Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Saddam expressed his admiration for Stalin on numerous occasions and describes him as not being a communist but a nationalist. And I think Saddam was trained by the KGB, which accounts in part for why he was able to run his country so brutally. His book came out shortly before the war began and it was arguably one of the best-timed biographies of the century. If you were in Baghdad you would see all manner of people carrying copies of it. The American soldiers had it, the foreign civilian officials working with the US administration had it, all the journalists had it, and quite a lot of Iraqis were interested in getting copies.
Con Coughlin’s book, Saddam: The Secret Life, portrays a monster comparable to Stalin. How striking did you find the similarity?
Saddam expressed his admiration for Stalin on numerous occasions and describes him as not being a communist but a nationalist. And I think Saddam was trained by the KGB, which accounts in part for why he was able to run his country so brutally.
His book came out shortly before the war began and it was arguably one of the best-timed biographies of the century. If you were in Baghdad you would see all manner of people carrying copies of it. The American soldiers had it, the foreign civilian officials working with the US administration had it, all the journalists had it, and quite a lot of Iraqis were interested in getting copies.
It’s a fairly even-handed account of the history of Iraq from Saddam’s time onward. It’s very good at describing his life, which was often pretty rocky. Saddam was born into a fairly notorious tribe in Tikrit, in northern Iraq in a village known for violence. He was very much a guy born on the wrong side of the tracks. He was a criminal and, like many of the worst dictators, such as Stalin, he was a criminal before he was a politician, as well as a murderer and a thug. When people like that get hold of the reins of power it’s a recipe for disaster.
So the book’s based on good information?
I cannot put my hand on heart and say that what you read in these two books is the 100 per cent truth about Saddam – simply because too many people in that part of the world have been killed or are unreliable witnesses. In the beginning of Coughlin’s book, for example, there is quite a telling remark. He says that writing the biography of Saddam Hussein is like trying to assemble the prosecution case against a notorious gangster: most of the key witnesses have either been murdered or are too afraid to talk. This shows you what people are up against in trying to write these books. They are not easy books to write.
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Colin Freeman is the Sunday Telegraph’s chief foreign correspondent. In August 2004 he was shot and assaulted by militia loyal to radical Shia cleric Moqtada al Sadr in the city of Basra. In 2008, researching a story about piracy in Somalia, he was kidnapped by his own bodyguards. He and a Spanish photographer spent six weeks in a cave before being released unharmed. In 2005, following his return from Iraq, Freeman wrote 'The Curse of the Al Dulaimi Hotel and Other Half-Truths from Baghdad'.
