Theodore Dalrymple
So much has been written about Dr John- son that one might have supposed there was little useful left to write, but Richard Holmes' Dr Johnson & Mr Savage (Hodder, £19.99) is enthralling, well-written and con- vincing, a model of tactful psychological biography, One reads it with the pleasure one derives from great imaginative litera- ture. Kanan Makiya's account in Cruelty and Silence (Cape, £18.99) of the sufferings inflicted by the Baathist regime on Iraq, and of the Arab intellectual response to them, is as damning an indictment of a political culture as one is ever likely to read. It is also a vivid and profound explo- ration of the stultifying effect of rhetoric on thought and feeling throughout the Arab
world, and — by extension — everywhere else. Perhaps one day the author will be honoured in his own land: he certainly deserves to be.
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