4th Field Regiment 'Old Boys' Association Newsletter

A couple of book reviews from Peter Smith Ghost Empire, Richard Fidler. 453 pp, 2016, ABC Books edition, 2017. Non-fiction. “A brilliant reconstruction of the saga of power, glory, invasion and decay of the one-thousand year story of Constantinople. A truly marvellous book.” Simon Winchester. Richard Fidler, of ABC and Radio National fame, travelled with his son Joe to Istanbul to uncover the rich and long history of the dazzling Byzantine Empire, centred around the legendary city of Constantinople (formerly Byzantium and now Istanbul). Fidler’s superb storytelling, supported by thorough research, brings to life ‘the clash of civilisations, the rise of Christianity, revenge, lust, and murder’. Fidler’s easy to read account takes one on a journey charting the rise of Constantinople, the continuation of the Roman Empire in the East (amazingly for more than 1,000 years after the Visigoths sacked Rome), the inevitable clash with other civilisations, and finally, after repelling constant assaults from without and political challenges within, the fall to the Ottoman Turks. I very much enjoyed Fidler’s narrative style. His journey, with his then fourteen year old son, explores every facet of life in this amazing ‘golden city’ which was regarded as ‘having no equal on earth’ by Western visitors. This is a book for history lovers. The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979. Ben Kiernan. 465 pp, 2002. Non-fiction “In this authoritative work, Ben Kiernan explores the reasons why Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge revolution became a Cambodian nightmare.” Richard Gough, Times Higher Education Supplement. I’m very much interested in Asian, especially South East Asian, history and culture hence the reason I was drawn to Kiernan’s book. Having lived and worked in Asia/South East Asia and travelled widely there I find it hard to resist books which add to my knowledge of the region. It just doesn’t seem right to say that I ‘enjoyed’ reading this detailed and chilling account of the horror of the Khmer Rouge revolution which overwhelmed this desperately poor country in the aftermath of French colonialism and the Vietnam war. But the detailed and personal accounts recounted in Kiernan’s book provided a deeper insight into this tragic period in Cambodia’s history