Skip to content
Literary Review of Canada logo

From the archives

Alberta and Me

From a land of oil, true enough

Amanda Perry

Referendum? What Referendum?

A constitutional expert argues that the federal insistence on clarity has paid off

Sujit Choudhry

The Grey Plateau

When the world stopped five years ago

Stephen Marche
Our Contributors

Michael Bell

Michael Bell is the Paul Martin Senior Scholar in International Diplomacy at the University of Windsor and co-chair of the Jerusalem Old City Initiative. A career foreign service officer, he served as Canada’s ambassador to Jordan, Egypt and Israel.

Articles by
Michael Bell

Brotherhood of the Dispossessed

A reporter’s close-up focus on young Muslim jihadists world-wide November 2011
Timed for release with the tenth anniversary of 9/11, Michelle Shephard’s Decade of Fear: Reporting from Terrorism’s Grey Zone ploughs through the world of terrorism over the decade since. Shephard, the Toronto Star’s national security correspondent, travelled widely through the hotbeds of discontent from Pakistan’s federally administered tribal agencies to Mogadishu and on through the no man’s land of Yemen gathering material for this compelling…

Cloak and Dagger Politics

A new book argues that western spies shaped the modern Middle East April 2011
Castles Made of Sand: A Century of Anglo-American Espionage and Intervention in the Middle East is a swashbuckling saga. It is the story of generations of imperial and colonial rogues who the author claims bludgeoned and intimidated unsuspecting Middle Eastern leaders—indeed, figuratively raped and humiliated them—into serving British and American interests, plus their own often pecuniary…