The Places in Between

 In his afterword, Rory Stewart explains the odd afterlife his 2001-2 walk through central Afghanistan has undergone. It has become a comment on a moment in time, between the rule of the Taliban and NATO's attempts to impose liberal democracy on what the West regularly terms a failed state. Stewart himself is unequivocal: this was not his aim. He simply wanted to walk across Afghanistan.

An odd goal, perhaps, given the dangers involved. It is hard to imagine many places more dangerous than Afghanistan in the weeks after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. What structures there had been had collapsed. A power vacuum existed, being filled by tribal leaders and traditional village leadership. The legacy of a decade and a half of invasions, power shifts and failed initiatives, going up to the post-9/11 invasion of Afghanistan.

Once again, that's what the Western narrative would suggest. And it is hard to read Rory Stewart's book without using Western eyes, sensible to the rule of law and sense of shared, common identity. Afghanistan, viewed through those eyes, does appear to be a failed state. But that, as every person Stewart met showed, is viewing Afghanistan as a geo-political problem and not necessarily a social one.

The Afghanistan Stewart walked through is one quite probably very similar to one that exists today, in the aftermath of the disastrous Western withdrawal in 2021. The Taliban continue to be zealots who vandalise the cultural heritage of this place in between; in between the Persian world of Iran and the structured Islamic world of Pakistan. Local justice - often based on Sharia law - is still dispensed under trees by village headmen rather than through a formalised court system. Viewed in such a light, Afghanistan is not a country that we would recognise as a nation state.

But that's the beauty of this astonishing book. Those places in between - the villages of central Afghanistan, in the mountain passes, where UN advisors and international experts were told it was too dangerous to travel - are Afghanistan. I would not want to go travelling there myself; today, as in 2001, it is simply too dangerous for someone unprepared. But it is in those places that millions of Afghans live, in villages that still work within a feudal system. Afghanistan isn't a Western democracy; it is a place of its own that the West has fundamentally misunderstood in two decades of foreign policy failure.

But that wasn't the point of the book. The point was the people. From the security escorts provided to Stewart in the early legs of his six-week walk, to the headmen he met, Afghanistan teems with complex humanity. It is those individuals and Stewart's interactions with them that form the basis of the book. It is fundamentally a travel book, interlaced with the history of Afghanistan. Every person he met on his journey he met on organic terms, not those imposed by some international treaty or agreement. Stewart saw villages and their social structures in operation. He met the kind, the cruel, the honest, the vindictive, the decent, the hospitable, the xenophobic and all other types in the human tapestry. He stayed on mosque floors and ate the bread of hospitality. And that is the backbone of this book: humanity.

Stewart doesn't always emerge to his credit - there are times when he is almost stereotypically the Brit abroad, domineering, abrasive, and stubborn - but in hindsight it's clear that he learned at every step, whether dealing with his security detail or with former Taliban commanders. He learned the country in a way few could do without spending weeks immersed in its people and landscapes. His affection for the place, despite its dangers, shines through. There are times when Afghanistan's beauty is able to shine; sadly, these times tend to be when he discusses the rich history of Afghanistan or its unforgiving geography, and not the very human problems that have dogged the place for centuries.

The Places in Between will live with me for a long time. In places poignant, in others brutal and unflinching, it is a book that touches on the entirety of human experience on the fringes of Western understanding. It is hard to read it without feeling something of the pity that exists in such a place.

The Prime Ministers

 Iain Dale's book has a major problem. In providing profiles of 55 men and women who have held the office of Prime Minister (or First Lord of the Treasury), there's something missing. To be specific, the latest incumbents of the office. As up-to-date as the book is, being published only in mid-2022, events of mid- to late-2022 are missing. So no Truss. No Sunak. Anyone hoping for anything more recent than covid will find themselves sadly disappointed.

Such have events been. No longer is George Canning, ailing at his accession to office, the shortest-serving PM. At least Iain McLeod holds his record at the shortest-serving Chancellor of the Exchequer, even if it's because he sadly died just 30 days into the job - rather than spending October crashing the economy on a mad, ideologically-driven 'dash for growth' that was doomed to failure necessitating removal from office to the backbenches.

