Bygone Heat

C.W.R. Long, after National Service in the Army and Cambridge (where he resisted recruitment as a spy) and McGill Universities, joined the Foreign Office in 1962 and began his life-long love affair with Iraq. He served in Baghdad 1963 - 6 and in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office until 1970 when he took up employment with the British Council. Postings followed in London, Beirut, Khartum, Ankara, Abu Dhabi, Amman, Newcastle and Doha and only Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses stopped him going on to Tehran. He later joined the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, first as Director of the International Office and then as Director of Islamic Studies - as which he also taught at Durham University's Centre of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. He has written widely on the Middle East, including the biography Tawfiq al Hakim, Playwright of Egypt, and contributed extensively to The Arab World, Journal of Arabic Literature, Middle East International, Middle Eastern Studies and New Middle East.