Peter Mansfield was born in 1928 in India. In 1955 he joined the British Foreign Office and went to Lebanon to study Arabic at the Middle East Centre for Arabic Studies. From 1961 to 1967 he was the Middle East correspondent for the Sunday Times. He became one of Britain's foremost experts on the Middle East. Peter Mansfield died in 1996.

Introduction - from ancient to modern; Islam on the defensive, 1800-; Muhammad Ali's Egypt - Ottoman rival; the struggle for reform 1840-1900; Britain in Egypt, 1882-1914; Turks and Arabs; The Persian factor; the sick man dies - 1918; the Anglo-French interregnum, 1918-1939; the Second World War and its aftermath; the entry of the superpowers and the Nasser era, 1950-1970; the years of turbulence; the inter-war years - globalization and counter-globalization; conclusion - prospects for the twenty-first century.