The Dictator's Wife: The gripping BBC Two Between the Covers book club pick

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Asma soon found a new way to extend her influence. She had toyed with charity work early in her marriage, and now sought to unify her projects within a single organisation, the Syria Trust for Development. She aimed to make the trust the primary conduit through which Syria encountered the world, recruiting Anglophone Syrians living abroad, former United Nations officials, strategists from the Monitor Group, a Boston-based management consultancy, even a German diplomat’s daughter. “It was licensed to engage with foreigners when other bodies weren’t,” recalls a diplomat then in Damascus.

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In 1975, she was awarded Doctor Honoris Causa at both the University of Tehran and Jordan University in Amman. Later, the University of Manila awarded Elena with an honorary doctorate thanks to a large donation that the Ceausescus made during a trip to the Philippines. Elena never admitted to any research malpractice and insisted that institutions really wanted to grant her recognition for her scholarly work.

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In her heyday Popa, we are told, introduced an all-female staff to her factory long before “girl power” became a rallying cry. She palled around with Ronald Reagan, Paul Newman and Saddam Hussein, and was a particular favourite of the British queen. She is described as “a hypnotic blend of Joan of Arc and Imelda Marcos; both goddess and she-devil, princess and tyrant, martyr and uber-bitch”. The regime’s forces have killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians, and tortured more than 14,000 people to death. Half the population have fled their homes, precipitating the greatest refugee crisis since the second world war. Iran and Turkey, as well as America and Russia, have fought proxy battles for influence on Syrian soil. Throughout the Arab world the hopeful dreams of a decade ago have been crushed, but nowhere more bloodily than in Syria. Nevertheless, on December 8, 1967, she obtained a PhD in chemistry after defending her thesis on the "Stereospecific Polymerization of Isoprene on the Stabilization of Synthetic Rubbers on Copolymerization." Romanian law decreed that doctoral candidates had to publicly defend their theses. To avoid the public defense of a thesis that she likely did not write, the law was changed so that she only needed to submit a written defense.

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Syria becomes complicated when you leave the Sheraton hotel. Its mountains and deserts shelter a patchwork of ethnic and religious groups, most of which have oppressed each other at one time or another. France prised the country from the Ottomans, and its rule between the world wars was brief and resented. The early years of Syria’s independence were marked by relentless internal strife as coup followed coup. Naturally, Elena sought what was probably the most prestigious scientific honor in Europe: membership in Britain's Royal Society. The ability to add FRS after her name certainly appealed to her, considering her already lengthy list of titles. Prior to attending an official visit to the UK, the Ceausescus solicited the Royal Society, as well as Oxford and Cambridge, for honors. The "trial" that sealed the Ceausecus' fate was perhaps the perfect foil for the decades of falsification and fraud that defined Elena's scientific career. Behr calls the proceedings "farcical" and it is clear that the prosecutors were performing an act of restitution that the entire nation desperately needed.

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Her interest in chemistry arose when she was briefly employed in a laboratory. In her free time, she attended meetings of the Youth Communists' League, where she met her soon-to-be husband Nicolae. She failed nearly every subject that was taught in Romanian schools.

Elena Ceausescu: Greatest Scientist Ever — except she was a Elena Ceausescu: Greatest Scientist Ever — except she was a

It was really fascinating. I liked how she used a fictional country but based historical events within it. Very clever!Behr, Edward. Kiss the Hand You Cannot Bite: The Rise and Fall of the Ceausescus. Edited by P. Gethers, Villard Books, 1991. Dominance in the scientific establishment within Romania was only one step on Elena's path to prestige. She routinely sought international recognition from other scientists. When the Ceausescus traveled abroad for state visits, ceremonies had to be negotiated prior to the trip in which Elena would receive honorary degrees and other rewards for her scientific work. Not a single scientist in either the West or the East ever wondered why she never participated in scientific debates.

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Soon afterwards, Asma issued her first official statement since the start of the uprising: “The president is the president of all of Syria, not the head of a faction of Syrians, and the First Lady supports him in this role.” She was standing by her man. With Makhlouf hobbled and Bashar’s sister and mother gone, Asma has few substantial rivals within the inner circle. Many of her closest advisers fill top posts in the president’s office. “She’s in control of palace appointees,” said a businessman who travels between Damascus and Europe. “She can nominate whomever she wants.”

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Once Britain might have supported Asma’s aspirations, happy to add to the collection of Middle Eastern leaders with British ties. Despite voluble denunciation of the Assads, the British government never revoked Asma’s citizenship, as it did with Shamima Begum, the east Londoner who travelled to Syria to join Islamic State in 2015 when she was still a teenager. Asma seemed a promising consort for the new Syrian leader. Queen Rania of Jordan, Sheikha Moza of Qatar, even Princess Diana in Britain, all served as models for how a glamorous first lady might become a force for reform. Syria’s secularist Baath party made it more receptive than most Arab countries to women taking public roles. “I thought the combination of these two would make Syria a heaven,” said Wafic Said, a wealthy Syrian expat who befriended the couple.