Simon Mayall

Former soldier and government defence adviser on the Middle East Lieutenant General Sir Simon Mayall discusses some of the key battles and sieges between Christendom and the Caliphate and their religious and historical context.

Mayall’s narrative stretches from the taking of Jerusalem by Caliph Umar in the 7th century to the end of the Ottoman Empire after World War I and the formation of the modern Middle East. He includes the collapse of the crusader states, the fall of Constantinople, the sieges of Rhodes and Malta, the assault on Vienna and the Allied capture of Jerusalem in World War I.

Mayall is a former soldier in the British Army and an acknowledged expert on the history of the Middle East and the Crusades. He has been the British government’s senior defence adviser for the Middle East and the prime minister’s security envoy to Iraq and the Kurdish region. He is chair of the council of the National Army Museum.