Let’s have a look at the five books you have chosen about Iraq. Your first is The Occupation of Iraq, an insider’s account of the Iraqi government following the American invasion.

Ali A Allawi combines the rigour of an historian with the knowledge of a senior politician in one of the first governments in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. He also kept notes while he was minister of finance and minister of defence and trade. Many insider accounts aren’t quite as insider as they pretend to be but this one really is, and it is combined with a very rigorous academic approach.

He is also very good at describing all the different factions.

Yes. He comes from the Shia side of the fence. Perhaps the most important development after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003 is that the Shia community – who are the majority of Iraqis – took over from the Sunni Arab community, which had previously been dominant under Saddam Hussein.

Is he able to be unbiased in his descriptions?

You are not going to find anyone unbiased dealing with Iraq. The question is if their bias is shallow or deep, and do they appreciate their bias? I think that more than anybody, he does.

What does he say about the transitional government, the Coalition Provisional Authority?

He is very negative about it. In fact, it would be very difficult to find anyone who was positive about it. It really was a wrecker’s yard of a government.

Your next choice, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, is by the journalist Thomas Ricks, who spent five tours in Iraq during the conflict.

This is an interesting book, which I have chosen because I think you need a book from the Americans’ side. When you read about Iraq, you need to know that it is a country more divided than almost anywhere else in the world – between groups like Kurds, Sunnis and Shias, and of course the Americans. Each has vigorous internal politics which determines what they do. This was true of the Americans, and Ricks writes fluently and eloquently about this. Sometimes he is unconscious of the degree to which he is reflecting American attitudes which aren’t Iraqi attitudes, but his book does show what the Americans thought, and what they thought the Iraqis thought.

What were some of the common misconceptions on America’s side?

They had great difficulty from the beginning, in that they wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein and to have a friendly government to replace him with. But the only real alternative to Saddam Hussein was a Shia government, which was going to be full of co-religionists with Iran. America was always fearful that Iran would emerge the winner of an American war. That explains an awful lot of what happened subsequently. You had the invasion, which many Iraqis accepted temporarily because Saddam Hussein had been a disastrous ruler. Then you had an occupation which was really because the Americans couldn’t think how to replace Hussein.

Many would argue that even if the Americans and British had thought through what would happen after the overthrow of Hussein, it was still a very difficult thing to manage.

I think one has to read a diversity of books to really understand what happened. The British often have this attitude of “if there had been more occupation troops” or “if things had been a bit better organised” and so forth. But actually the dilemma was very real. What communities and countries were going to be the winners and losers after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein? That was a real dilemma for the Americans, which they never really resolved.

What was it like being on the ground as a journalist?

It was very dangerous, among other things. In other places I have covered – like Lebanon during its civil war – it was rather safer to be a journalist. Even very violent militia groups gave you a pass to get through. In Iraq it was extremely dangerous to be any kind of foreigner, and particularly a journalist. But you could get around and talk to people. I have chosen authors who talked to people, and you do need to use as a source people who were there on the ground. People who weren’t there, even if they had a previous acquaintance with Iraq, often missed what was happening because the situation changed rapidly. You had to be in the thick of it to produce a book which is worth reading.