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The Dictator's Wife: The gripping BBC Two Between the Covers book club pick

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Bashar’s older brother, Basil, served in the Syrian army, drove fast cars and chased women. Bashar, by contrast, was “hard-working, punctual, went every day to college and avoided the wild life,” said Wafic Said, a wealthy Syrian expat. He listened to Phil Collins and the Electric Light Orchestra, drank green tea and cycled around town. Unlike his father, who retained a peasant brogue, Bashar spoke the refined lilt of the Damascene elite. Elena's rise to the top ranks of academic chemists was, subsequently, smooth. Publications steadily appeared under the name of Professor Doctor Engineer Elena Ceaucescu. It was easy for her to find scientists to publish studies and books in her name; they did not have much of a choice and were handsomely rewarded for their work. An entire organization was involved in translating and distributing "her" works. She never wrote a thing herself during her entire life. Eventually, Elena became the head of Romania's Institute for Chemistry. But that was not enough: Elena wanted every chemical institute in the country to come under one central institute in Bucharest, with herself at the helm. She wanted to be called Professor Doctor Engineer, and she found no opposition at the Romanian Academy, since resistance was both futile and dangerous. This was a pivotal moment for the couple. Until now Asma, the foreign wife, had been relegated to the sidelines. Now she came to play a central role in Bashar’s international rehabilitation. “She was his ambassador to all the countries with whom he couldn’t mingle and mix,” says Abdel Nour, Bashar’s former adviser. Asma’s parents arrived in London in the 1970s in search of better opportunities. The family remained religious in exile: her father attended Friday prayers and her mother discarded her hijab only after Asma married. Friends describe the family as culturally conservative but eager for their children to assimilate. At her local Church of England primary school Asma was known as Emma. “You’d be hard-pressed to recognise her as a Syrian,” a neighbour recalled.

Elena Ceausescu: Greatest Scientist Ever — except she was a Elena Ceausescu: Greatest Scientist Ever — except she was a

Now 30 and based in London, Berry worked as a financial and political journalist at Reuters before becoming an author. She reported on the US presidential election in 2016 after joining the Mail Online, where her observations of the rise of Donald Trump with Melania Trump at his side planted the seed of the novel. Home life was miserable. “They hated her,” said Ayman Abdel Nour, an adviser to Bashar at the time. “They kept her inside the house for years.” Asma was not yet fluent in Arabic. When the family gathered for meals they made a point of conversing in their impenetrable Alawite patois. It’s a man’s world but these women are married to the men who make this world. I wanted to explore that duality because they’re at the eye of power but it’s slightly off to the left. They’re not paid. Their role often isn’t clear,” Berry says. Many Syrians were intoxicated by what they saw, but fear inhibited most from coming onto the streets. Then, one night in February in a drab agricultural town called Deraa, south of Damascus, a group of schoolchildren sprayed graffiti on a wall: “It’s your turn next, doctor.”This is a brilliant novel, in my opinion, and anyone who has an interest in reading novels about the Cold War, post Cold War, and life in Eastern Europe when it was part of the USSR, should seek this one out. The author may have used a fictious country as her setting, but the experiences and circumstances have been based on actual former Eastern Bloc countries and the people who lived there. Outstanding. The mesmerised narrator wonders aloud about the impact of these women, raising issues not too detached from ones we might ask about our own, real-life dictators’ wives. Why does the media fawn over their closets and philanthropic habits? And does the fixation on the glamour help disguise the darkness of their husbands’ deeds? Having failed to thwart the wedding, Bashar’s mother resolved to conceal it. There were no news bulletins about the low-key event. No official photos have ever been released. Asma was repeatedly told that her job was to produce heirs and stay out of the news. Bashar’s mother insisted on retaining the title “First Lady”; state media referred to Asma as akilatu al-rais, the president’s spouse. No one recognised her in the street.

Banker, princess, warlord: the many lives of Asma Assad Banker, princess, warlord: the many lives of Asma Assad

