"I don't think people talk to each other in relationships," says Sadie Jones. She's referring to the stiff-upper-lip, post-war society of the 1950s where her new book is set, but she could just as easily be talking about today. The best-selling author, sitting comfortably in her West London home, suddenly becomes animated.
"The overwhelming need to write Small Wars came out of feeling so upset by these terrible repetitive histories, the way we don't seem to learn. It makes me really angry." There's a venom in her voice, which is not what I'd expected from one of the most affable, friendly British writers you could expect to meet. But just as her first book, The Outcast, had a literary ambition beyond a summer read (although it appeared on various summer reading lists), Small Wars is so much more than the portrait of a marriage under pressure. Those elements exist but the central character, Hal Treherne, is enigmatic, a soldier whose emotions and morals start to fall apart when he's posted with his wife, Clara, and small twins to Cyprus in 1956 to defend the British colony in turmoil. He sees things no one should have to see but, at first, is glad of the "action". Clara, meanwhile, imagines things no one should have to imagine.
As Hal wrestles with the implications of duty, Jones skilfully weaves in war, relationships, the male psyche and an overriding sense of a man battling with his conscience. "But with all those elements it was a bit like plate spinning, and, initially at least, I was very wary of going back to the 1950s again," she says. "That's obviously where The Outcast was set, and you really don't want to be pigeonholed. I wanted to kill everyone who made these jokes to me about the 'difficult second book'."
There must have been a pressure, though, in following up such a successful book, a worry that perhaps The Outcast might have been a delicious one-off. It had, after all, taken her 15 years of largely unsuccessful script, film and play writing to get to this point. "All the elements I wanted to get in made the actual writing of it really difficult," she remembers. "But it wasn't until the very end that I felt any of the pressure that comes with telling a story that perhaps people would be anticipating. The relief when I could make it clear that even though we were back in the 1950s, it wasn't just the same book, was immense."
So why go back to that era at all? Hadn't she said everything she wanted to say about love and shame in that time in The Outcast? "I know, I did feel that," she says. "But when I discovered Cyprus I became completely obsessed by it, and I knew that was the story I wanted to tell because of its similarities to what's happening now in Afghanistan. It had to be where it was. Initially it was the logistics of the actual soldiering that interested me. That there could be, like Afghanistan, these quite small skirmishes where, nevertheless, lives are lost. The two countries even look a bit like each other."
She slowly began to realise that Cyprus could be a way of exploring events in Afghanistan without having to get into the specifics of an ongoing conflict. It was a while, though, before she found her lead character. She remembers the moment quite clearly: when she read about Flt Lt Malcolm Kendall-Smith, a British medical officer who was jailed in 2006 for opposing the war in Iraq. What's slightly strange, then, is that Hal is the opposite of Kendall-Smith. Where the real-life officer was prepared to take a stand and go public for his principles, Hal cannot. His sense of duty to his country prevents him from fully revealing the cover-up that is at the centre of the book. He hears about the shocking, vengeful attack on two women in Limassol by the men under his command and it changes him: he condemns the assault but in a sense it condemns him, too. He becomes a haunted man, tragically distant from the wife who loves him - and violent towards her as well.
In her research for the book, Jones met many soldiers who had been to war. "All the ethics, the accusation and counter accusation and the treatment of prisoners, all of that came up. So it was just the perfect place for me to discuss the real point, that this kind of appalling behaviour is universal in conflict." The line in the book that emphasises this - "the outrage of the collective frees the individual to commit terrible acts" - is uncharacteristically clunky amid her usual, beautifully flowing prose, but it's a point worth making.
"There's supposed to be this battle for hearts and minds but in that situation, people can easily become dehumanised. What's very sad is that we're herd animals and we respond to whatever the collective behaviour is - and you can take that right back to Nazi Germany. We all like to think that we would be the person who stands up and says: 'No, this isn't right.' But what interests me is this overwhelming human urge to join in and be like other people."
The character that best represents Jones's message is not Hal at all, but a timid interpreter called Davis. He witnesses the abuse and, when he decides to report it, it seems Small Wars will surely take a different tack, perhaps becoming a moral tale of the little guy standing up for what's right. But in the end he's a coward - and for Jones that's the sad fact of life. "In a culture where people are doing wicked things, people who aren't wicked themselves tend to go along with it," she says.
