Real Dictators

In a way, he sounds almost like he's reading from Machiavelli's *The Prince*, about how to seize and maintain power.

There were still people around who were creating problems for him that were both personal problems but also problems of getting things done They were blocking getting things done And so he needed to get rid of them And the best way to do it is a purge And the best way to do that is to demonstrate that his arch enemies the ones who are the chief obstacles to getting anything done were responsible for the beloved Kirov's death And so that's exactly what he does

Stalin's propaganda was extremely effective and we have accounts of how he would work late into the night developing slogans for this day, for the next day, for the day after and I'll tell you after reading these accounts of the way he would work on the slogans that they were going to export to all of the parties worldwide I came to realize that if Stalin had been born in the United States he would have been a first-class advertising executive because he really understood how to get people to buy what he's selling he was a master at that

One of the fascinating things about Oliver Cromwell is that he wasn't a kind of revolutionary figure by background at all.

He came from what you call gentries, the sort of people wealthy enough to essentially own land, go to university, educate their children, expect to hold local offices.

Oliver Cromwell was born into a family that for a time have become one of the leading families of East Anglia.

They were never at the absolute pinnacle.

They were never peers or aristocrats.

But several members of that family were knighted.

Several members of that family were elected to parliament as MPs and they had quite grand properties in Cambridgeshire and Huntingtonshire.

London becomes the fastest-growing European capital in the 17th century.

It's a very urban, literate population.

I mean, Ireland in the 17th century is a colony, put it bluntly.

It's a colony that's exploited by the English in their own economic interests, but it's a highly complex society.

The vast majority of the people are indigenous native Irish people who have remained steadfastly Catholic.

So not only are they suspect, if you like, on ethnic grounds, but they're also suspect on religious grounds.

And it's that combination of ethno-religious hostility, I think that gives a particular nasty edge to Anglo-Irish relations.

John Morrill is professor of British and Irish history at Selman College, University of Cambridge and author of an upcoming biography, Oliver Cromwell, the brave bad man of British history.

It looked Catholic and sounded Protestant.

The worship is a true hybrid, so if you like Protestant ministers wear Catholic underclothes.

the sea is very rarely of use to anybody. I am sure it almost killed me once.

These books included the whole library of classics, the library of world literature including Dante and Shakespeare and Zola and Montesquieu and Russo and Diderot.

These books included the whole library of classics, the library of world literature including Dante and Shakespeare and Zola and Montesquieu and Russo and Diderot.

These books included the whole library of classics, the library of world literature including Dante and Shakespeare and Zola and Montesquieu and Russo and Diderot.

It also included books by people like Graham Green and John Lakeret.

He was part of the Ottoman Empire until 1912 so the last of the Balkan states to achieve independence.

During the interwar period it was ruled principally by King Zog who was a self-proclaimed king he rose from being one of the major tribal chiefs in the north of Albania.

It also included books by people like Graham Green and John Lakeret.

He goes to study in France in never finished his studies.

It included books by Sartre and Kamu and the one thing it didn't include was anything written by either Marx or Lenin which one might find surprising.

In a small country, which is already patriarchal and we're a tall man commands attention.

He used that alongside his willingness to execute people and execute his own comrades and work with international allies and sacrifice people who were close to him in order to consolidate power.

I think the best way to sum up that time is that Life is War, that's what people told me and that was a common saying at the time Yeta's Luft, Life is War.

Based on the critically acclaimed and best-selling novel, FX's Show Gun is set in feudal Japan and charts the collision of two ambitious men from different worlds, and a mysterious female samurai.

In the year 2000, he publishes his first novel, Sabiba and the king, supposedly the author wishes to remain anonymous, but if so, his identity is the country's worst-kept secret. It's published by the ministerial firm formation, and everyone knew about it, and the next day it became a best seller in Iraq. And the worst part of it, it became a textbook for all party members in their cell meetings to be read and discussed. I mean, I always wish someone would do this from my books, that that it would be, you know, mandatory reading for everyone.

So here's this book called Sabiba and the king and it was a kind of like romance novel. It's a love story. It's set in the past in the early years of Islam and there's like a pagan king and I think he goes out writing one day and he sees this beautiful woman Sabiba. When we imagine Saddam Hussein's method of coasting wasn't very elegant. I mean, who knows, but like in in the book, he just falls in love with his woman and then he starts having sort of long conversations about state craft and religion with her and she starts to kind of change his mind about things. You know, there's profound loneliness and I think the loneliness of this king who's like isolated, he's got nobody to talk to and the only person he can really communicate with this is this young woman. And night after night he goes to talk to her. If you want to know what it's like to be a dictator with the power of life and death, but who's also terrified of being assassinated, and he's like looking around and garnering position at any moment. I think Sabiba and the king gives you a reasonable sense of what was going through Saddam's mind when he felt sort of besieged and alone.

You did not need a detective to figure out who was talking about himself, he tells you. So many stories that you can really understand how he felt about himself, about his relationship with his mother, about his connection to the land. He used the material from his own life, but then he changed it as a writer does, and so, you know, in that sense, it's like a proper novel, maybe not a great novel, but he created the novel the same way all novelists do. It's not a good book, but it's the real book.

As he had gotten older he began to fancy himself as a writer and an artist I guess you know according to a number of these senior Iraqi officials he you know in his later years of rule in the country he would disappear for days at a time and kind of lose himself in his writing you know he appeared more focused in some cases on this writing than he did on ruling.

Alex Fontoune's on man is the author of Fallen Idles, 12 statues that made history.

Saddam even grew quite a similar moustache to Stalin so you know kind of adopted that look a little bit and very very much bought into that same social tradition of portraying himself as a benevolent uncle as this kind of kindly leader as this big brother without irony.