Simon Sebag Montefiore

Simon Sebag Montefiore’s previous visit to Petworth remains one of the highlights among many highlights over the fifteen years the festival. The acclaimed historian returns on the back of his latest volume, The Cauldron, an incredible piece of scholarship narrated in captivating prose: a captivating history of the modern Middle East which sheds light on the intricate, complex, interrelated and often tumultuous region and its huge influence on global geopolitics. In conversation with the Daily Telegraph’s Con Coughlin, Sebag Montefiore will outline his remarkable survey of how the Middle East of 1900 became the Middle East of today - and what it might look like tomorrow.

‘Masterful. In The Cauldron, Montefiore brings extraordinary narrative power and scholarly depth to the making of the modern Middle East, tracing the region’s turbulent evolution from empire to ideology, and from revolution to war’. General David Petraeus, former Director of the CIA