The Big Read: What’s eating Tony Blair?

Alex Perry meets the would-be world leader Tony Blair

ON a December morning in 2014, a four-car convoy of black SUVs swept out of the polished, limestone arches of the American Colony Hotel, in East Jerusalem, and drove south. Skirting the walls of the old city, it passed Mount Zion and its small, ancient church, where King David lies buried and where Jesus was said to have hosted the Last Supper.

Leaving the old city behind, the convoy hit smooth asphalt, passed tower blocks and an art cinema, overtook Israelis travelling to work in turquoise buses, and broke out into the terraces of cypress and olive on Jerusalem’s outskirts. In 15 minutes, it had reached a security checkpoint in front of a towering, concrete security wall and was waved through — into Bethlehem, the West Bank, and, soon, another world.