Nevertheless, on December 8, 1967, she obtained a PhD in chemistry after defending her thesis on the "Stereospecific Polymerization of Isoprene on the Stabilization of Synthetic Rubbers on Copolymerization." Romanian law decreed that doctoral candidates had to publicly defend their theses. To avoid the public defense of a thesis that she likely did not write, the law was changed so that she only needed to submit a written defense. Assad appears to have almost a cast a spell on the profile writer, Berry observes. “Personal magnetism and charm is very hard to fight against. You look over here and you don’t look at the extrajudicial killings over there.”Berry quit the newsroom and travelled to eastern Europe for three months of research. She began in Romania and immediately found herself in the midst of a street protest with hundreds of thousands of people calling for the government’s resignation. Elena's PhD in chemistry was based on a thesis defense that never occurred. Indeed, there was nothing to present. The petitions were turned down and Elena had to settle for an honorary degree from the Central London Polytechnic and an honorary fellowship from the Royal Institute of Chemistry. According to Behr, the chancellor of London University, Professor Sir Philip Norman, publicly praised Elena's work, despite the fact that she never wrote a single word of any of her publications. For months, Asma stopped giving interviews. Former friends describe her as looking emaciated on a rare public outing to a pro-government rally in January 2012. At some point she and her children moved to the family’s summer palace near the coast, far from any shelling or tear gas. Hanson, Roger. “Elena Ceausescu - Romanian Dictator’s Wife and Fake Scientist.” Stuff.Co.Nz, 12 July 2017, https://www.stuff.co.nz/science/94679348/roger-hanson-elena-ceausescu--romanian-dictators-wife-and-fake-scientist.

Freya Berry - Watson Little

Elena Ceausescu (1916-89) was the wife of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu (1918-89). During the 1970s and 80s, she was one of the two most powerful women on earth (the other was was Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister of Great Britain). Her reputation was falsely built up thanks to a fraudulent PhD, appointments to Central Committee positions, and extensive propaganda. With Makhlouf hobbled and Bashar’s sister and mother gone, Asma has few substantial rivals within the inner circle. Many of her closest advisers fill top posts in the president’s office. “She’s in control of palace appointees,” said a businessman who travels between Damascus and Europe. “She can nominate whomever she wants.” Dominance in the scientific establishment within Romania was only one step on Elena's path to prestige. She routinely sought international recognition from other scientists. When the Ceausescus traveled abroad for state visits, ceremonies had to be negotiated prior to the trip in which Elena would receive honorary degrees and other rewards for her scientific work. Not a single scientist in either the West or the East ever wondered why she never participated in scientific debates. Elena Ceausescu receiving a honorary doctorate from the University of Buenos Aires in 1974. Source: Online Photo Library of Romanian Communism A visit to the grand Ceausescu Palace in Bucharest conjured ghosts of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu and what was known as a “conjugal dictatorship” before their unceremoniously swift trial and execution.

Ultimately, when an offer from a Washington-based organization did not appear, she was forced to accept the honorary membership from the IAS. She showed her disgust and vehement anti-semitism by claiming that she had to accept a "low-ranked" degree from the hands of a "dirty Jew," Dr. Emanuel Merdinger, then head of the IAS (Pacepa 181).

Velvet gloves to iron fists: how complicit are the wives of

Her colleagues saw a different side. On a good day she was “enormously curious” and “amazingly accommodating”, according to a former employee. But another consultant remembered her “princess-like temper. She would shout and vent”. (He resigned after eight months.) “She’s a control freak, a scary person,” said the consultant. It’s hard to compute the scale of destruction in Syria over the years that followed. In 2014 Islamic State, a Sunni extremist group, took advantage of the chaos to establish a so-called caliphate straddling Syria and Iraq. Its sectarian ferocity presented a serious threat to Bashar’s forces but also weakened support for his opposition and justified Iran and Russia in propping him up.Once Britain might have supported Asma’s aspirations, happy to add to the collection of Middle Eastern leaders with British ties. Despite voluble denunciation of the Assads, the British government never revoked Asma’s citizenship, as it did with Shamima Begum, the east Londoner who travelled to Syria to join Islamic State in 2015 when she was still a teenager. Syria becomes complicated when you leave the Sheraton hotel. Its mountains and deserts shelter a patchwork of ethnic and religious groups, most of which have oppressed each other at one time or another. France prised the country from the Ottomans, and its rule between the world wars was brief and resented. The early years of Syria’s independence were marked by relentless internal strife as coup followed coup. Her mother, Sahar, had ambitious plans for Asma. Her own great-uncle had helped Hafez Assad seize power. Sahar used this connection to get a job at Syria’s embassy in London. She was also keen to promote a match between Asma and Bashar, Hafez’s second son, according to Sam Dagher, author of "Assad Or We Burn the Country”. The two met several times when Bashar was a gangly medical student in London in the 1990s. Elena began attending night-school courses in chemistry at the Bucharest Municipal Adult Education Institute. She was soon expelled because she cheated on an exam and never received a bachelor's degree. In fact, the teacher who oversaw the infamous exam "lived in fear of his life for decades afterward" (Behr 140).

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