The Cauldron, The Making of the Modern Middle East by the British Jewish historian, Simon Sebag Montefiore, is an astonishing achievement because of the number of countries whose histories the book distils since 1900. The press release from publisher Weidenfeld & Nicolson includes a militarily concise...

A risque joke about a priest and a nun, told by a ruling-party politician at a national political assembly and falsely attributed to the Book of Psalms, has ignited a storm of protest from Christian leaders across Malaysia, casting a shadow over the country's...