The Bride: An Illustrated History of Palestine 1850-1948
ROGER HARDY
(MOUNT ORLEANS PRESS, 320 PP, £15)
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T. E. LAWRENCE recounted that when Ronald Storrs, governor of Jerusalem 1917-26, was heading by ship for Jeddah, he discoursed at length with an Arab leader on Wagner and Debussy, all the while sitting in a red leather armchair, which his sweat in the heat caused the seat of his trousers to turn bright scarlet.

Roger Hardy, for two decades a Middle East analyst with the BBC World Service, judges that Storrs “epitomised the hubris of the Palestinian Raj”, as he calls the British Mandate from the League of Nations from 1920 to 1948.