When Allah made Hell, runs the Arab proverb, he did not find it bad enough, so he made Mesopotamia—and added flies. What was a British Army doing in this Godforsaken place and how had it all come about?

A.J. Barker’s masterful retelling of the story of Britain’s first Iraq war in 1914 is a masterpiece of military history that provides many answers to the endless problems and realities encountered in Iraq since 2003. Prestige and power played a major role then as they still do today.

If the British were dislodged from the Shatt-al-Arab, the effects would undoubtedly have reverberated throughout the whole of the Eastern world.