For all the talk of wicked deeds, Jones is just as keen to talk about the emotional power of Small Wars as discuss the political subtexts behind it. After all, this is a book that is as much about Hal's wife battling her fear of the unknown and the crushing boredom of domesticity. It's not so much a dark tale as a very ambitious undertaking, one that's just as happy to speak of the unfettered joy of eating strawberries in the sun, or of how a blazingly bright Cypriot beach can spark happy memories of Cornwall. Hal's eventual reconciliation with Clara is dubious. The reader not actually sure whether it is a reconciliation.
"That's really what I mean when I say people don't talk in relationships," Jones says. "Hal and Clara's relationship is crippled by them not being able to talk to each other. You'd imagine all he would need to do is tell her why he's acting the way he's acting and she'd understand, but he doesn't function like that. We might act and speak differently now, but you have to admit you'd prefer to avoid confrontation in a relationship if possible. And I don't think you'd find an army wife now who would say to her husband: 'I'm so frightened. I need to talk about this.' I just don't think people do that."
All of this might suggest that Jones wasn't writing about the 1950s at all when she chose her setting for Small Wars. She was born in 1967. Her experience of the 1950s extends to writing one well-received novel set during that period and enjoying the first series of Mad Men. But, for her, the connections across the decades are relevant. "I am fascinated by the male condition - how men behave in society, what their responsibilities are," she says. "What I do know about the 1950s is there was a gender pressure of sorts in that men had such a clear role. They were the providers, these impressive adults. Now that role has been taken away in many parts of the world. The 1950s men I have written about in both The Outcast and Small Wars have their roles taken away from them, too. In The Outcast, they come back from the war and have to deal with not quite fitting in. And what happens to Hal, well-"
Jones trails off, and it's not just because she doesn't want to give away the ending. You sense she feels a deep sympathy and connection with her central character. "I knew what was going to happen because that's the way I write, but I was so upset I almost changed it," she laughs. "Of course, I couldn't do that because I was absolutely determined not to have a war as a subplot to a romantic story. In my view, that's a despicable thing to do. But I do catch myself wondering whether he and Clara will be all right. I think they will."
Small Wars reveals that The Outcast wasn't a one-off - it may have taken Jones some years to get to this point, but she's now arrived as one of those rare writers who can sell thousands of books but please the literary critics, too. So it is rather ironic that she's currently working on the film adaptation of The Outcast after all those years of struggling with screenplays. "I've written it," she says. "We've got a director. I'm not counting my chickens but we've made a good start."
I ask her if it feels odd to be going back to that world after finally making it as an author. "Well, kind of. Books give you more space, and you can do whatever you like with your imagination, which is great, but that has its own pressures, in a way. But being able to describe things, which you can't really do in screenplays, is really lovely. It's like being let off the leash."
Small Wars (Chatto & Windus) is out now.
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
Quick pearls of wisdom
Focus on gratitude: And do so deeply, he says. “Think of one to three things a day that you’re grateful for. It needs to be specific, too, don’t just say ‘air.’ Really think about it. If you’re grateful for, say, what your parents have done for you, that will motivate you to do more for the world.”
Know how to fight: Shetty married his wife, Radhi, three years ago (he met her in a meditation class before he went off and became a monk). He says they’ve had to learn to respect each other’s “fighting styles” – he’s a talk it-out-immediately person, while she needs space to think. “When you’re having an argument, remember, it’s not you against each other. It’s both of you against the problem. When you win, they lose. If you’re on a team you have to win together.”
Asia Cup Qualifier
Final
UAE v Hong Kong
TV:
Live on OSN Cricket HD. Coverage starts at 5.30am
2025 Fifa Club World Cup groups
Group A: Palmeiras, Porto, Al Ahly, Inter Miami.
Group B: Paris Saint-Germain, Atletico Madrid, Botafogo, Seattle.
Group C: Bayern Munich, Auckland City, Boca Juniors, Benfica.
Group D: Flamengo, ES Tunis, Chelsea, (Leon banned).
Group E: River Plate, Urawa, Monterrey, Inter Milan.
Group F: Fluminense, Borussia Dortmund, Ulsan, Mamelodi Sundowns.
Group G: Manchester City, Wydad, Al Ain, Juventus.
Group H: Real Madrid, Al Hilal, Pachuca, Salzburg.
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
The rules on fostering in the UAE
A foster couple or family must:
- be Muslim, Emirati and be residing in the UAE
- not be younger than 25 years old
- not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
- be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
- have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
- undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
- A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
FINAL RESULT
Sharjah Wanderers 20 Dubai Tigers 25 (After extra-time)
Wanderers
Tries: Gormley, Penalty
cons: Flaherty
Pens: Flaherty 2
Tigers
Tries: O’Donnell, Gibbons, Kelly
Cons: Caldwell 2
Pens: Caldwell, Cross
Mumbai Indians 213/6 (20 ov)
Royal Challengers Bangalore 167/8 (20 ov)
Earth under attack: Cosmic impacts throughout history
- 4.5 billion years ago: Mars-sized object smashes into the newly-formed Earth, creating debris that coalesces to form the Moon
- 66 million years ago: 10km-wide asteroid crashes into the Gulf of Mexico, wiping out over 70 per cent of living species – including the dinosaurs.
