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Under Dr M's administrations, and his jokey central-casting personality, I began to feel better, though able only to walk a few paces before puffing. It was slow progress, with good days followed by bad ones. The following Tuesday, there was a true Peter Sellers scene when I was carted off to a pneumologue (lung clinic) for X-rays. It was on the second floor of a bleak suburb, a banlieu which the Marrakech tourist never sees: a dusty red hell of hot charmless streets. In the slums around it, we passed desperately poor encampments -- the worst I have seen anywhere in the world -- juxtaposed with sumptuous villas under construction. At the clinic it took six hefty Moroccans to hoist the shaky wheelchair, terrifyingly, up two flights of concrete stairs, with me seated in it like some medieval despot. There I was diagnosed with pneumonia, as well as asthma. Nearly nine months later, I am well, but I wonder when the old enemy will come back. I ruminate on Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Room 101, the torture chamber in which prisoners are confronted with their worst nightmare. For Orwell's protagonist, Winston Graham, the \"worst thing in the world\" was rats: for me, it's the feeling of being buried alive in an asthma attack. There are approximately 5.4 million people in Britain receiving treatment for asthma, and every seven minutes a person is admitted to hospital with symptoms. It's not known what causes the condition, but you're more likely to develop it if there's a family history of asthma, eczema or allergies.

Sir Alistair Horne, speaking ahead of tomorrow's clock change, said it was \"absolutely crazy\" for Britain to be the only country in Europe to have its own time zone. \"But when you look at the map of time it is absolutely crazy. European time stretches from the eastern frontier of Poland to the Western frontier of Spain and the only country which is on Portuguese time is Britain.\" Tom Mullarkey, chief executive of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, said: \"5,700 people have died since the Sixties because of the current, crazy set-up and I don't think anyone in Scotland would mind the minor inconvenience of darker mornings in order to save so many lives, many of them in Scotland, as a result.\"

Sir Alistair Horne, speaking ahead of tomorrow's clock change, said it was \"absolutely crazy\" for Britain to be the only country in Europe to have its own time zone. \"Some 5,700 people have died since the Sixties because of the current crazy set-up, and I don't think anyone in Scotland would mind the minor inconvenience of darker mornings in order to save so many lives, many of them in Scotland, as a result.\" \"In the mornings, farmers need to see their livestock, but as a union we have been conducting an investigation to see what the impact of a changing time zone would be for Scotland.\"

'But when you look at the map of time, it is absolutely crazy. European time stretches from the eastern frontier of Poland to the western frontier of Spain and the only country which is on Portuguese time is Britain.' He added Scotland could have its own 'tundra time' - comparing it to a vast frozen land - while the rest of the UK could have a separate time zone. She added: 'Whilst the problems facing agriculture are fewer now than in the past due to increased use of modern technology and lighting, the issue nevertheless remains one of concern to the farming community. The start of field operations would be delayed and livestock farmers would also be inconvenienced by the longer period of morning darkness.' Britain last attempted to abandon Greenwich Mean Time in 1968 when twice-yearly clock changes were replaced by setting them an hour ahead of GMT throughout the year. 'This is clearly not just about dairy farmers, it's about road safety, energy saving and the quality of life.'

Like the U.S. in Iraq, the French faced a persistent and unspeakably vicious insurgency. (Unlike the U.S., the French held Algeria as a colony, with about 10 per cent of the population being ethnic French pied-noirs or \"black feet\" farmers.) As in Iraq, the war ebbed and flowed through various regions. The joint U.S.-Iraqi effort to regain control of Baghdad, \"Operation Imposing Law,\" has conceptual similarities. The new U.S. commander, Gen. David Petraeus, authored his army's new counter- insurgency manual and reportedly studied [Alistair Horne]'s book. The new operation is flooding Baghdad's neighbourhoods with U.S. and Iraqi troops and police. American units are being pushed out of their mega-bases, where they're isolated from the population. As terrorism expert Bill Roggio reports on his weblog, \"There are now 23 Joint Security Stations established throughout the city. The JSS are the patrol bases where U.S. soldiers, Iraqi police and Army units operate from within the neighbourhoods in Baghdad.\"

