Robert Fisk in Sydney

Following my appointment in late 2005 to the board of Macquarie University’s Centre for Middle East and North African Studies, I’ve helped secure an event by the Middle East’s finest Western journalist.

Robert Fisk to give public lecture at Macquarie University

On March 10, bestselling author and journalist Robert Fisk will give a free public lecture at Macquarie University based on his latest book, The Great War of Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East.

Fisk, based in Beirut as Middle East correspondent for The Independent, has lived in the Middle East for almost three decades and holds more British and international journalism awards than any other foreign correspondent, including the British Press Awards and International Journalist of the Year award seven times. He has been described by the New York Times as “probably the most famous foreign correspondent in Britain”, while the Financial Times calls him “one of the outstanding reporters of his generation. As a war correspondent he is unrivalled.”

Rarely have first-hand reporting and history been so powerfully combined as they are in The Great War of Civilisation, Fisk’s epic story of tragedy and betrayal in the Middle East. As his narrative of bloodshed and cruelty unfolds in Iraq, Afghanistan, Algeria, Iran, Palestine and other battlefields, the carnage of 11 September 2001 and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime take on a new and frightening meaning.

Fisk, who has met Osama bin Laden three times, has been on the battlefront of the Middle East’s conflicts for 28 years, and his devastating accounts of human suffering are now read around the world. In the tradition of all foreign correspondents, his eyewitness testimony of the horrors of modern warfare, like that of the great reporters of World War II, is laced with both suspicion and anger.

The lecture is organised by the Centre for Middle East and North African Studies at Macquarie University.

What: The Great War for Civilisation Revisited by Robert Fisk

When: Friday March 10th, at 7:30pm

Where: Mason Theatre, Building E7B,

Macquarie University, Balaclava Road, North Ryde.

Parking: Free. Use the University car parks (normal restrictions won’t apply)

Further information:
For attendees: (02) 9850 8869

For media comment: Dr Andrew Vincent (02) 9850 8825.

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