- 50,000 years ago: 50m-wide iron meteor crashes in Arizona with the violence of 10 megatonne hydrogen bomb, creating the famous 1.2km-wide Barringer Crater
- 1490: Meteor storm over Shansi Province, north-east China when large stones “fell like rain”, reportedly leading to thousands of deaths.
- 1908: 100-metre meteor from the Taurid Complex explodes near the Tunguska river in Siberia with the force of 1,000 Hiroshima-type bombs, devastating 2,000 square kilometres of forest.
- 1998: Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 breaks apart and crashes into Jupiter in series of impacts that would have annihilated life on Earth.
-2013: 10,000-tonne meteor burns up over the southern Urals region of Russia, releasing a pressure blast and flash that left over 1600 people injured.
Britain's travel restrictions
- A negative test 2 days before flying
- Complete passenger locator form
- Book a post-arrival PCR test
- Double-vaccinated must self-isolate
- 11 countries on red list quarantine
Mercedes-AMG GT 63 S E Performance: the specs
Engine: 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 plus rear-mounted electric motor
Power: 843hp at N/A rpm
Torque: 1470Nm N/A rpm
Transmission: 9-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 8.6L/100km
On sale: October to December
Price: From Dh875,000 (estimate)
UAE SQUAD
Goalkeepers: Ali Khaseif, Fahad Al Dhanhani, Mohammed Al Shamsi, Adel Al Hosani
Defenders: Bandar Al Ahbabi, Shaheen Abdulrahman, Walid Abbas, Mahmoud Khamis, Mohammed Barghash, Khalifa Al Hammadi, Hassan Al Mahrami, Yousef Jaber, Mohammed Al Attas
Midfielders: Ali Salmeen, Abdullah Ramadan, Abdullah Al Naqbi, Majed Hassan, Abdullah Hamad, Khalfan Mubarak, Khalil Al Hammadi, Tahnoun Al Zaabi, Harib Abdallah, Mohammed Jumah
Forwards: Fabio De Lima, Caio Canedo, Ali Saleh, Ali Mabkhout, Sebastian Tagliabue
Director: Laxman Utekar
Cast: Vicky Kaushal, Akshaye Khanna, Diana Penty, Vineet Kumar Singh, Rashmika Mandanna
Rating: 1/5
COMPANY%20PROFILE%20
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECompany%20name%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ENomad%20Homes%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarted%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E2020%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFounders%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EHelen%20Chen%2C%20Damien%20Drap%2C%20and%20Dan%20Piehler%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20UAE%20and%20Europe%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EIndustry%3C%2Fstrong%3E%3A%20PropTech%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFunds%20raised%20so%20far%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20%2444m%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestors%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Acrew%20Capital%2C%2001%20Advisors%2C%20HighSage%20Ventures%2C%20Abstract%20Ventures%2C%20Partech%2C%20Precursor%20Ventures%2C%20Potluck%20Ventures%2C%20Knollwood%20and%20several%20undisclosed%20hedge%20funds%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
Temple numbers
Expected completion: 2022
Height: 24 meters
Ground floor banquet hall: 370 square metres to accommodate about 750 people
Ground floor multipurpose hall: 92 square metres for up to 200 people
First floor main Prayer Hall: 465 square metres to hold 1,500 people at a time
First floor terrace areas: 2,30 square metres
Temple will be spread over 6,900 square metres
Structure includes two basements, ground and first floor
List of officials:
Referees: Chris Broad, David Boon, Jeff Crowe, Andy Pycroft, Ranjan Madugalle and Richie Richardson.
Umpires: Aleem Dar, Kumara Dharmasena, Marais Erasmus, Chris Gaffaney, Ian Gould, Richard Illingworth, Richard Kettleborough, Nigel Llong, Bruce Oxenford, Ruchira Palliyaguruge, Sundaram Ravi, Paul Reiffel, Rod Tucker, Michael Gough, Joel Wilson and Paul Wilson.
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
The%20specs
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If you go...
Etihad flies daily from Abu Dhabi to Zurich, with fares starting from Dh2,807 return. Frequent high speed trains between Zurich and Vienna make stops at St. Anton.