Though they could win local successes, they could not stop the ANL from mounting attacks. Following a number of judicial executions, the ANL launched a wave of killings of French civilians in Algiers, the worst outrage so far. In retaliation, Paris ordered General Massu to take over the Arab quarter of the city with his 10th Parachute Division. Massu was a famed fighter and veteran of Indo-China. Between January and March 1957, Massu's Paras terrorised the casbah into pacifity. Torture was widely used and in the end the ANL gave up because its counter-terrorism could not carry the Arab population with it. From his return to power in May 1958 until the departure of the French in July 1962, events in Algeria and France continued to be as turbulent as in the previous four years of war. The ANL launched a bloody campaign of terror inside France. The Algerian colonists took to open rebellion against France and succeeded in winning several of the leading French generals of Algeria to their side. France was threatened with invasion by military rebels. Moreover, de Gaulle's grant of independence to Algeria did not bring a lasting peace to that country. The unrecognised power of Islam came into play against what was essentially a secular Algerian revolutionary government, leading to outbreaks of terrible civilian violence in 1992, which were to persist into the 21st century. No one would wish the history of Algeria on the suffering people of Iraq.

Though they could win local successes, they could not stop the ANL from mounting attacks. Following a number of judicial executions, the ANL launched a wave of killings of French civilians in Algiers, the worst outrage so far. In retaliation, Paris ordered General Massu to take over the Arab quarter of the city with his 10th Parachute Division. Massu was a famed fighter and veteran of Indo-China. Between January and March 1957, Massu's Paras terrorised the casbah into pacifity. Torture was widely used and in the end the ANL gave up because its counter-terrorism could not carry the Arab population with it. From his return to power in May 1958 until the departure of the French in July 1962, events in Algeria and France continued to be as turbulent as in the previous four years of war. The ANL launched a bloody campaign of terror inside France. The Algerian colonists took to open rebellion against France and succeeded in winning several of the leading French generals of Algeria to their side. France was threatened with invasion by military rebels. Moreover, de Gaulle's grant of independence to Algeria did not bring a lasting peace to that country. The unrecognised power of Islam came into play against what was essentially a secular Algerian revolutionary government, leading to outbreaks of terrible civilian violence in 1992, which were to persist into the 21st century. No one would wish the history of Algeria on the suffering people of Iraq.

Though they could win local successes, they could not stop the ANL from mounting attacks. Following a number of judicial executions, the ANL launched a wave of killings of French civilians in Algiers, the worst outrage so far. In retaliation, Paris ordered General Massu to take over the Arab quarter of the city with his 10th Parachute Division. Massu was a famed fighter and veteran of Indo-China. Between January and March 1957, Massu's Paras terrorised the casbah into pacifity. Torture was widely used and in the end the ANL gave up because its counter-terrorism could not carry the Arab population with it. From his return to power in May 1958 until the departure of the French in July 1962, events in Algeria and France continued to be as turbulent as in the previous four years of war. The ANL launched a bloody campaign of terror inside France. The Algerian colonists took to open rebellion against France and succeeded in winning several of the leading French generals of Algeria to their side. France was threatened with invasion by military rebels. Moreover, de Gaulle's grant of independence to Algeria did not bring a lasting peace to that country. The unrecognised power of Islam came into play against what was essentially a secular Algerian revolutionary government, leading to outbreaks of terrible civilian violence in 1992, which were to persist into the 21st century. No one would wish the history of Algeria on the suffering people of Iraq.

A single-volume history of a nation is bound to engender scorn among those who will consider it the summit of populist academia. And certainly [Alistair Horne] fixes on the beloved staples - monarchy, sex, and torture (which, in medieval France, was gruesomely inventive) - while glossing over decades that are not sufficiently arresting.