Bells and whistles: Travel insurance commission-free foreign exchange roadside recovery and a

Bells and whistles: Travel insurance, commission-free foreign exchange, roadside recovery, and a £260 interest-free overdraft. What’s the catch? Those bells and whistles aren’t free – they cost you £6 a month. Inspired by “clash-of-civilisations” Huntington and “end-of-history” Fukuyama, they blithely assumed that the tactics which had seen off the Soviet Union could as easily spread a profitable Pax Americana through the oil-producing Middle East.Readers of The Independent may not learn anything new from Kepel’s sensible chapter on the Bush-Blair Iraq adventure, but they should find his scrutiny of al-Qa’ida’s roots absorbing. ( ; 0870 843 2265)CahootIf you don’t mind doing all your banking over the internet, Cahoot offers a pretty good deal. But he concludes with the hope that Europe’s assimilated young Muslims will fruitfully blend the best of East and West Inshallah. Smile/Smile More

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Pity that you have to pay for any extras; still, it’s a good account.Interest rate paid when you’re in credit: 3.3% Overdraft rate: 9.9%. He also takes us on a parallel journey – that of the US neo-conservatives – to show with what fateful symmetry these two paths converged. The neo-cons and the jihadists both wanted to see off the corrupt Middle Eastern oil regimes. They may have had different goals – respectively, democracy and an Islamic state – but both wanted to modify the status quo by force.Kepel’s account of neo-conservatism is as interesting as his analysis of al-Qa’ida. In this magnificent mountain region, Kepel depicts a political, economic and sexual frustration so complete that the desertion of the young comes as no surprise.

Nothing could be more natural than their rage at the inequities and profanities they found when they gravitated to US-supporting Jeddah.But this is merely one moment from Kepel’s epic journey, from Islam’s 7th-century roots to its multifarious flowerings today. It began with a bunch of disaffected left-wingers, defined by its leading light Irving Kristol as liberals who had been mugged by reality. In their shadowy way, the dramatis personae are familiar too: al-Qa’ida has been so thoroughly anatomised that one wonders if there’s much more to say.
As Kepel’s book proves, there certainly is, most vividly when he penetrates the Saudi province of Asir to lunch with a member of the Ghamdi tribe to which many of the 11 September attackers belonged. Gilles Kepel’s road-map is familiar: from Kabul via Peshawar to the Twin Towers, then back via Afghanistan to Iraq.

She takes gleeful risks in seducing the prince, sailing triumphantly off-balance in the sure knowledge that he’ll catch her Her most touching moment comes in the last act. Finding that her prince has betrayed her, she explains in mime that she must die. The gestures are grand, but softly phrased: she doesn’t reproach him, she despairs.Alina Cojocaru’s London debut in Swan Lake was a disappointment. She has an effortless flow of movement, and she used it to fill her dancing with curlicues: all icing, not enough cake.