'Islam and the Myth of Confrontation - religion and politics in the Middle East' by Fred Halliday, IB Tauris £12.95

'The Railway Man by Eric Lomax, Cape £15.99; paperback Vintage £6.99

Yusuf Al-Azhari spent six years in solitary confinement as a political prisoner. Now he is helping to bring Somalia's warlords together. Michael Smith tells his story:

As the Cambodian peace plan swings into action, a survivor of Pol Pot's terror talks to Mike Brown about justice and forgiveness.

Is it really the best thing that can happen to us to have the wind at our back, for life always to be smooth and comfortable?

Troubled by the Irish question, English doctor John Lester feels the need for a clinical examination of his own attitudes:

In the 1960s and 70s Bill Taylor, otherwise known as 'Burglar Bill', was one of the principal trade union convenors of the huge Austin car plant in Birmingham, where 28,000 people worked. In 1974 the IRA bombed two pubs in the city centre.

Gordon Wilson and his daughter Marie, a 20-year-old nurse, were buried under six feet of rubble when the IRA bombed a Remembrance Day gathering in the Northern Irish town of Enniskillen in 1987. Marie was one of 11 who died in the blast.

With a bullet in his arm, he zigzagged away, missing by inches the car that was blocking the road.

Another African leader, General Joseph Lagu, former Vice-President of the Sudan, also took part. As a guerrilla leader in the bush, he fought against the Arab North in Sudan's first civil war.