Michael Kerr

Why Some Businesses are Laughing All the Way to the Bank

The Humor Advantage

Craig Larkin

Throughout the turbulent history of the Levant the 'Alawis - a secretive, resilient and ancient Muslim sect - have aroused suspicion and animosity, including accusations of religious heresy. More recently they have been tarred with the brush of political separatism and complicity in the excesses of the Assad regime, claims that have gained greater traction since the onset of the Syrian uprising and subsequent devastating civil war. The contributors to this book provide a complex and nuanced reading of Syria's 'Alawi communities -from loyalist gangs (Shabiha) to outspoken critics of the regime. Drawing upon wide-ranging research that examines the historic, political and social dynamics of the 'Alawi and the Syrian state, the current tensions are scrutinised and fresh insights offered. Among the themes addressed are religious practice, social identities, and relations to the Ba'ath party, the Syrian state and the military apparatus. The analysis also extends to Lebanon with a focus on the embattled 'Alawi community of Jabal Mohsen in Tripoli and state relations with Hizballah amid the current crisis.

War, Faith and Politics in the Levant

The Alawis of Syria

A Reason To Kill

Ever since Paul Theroux embarked in London on the first train of his Great Railway Bazaar, railways have been a rich source for the best travel writing. This is truer than ever in the twenty-first century. As the environmental implications of relentless air travel cast an ominous shadow over the prospect of foreign adventure, the opportunity to jump on a train at St Pancras and be whisked straight to the continent offers a wonderful alternative. Train travel has assumed a new pragmatic importance as well as romance – which is no doubt why so many more tour companies are offering a great train ride as part of their holiday itineraries. Now, Michael Kerr, the Telegraph’s deputy Travel Editor, has burrowed deep in the newspaper’s archives and collected together the very best of its writings about the railway: here are journeys non-stop from London to Vladivostok; across the Canadian Rockies; the first train to traverse Australia from Darwin to Alice Springs; and on the teeming, crawling, travelling adventure of Indian railways. In scenes much more familiar to the British commuter, Boris Johnson discovers his “inner McEnroe” thanks to signal failure in the Midlands, and Michael Palin samples the delights of British Rail Inter-City. This is an anthology that will appeal to the railway buff and the armchair traveller alike; to anyone who has ever Inter-railed in their youth and everyone nostalgic for the days when the only way to cross a continent was by train.

The Daily Telegraph Book of Great Railway Journeys

Last Call for the Dining Car

‘Railway termini,’ wrote E.M. Forster, ‘are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine…’ Now, in this new collection of great journeys from the pages of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, Michael Kerr follows up his bestselling anthology, Last Call for the Dining Car, with another feast for the armchair rail traveller. The train sliding out of the station can take you back into the past – in the company of John Betjeman on the Great Western – or into an ominous future, now that China has a line across the permafrost to Tibet. The sunshine may be the late-afternoon glow on a freight train between LA and Seattle, or the sea light bathing the Cornish coast alongside the branch line to St Ives. The adventure may even be dodging death on the train itself, as Dervla Murphy does on the antiquated rolling stock of Cuba. Sometimes, too, the train tracks people’s lives, on a journey into their deepest secrets. Nicholas Shakespeare, travelling around France, pieces together the story of what happened to his aunt, who was stranded there on the brink of war in 1937. Pamela Petro, rattling down the Pacific coast of the US, confronts the demons that have been haunting her since a train crash a quarter of a century ago. From Sandi Toksvig’s commuter train to Alexander McCall Smith’s night train; from the Indian Pacific to the Maharajas’ Express; Sunrise on the Southbound Sleeper is a first-class ticket to ride all the best trains in the world.

The New Telegraph Book of Great Railway Journeys

Sunrise on the Southbound Sleeper

Putting Humor to Work

You Can't Be Serious!

Ever since Paul Theroux embarked in London on the first train of his Great Railway Bazaar, railways have been a rich source for the best travel writing. This is truer than ever in the twenty-first century. As the environmental implications of relentless air travel cast an ominous shadow over the prospect of foreign adventure, the opportunity to jump on a train at St Pancras and be whisked straight to the continent offers a wonderful alternative. Train travel has assumed a new pragmatic importance as well as romance - which is no doubt why so many more tour companies are offering a great train ride as part of their holiday itineraries. Now, Michael Kerr, the Telegraph's deputy Travel Editor, has burrowed deep in the newspaper's archives and collected together the very best of its writings about the railway: here are journeys non-stop from London to Vladivostok; across the Canadian Rockies; the first train to traverse Australia from Darwin to Alice Springs; and on the teeming, crawling, travelling adventure of Indian railways. In scenes much more familiar to the British commuter, Boris Johnson discovers his "inner McEnroe" thanks to signal failure in the Midlands, and Michael Palin samples the delights of British Rail Inter-City. This is an anthology that will appeal to the railway buff and the armchair traveller alike; to anyone who has ever Inter-railed in their youth and everyone nostalgic for the days when the only way to cross a continent was by train.

The Telegraph Book of Great Railway Journeys

Efraim Karsh

Rory Miller

This book is a wide-ranging and innovative study of Israeli-Lebanese relations from the birth of the Jewish state in 1948 to the Israel-Lebanon War of 2006. Israel’s relationship with its Arab neighbours is a subject of perennial interest in the Middle East. The relationship between Israel and Lebanon has taken numerous forms since the establishment of the Jewish state and the chapters in this timely and important volume provide a comprehensive, detailed and informative analysis of the evolving ties between the two countries up to the present day. The contributors are drawn from numerous disciplines in the social sciences and humanities; and contributions range from the impact of the Arab-Israeli conflict on the Jews of Lebanon, to the role of external powers (the EU, the US and Arab world) on Israeli-Lebanese relations, as well as the legal mechanisms regulating the bilateral political relationship to the Palestinian Refugee problem as a factor in Israeli-Lebanese relations. This book was published as a special issue of Israel Affairs.

Conflict, Diplomacy and Society in Israeli-Lebanese Relations

This candidly written autobiography of Sir Michael Kerr chronicles the life of one of Britains most prominent judges of the 70s and 80s from his Continental childhood up to his career in the Court of Appeal and beyond. In the first part of his memoir,the author traces his family history and Germanic roots. His father, Alfred Kerr, was a well-known dramatic critic and essayist, whose writings were widely known throughout Germany from the turn of the century and have recently seen a resurrection, 50 years after his death, as related in the last chapter of the book. But because of the fame of his anti-Nazi writings and broadcasts, the Kerrs were forced to flee from Berlin as early as 3 March 1933, when Hitler came to power. The author and his sister Judith, later to become a famous author of childrens books, had a relatively happy cosmopolitan childhood in Zurich, Paris, Nice and ultimately England. But their parents lives remained on the edge of poverty and sometimes despair and there was never again a family home. The memoirs then tell of his years at Aldenham School and the beginnings of Cambridge, and of his assimilation into the English way of life. They relate the story of his internment as an enemy alien in 1940 and of his subsequent release and service as a pilot in the Royal Air Force until the end of World War II. The author then returned to Cambridge to finish his law degree and was urged to go the Bar. The later chapters of this autobiography are mainly devoted to the law. They recount the authors career as a leading commercial Junior and then a Silk, his initial hesitations about the Bench, but ultimately culminating in his appointment as a Lord Justice of Appeal. He describes the Bar of the post-war decades and is frank about the frustrations and disappointments of his career. He also provides insights into the oddities of the English legal system, but maintaining throughout his firm belief in the importance of an independent Bar.

Michael Kerr

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