David Pryce-Jones - Career

Career

He was educated at Eton and read History at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied under A.J.P. Taylor.

He did his National Service in the Coldstream Guards, in which he was commissioned in 1955, promoted Lieutenant in 1956, and served in the British Army of the Rhine. In 1956, Pryce-Jones lectured the men under his command about the necessity of the Suez War, but admits that he did not believe what he was saying. At the time, he believed that the Islamic world would soon progress after decolonization, and was disappointed when this did not happen. He has worked as a journalist and author. He was Literary Editor at the Financial Times 1959-61, and The Spectator from 1961-63.

Pryce-Jones currently works as senior editor at National Review magazine. He also contributes to The New Criterion and Commentary, and for Benador Associates. Pryce-Jones often writes about the contemporary events and the history of the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and intelligence matters.

In his 1989 book The Closed Circle, Pryce-Jones examined what he considered to be the reasons for the backward state of the Arab world. A review described the book as more of an "indictment" than an examination of the Arab world. In Pryce-Jones's opinion, the root cause of Arab backwardness is tribal nature of Arab political life, which reduces all politics to war of rival families struggling mercilessly for power. As such, Pryce-Jones's view power in Arab politics consists of a network of client-patron relations between powerful and less powerful families and clans. Pryce-Jones considers as an additional retarding factor in Arab society the influence of Islam, which hinders efforts to build a Western style society where the family and clan are not the dominant political unit. Pryce-Jones argues that Islamic fundamentalism is a means of attempting to mobilize the masses behind the dominant clans.

His most recent book, Betrayal: France, the Arabs, and the Jews has accused the French government of being anti-Semitic and pro-Arab, and of consistently siding against Israel in the hope of winning the favour of the Islamic world.