“OSAMA bin Ladin made me famous” is not perhaps a phrase one would expect to find in the middle of a reflective review of nearly of a century of life spent largely in academia on both sides of the Atlantic.

But then Bernard Lewis has been described as “the world’s greatest living historian of the Middle East”, a man whose already distinguished career was given an entirely unexpected boost by the cataclysmic events of September 11, 2001.

He swiftly topped bestseller lists with works explaining why parts of the Islamic world hated America and had spawned the likes of bin Ladin (the spelling used by Lewis, as opposed to bin-Laden).

Born in London in 1916, Lewis spent most of his long life in academia, combined with activities such as wartime intelligence work and generally advising and mixing with the famous and powerful, from American, Turkish and Israeli politicians and Jordanian royalty to Pope John Paul II (whom he particularly admired).

We learn how he found it perfectly possible to be English and Jewish and happy with both heritages, and how he took a mid-career move across the pond to Princeton completely in his stride, while courting controversy with views such as those on the Turkish Armenian massacres, which ended up in a French court case.

This is a deceptively gentle memoir, punctuated by sharp observations on life in general and the apparently ever-tumultuous Middle East in particular.