestine.