How often do our students long for black and white rather than the shades of grey that history generally presents us with? Understanding the Arab-Israeli conflict is all about understanding diversity and complexity in all their shades of grey. Alison Stephen, teaching in an immensely diverse school herself, is determined not to over-simplify the topic for her GCSE students, but she is also acutely aware of the difficulties they face in acquiring a proper grasp of the conflict. Through a series of wonderful activities, many of which are based on some of the most engaging activities in recent editions of Teaching History, Stephen demonstrates how she develops an understanding of chronology, diverse perspectives, the difficulty of dividing land and the significance of place. She uses analogy, visual images, role play, living graphs and continuums to engage her students and help them to comprehend a world that is foreign to them. Most impressively, she denies her students the possibility of any black and white. Her teaching is all about complexity – and how to unravel it.