It must be a slow news day when The Times, a newspaper dedicated to keeping its readers abreast of important public affairs with an eye to the best interests of Britain, runs a story about drunken wedding misdemeanours on its front page under the lame headline: SHOWER AT THE TOWER.
Lieutenant Phil Roberts managed to ruin his friends’ wedding day as well as a 19th Century oil painting before punching another guest in the face and being arrested by the Metropolitan Police – what a muppet.
A tragedy for the happy couple, no doubt, but it’s hard to see how The Times editors judged this to be a story in the national interest.
SPIN ZHIRA: Old Man in Helmand is the unauthorised, unvarnished and irreverent story of one man’s midlife crisis on the front line of the most dangerous district in Afghanistan where the locals haven’t forgiven the British for the occupation of 1842 or for the Russian Invasion of 1979. Of course, all infidels look the same so you can’t really tell them apart.
‘Brims with authenticity and dark humour.’
Patrick Hennessey, bestselling author of The Junior Officers’ Reading Club
‘First class’
Doug Beattie MC, bestselling author of An Ordinary Soldier
‘A must read.’
Richard Dorney, bestselling author of The Killing Zone
‘The best book by a soldier concerning the Afghan War that I have read’
Frank Ledwidge, bestselling author of Losing Small Wars
‘Five stars’
SOLDIER The official magazine of the British Army
‘Not just for soldiers’
William Reeve, BBC World Service and Afghanistan Correspondent
SPIN ZHIRA 