Anatol Lieven

Arif Azad (Letters, 20 February) repeats precisely the error I criticised in my essay: that of believing that the functioning of Pakistani democracy can somehow be separated from the nature of Pakistani society, and the power structures and attitudes to power within that society. Closely connected with this is the belief that somewhere there exists a progressively minded Pakistani people who, if liberated...

Far from suggesting that E.H. Carr’s observations on the interwar period were worthless, as Michael Cox suggests (Letters, 7 September), I spent much of my essay pointing out that aspects of them are of great and indeed increasing value.On Carr’s character, I was careful to say that his love affairs ‘aren’t so very shocking sixty years later’, and that what stands out from his personal life...