Persicos odi, puer, apparatus
Horace Odes xxxviii, 1
IMPISH, BEAMING, MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD, President of Iran and sometime bespoke outfitter to the Royal Navy, must be seething over the West’s high-, heavy- and cack-handed coverage of his country’s recent elections. In most of his heartfelt speeches against Western interference, it is at times possible to feel that he has a right to claim he is genuinely upset and is the victim of underhand activity by “Britain and its evil allies”, which apparently include the USA.
I HAVE NEVER BEEN TO PERSIA, although everything I have read about it, including the sublime The Road to Oxiana, by Robert Byron (not the Byron you are thinking of), has suggested that a trip to Persia, now strangely called Iran, is a must for anyone who enjoys beauty, ranging in its scope from landscape to fruit, from smell to taste, and from women to architecture.
BOTH THE SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS CHAPS who have run Persia since Byron went there and the British were then encouraged to leave it to the influence of our esteemed fellow westerners the Russians, have gradually managed to make it become less appetising to both myself, with my wistful imagination and images of rich cloths, luscious drapes and carpets, scented pomegranate bushes, lemon trees and the sound of cool water softening the harshness of the afternoon’s shuddering heat hazes, and indeed to anyone else who might have found a visit interesting, profitable or fun.
GOOD OLD AYATOLLAH KHOMEINI and his reign of mullah terror certainly added to my worries about visiting the region, and now Ahmadinejad and the new Ayatollah, this time Khamanei, have now more or less put a lid on any ideas I had about a holiday in the sun in their country. And even if the lid were made of lead I would still be worried about the nuclear threat underneath it.
THE SAD THING ABOUT ALL OF THIS is that although I feel I have a perfect right to feel worried about visiting Persia, I would have thought that Gordon Brown and – in particular – Barack Hussein Obama might have wanted to give these people a ticking off. Alas, no. Obama seems to be as afraid of Ahmadinejad as he is of slobbering fanatic Hugo Chavez.
Horace Odes xxxviii, 1
IMPISH, BEAMING, MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD, President of Iran and sometime bespoke outfitter to the Royal Navy, must be seething over the West’s high-, heavy- and cack-handed coverage of his country’s recent elections. In most of his heartfelt speeches against Western interference, it is at times possible to feel that he has a right to claim he is genuinely upset and is the victim of underhand activity by “Britain and its evil allies”, which apparently include the USA.
I HAVE NEVER BEEN TO PERSIA, although everything I have read about it, including the sublime The Road to Oxiana, by Robert Byron (not the Byron you are thinking of), has suggested that a trip to Persia, now strangely called Iran, is a must for anyone who enjoys beauty, ranging in its scope from landscape to fruit, from smell to taste, and from women to architecture.
BOTH THE SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS CHAPS who have run Persia since Byron went there and the British were then encouraged to leave it to the influence of our esteemed fellow westerners the Russians, have gradually managed to make it become less appetising to both myself, with my wistful imagination and images of rich cloths, luscious drapes and carpets, scented pomegranate bushes, lemon trees and the sound of cool water softening the harshness of the afternoon’s shuddering heat hazes, and indeed to anyone else who might have found a visit interesting, profitable or fun.
GOOD OLD AYATOLLAH KHOMEINI and his reign of mullah terror certainly added to my worries about visiting the region, and now Ahmadinejad and the new Ayatollah, this time Khamanei, have now more or less put a lid on any ideas I had about a holiday in the sun in their country. And even if the lid were made of lead I would still be worried about the nuclear threat underneath it.
THE SAD THING ABOUT ALL OF THIS is that although I feel I have a perfect right to feel worried about visiting Persia, I would have thought that Gordon Brown and – in particular – Barack Hussein Obama might have wanted to give these people a ticking off. Alas, no. Obama seems to be as afraid of Ahmadinejad as he is of slobbering fanatic Hugo Chavez.
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