Picador just sent first copies of my new book, published on 1st Sept. It follows my BBC series Our Man in the Middle East. Ridiculously proud that I took most of the photos, including the jacket. If you need one book to help you navigate the Mideast, I hope it will be this one.

Huge FT scoop which confirms essence of @anneapplebaum prescient book Autocracy Inc and challenge to American power; Russia secretly helping Iran develop supersonic cruise missiles ft.com/content/6cf367bc-95b0… via @ft

The years roll by as we grow older, but those we lost are frozen in time. Tim is forever 12, with 34 years of life taken from him. What he would have achieved, we dont know, but his legacy charity survives him and supports others. Tim would not ask for more

Jeremy Bowen: The world is more dangerous today than I can ever remember The world is at another moment of transformation; we see it everywhere. The political and economic turmoil that drives people towards rich countries where increasingly they are not welcome. Climate change that is doing much more damage than simply ruining holidays in Europe’s burning tourist hotspots. The power of asymmetric warfare to confound the superpowers. In the Oval Office sits a president driven by vanity and instinct, and surrounded by a court of advisers who know better than to question his decisions or challenge him with inconvenient truths. Iran has demonstrated the vulnerability of the world economy to the weaponisation of geography. Blocking the Strait of Hormuz put a chokehold on the global economy. Americans who already feel hard up are spending more on petrol and might take their revenge on the president at the midterm elections in November. Worldwide, the longer trade is paralysed; more people will go hungry as farmers lack fertiliser. Global supply chains are more interdependent, and vulnerable, than they were even at the turn of the century. The world’s other chokepoints await the next big crises. The Strait of Malacca, which connects the Pacific and the Indian Oceans, is less than two miles wide at its narrowest point. One fifth of world trade, estimated at $2.45trn by one think tank, passes through the Taiwan Strait every year. It is around 100 miles wide, but if China ever took military action against Taiwan, it would be the main theatre of war. Economic disruption is bad enough on its own. But it also feeds in to a world of suspicion and populist politics that is sharpening fears of war between the great powers. It seemed unthinkable in the Cold War, impossible in the West’s warm glow after the fall of the USSR, but stopping one happening might be the biggest challenge any leader will face in the second quarter of this century. After Vladimir Putin threatened “consequences that you have never faced in your history” to anyone who intervened against his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Joe Biden posted on X that “a direct confrontation between Nato and Russia is World War III. And something we must strive to prevent.” Putin has reprised versions of his warning since then. It is largely seen as a bluff, and has not stopped Western military aid to Ukraine, but it slowed it down. With the Kremlin under unprecedented pressure now that Ukrainian drones are striking deep inside Russia, some strategists are discussing whether his threats are less of a bluff than some assume. @BowenBBC newstatesman.com/politics/20…

Jeremy Bowen hammering the idea of the illegality of ‘Jewish settlements’. Surely he means ‘Israeli settlements’? But he says it too many times for it to be a slip of the tongue.

July 1966 and the country watches on as the Charlton brothers take England into the World Cup final… But their dad - Bob- misses it all because he’s working a coal shift two miles underground The Coal Board and the BBC put on a special showing once back at the surface… 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

I’m back with another Reading Russia Weekend Extra. In this edition: what the Russian papers have been saying about the talks in Abu Dhabi and the Olympics in Milan-Cortina, plus memories of a Nato chief visiting Moscow 25 years ago. #ReadingRussia

Sad to learn of the death of former BBC foreign correspondent Sir Mark Tully. For so many years he was known as the ‘Voice of India.’ As a tribute I play one of the pieces Sir Mark selected on BBC Radio’s Desert Island Discs: Danny Boy.

@bowenbbc is among our special guests and contributors at the 70th anniversary recording of From Our Own Correspondent along with @BBCSteveR, @bbclysedoucet, Kate Adie, @yogital, @annaefoster and @fergalkeane47 - listen Saturday night at 20GMT @BBCRadio4 ; or download @BBCSounds

The BBC, in association with Agence France-Presse, the Associated Press, and Reuters, has launched a short film calling on the Israeli authorities to allow international journalists access to Gaza. Read more: bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2025/s…