ABSTRACT
Strong men have been known to blanch at the thought of conjugating verbs, any verbs, let alone Arabic ones. Moreover the published memoirs of old Arab-world hands are replete with heart-rending accounts of grappling with the subject in Aden or Lebanon (without benefit of air-conditioning or heating respectively). One of these was the account written in Moscow of his struggle with Arabic by the spy George Blake, arrested while studying the language in Lebanon (at my old school, as it happens).
