Loved Egyptian Night fundamentally reassesses the Arab Spring, debunking the stories the Western powers fed to the world. There is no doubt that the toppling of Ben Ali in Tunisia in January 2011 constituted a political revolution. Was the same ever really true of events in Egypt, Syria or Libya, countries with quite different social topographies? The bitter ends of these uprisings were inscribed in their misunderstood beginnings, Hugh Roberts argues.

Outside meddling ostensibly on behalf of these 'revolutions' has reduced Libya to anarchy and Syria to a devastating civil war now in its twelfth year. In Egypt, the Free Officers' state has been fortified. After so much wishful thinking, what remains is the debris of a cynical pretension. The Americans and Europeans did not vainly strive to free the Egyptians or anyone else from authoritarian rule. Instead, they contrived to seal them up in it. The long oppression of these societies, Kipling's 'loved Egyptian night', is not going to be ended by Western power, it is guaranteed by it.