Patrick Seale, who has died aged 83 after suffering from brain cancer, had many skills as author, journalist, broadcaster, Middle East historian, arts aficionado and dealer and literary agent. But most notably he was the English-speaking world's foremost chronicler and interpreter of Syria, its troubled modern history and its leadership during the past 44 years, that of the al-Assad family, father Hafez and son Bashar.
Seale, a man of great personal charm and the highest intelligence, had carried on writing and broadcasting about Syria's seemingly unstoppable and now regionally menacing war after his diagnosis last year. In one of his final judgments, he said: "Both sides believe they can win, but neither side can win ... Syria will be a field of ruins." He believed that only a proper peace conference including the US, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey and the Syrian government and its multifarious oppositions could stop the conflict.
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