At least for 54 of the 55 PMs there is an up-to-date analysis of their achievements and failures in office. Even then, Dale's own analysis of then-premier Boris Johnson - and how long does it feel since that could be said? - rings true. The personal charms of Johnson do not outweigh the fact that, even before Partygate and resignation scandals, his political achievements were limited to bikes on loan while he was Mayor of London. Dale reserves judgment, but places Johnson squarely in the bottom half of the league table of Prime Ministers; there's even the caveat that he could rank lower.

Recent history is where this collection of biographical essays excels. Historians, politicians, and journalists contribute one essay each to outline the achievements of the men who, since Robert Walpole, have assumed the mantle of political leadership. From the mid-nineteenth century on, as politics assumed its modern shape and the constitution settled into something reconisable, with familiar parties and conventions, the writing becomes stronger. The judgments made by the authors - if coloured by partisanship and personal inclinations - hold true in the light of ideas in 2023. Particular highlights include Rachel Reeves writing on Harold Wilson, the essay on Herbert Asquith, and Adam Boulton's fine judgment on David Cameron's tuneless leadership.

At its strongest, the book puts to one side the political ideas of the authors and provides a dispassionate and compelling overview of the development of the office and achievements of its holders. This is something that, despite the stronger second half, the first half also achieves. But it is this overview which holds back the book. This is inevitable; 300 years and 55 men and women are covered in 508 pages. Each essay can only ever be a summary; much will be missed. Going to Harold Wilson, having recently read a 500-page biography on him alone it is something of a shock to see his premierships distilled into 10 pages, little over 4,000 words.

This is particularly a problem for controversial PMs who made great achievements, particularly in the modern age. Henry Campbell-Bannerman and Herbert Asquith are limited, between them, to fewer than 20 pages despite being the achitects of modern social structures and the beginnings of the welfare state, with its move away from laissez-faire government. David Cameron, who achieved the square root of nothing beyond sticking parts of his appendage in dead farmyard animals (allegedly), gets ten pages, just a couple fewer than William Pitt the Younger and significantly more than Earl Grey, who began the process of democratisation - not that he would recognise it as such. This is most obviously problematic with Thatcher; fourteen pages is nowhere near enough time for a proper assessment of her leadership style, her achievements, her failures, and her impact both in the short- and long-term. The result is an unbalanced essay, focusing as much on Thatcher's personality and not her rearrangement of the British economy; even the miner's strike barely warrants a mention.

Although most contributors retain some semblance of balance, there are exceptions. Criticisms of the 1945-51 Labour government's open cast mining policy crop up in a discussion of the mid-eighteenth century Duke of Newcastle, despite having no relevance to the point being made. Most PMs escape truly scathing criticism, even when they bore responsibility for significant failures in foreign or domestic policy. Nobody is held responsible for the Great Famine in Ireland for instance - another major event conveniently skated over by multiple authors. There's little discussion of imperial policy; perhaps because it could be an entire series of books in itself, but when considering several hundred years of history it seems a glaring oversight. From a history teaching standpoint, the book provides a goldmine of interpretations.

The other major problem - again, inevitable in a volume of this nature - is the inconsistency of the writing. Some essays provide excellent writing alongside skilfully woven analysis. Others, less so. These tend to be the co-opted politicians, those who are intelligent and know their subject, but who do not have the experience of writing for anything other than a political audience. Most essays are at least readable, but there's a special place in literary hell for Nicky Morgan after her appalling excuse for an essay on Lord North. Less an essay, more a bullet-pointed chronology of events, she manages to somehow overlook the key point of his premiership, whether or not he was to blame for this: the loss of the Thirteen Colonies and its impact on both Britain and the wider world. And that is without mentioning the fact that the writing in that essay is utterly abominable. 'In 1779... By October 1779... In 1780...' It would be an insult to an A Level student to describe it as a 17-year-old's standard of writing; I'd back my students to write something better, given the subject material. It must be her drive for an improvement of literary standards that makes me say that.

To sum up The Prime Ministers is a tough ask. As a primer for British political history, it serves a purpose. Its inconsistency is problematic, and a reader needs some knowledge of British politcal history to be able to analyse each essay and its author; itself a problem for those seeking instruction. But I can recommend it, with the caveats above. It is far from authoritative - and to be fair it doesn't seek to be - but it has proven useful in filling in certain knowledge gaps, particularly in the tricky nineteenth century.