Dubai: The Story of the World’s Fastest City by Jim Krane: review

By Richard Spencer Telegraph.co.uk

Dubai’s wealth came quickly, and it got a little carried away: artificial islands, gaudy hotels and pointy skyscrapers, spectacular or tasteless as they are, according to your viewpoint. But at first, wealth brought amenities we take for granted: running water, electricity, roads. Dubai’s first electric lights were hooked up in the Sixties. It put in taps and telephones around the same time.

When the Emir of Qatar married a Dubai princess, the dowry was to pay for the city’s first tarmac road; a year later, he paid for a bridge connecting the emirate’s two halves. He probably felt sorry for his backward neighbour, which had just been taken over by his eccentric new father-in-law, Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed al-Maktoum.

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