The Book Club
Christina Lamb: how rape is used as a weapon of war
In this week’s Book Club podcast, my guest is the veteran foreign correspondent Christina Lamb. Christina’s new book, Our Bodies Their Battlefield: What War Does To Women is a deeply reported survey of rape as a weapon of war, described in our pages by Antony Beevor as the most powerful and disturbing book he has ever read. From the fates of Yazidi and Rohingya woman at the hands of IS and the Burmese military, to the German victims of the Red Army and the Disappeared of the Argentinian Junta, Christina looks at the past and present of this phenomenon and talks to me about why it’s so little reported or discussed, let alone prosecuted, how it happens, what it means — and why it’s seemingly on the increase even as wealthy western liberals congratulate themselves on the success of the #metoo movement.