About Barnaby
Barnaby Rogerson was conceived on the Isle of Wight (at Cowes week) and born in Dunfermline, Scotland. Travel was a vital aspect of his childhood which followed in the wake of his father's career in the Royal Navy. A degree in History from St Andrews University proved to be adequate preparation for work as - variously - a barman, tutor for a child film star, a pony boy on a Highland estate and working for two independent publishers. The latter role led to a job in the press department of the Afghanistan Support Committee and a chance encounter in the Outer Hebrides led to his first commission to write a guidebook on Morocco. He subsequently wrote further guidebooks to Tunisia, Cyprus, Istanbul and Libya.
His first history book was a chronicle of North Africa and he went on to write the acclaimed The Prophet Muhammad: a Biography. For more details on this and subsequent books, visit the Books page.
Barnaby's latest work is The House Divided: Sunni, Shia and the Making of the Middle East, described by Rory Stewart as: "A masterly engagement with the most delicate and important of subjects – filled with gentle empathy, learning and rare balance."
Barnaby is on the advisory board of Critical Muslim. He is also a lecturer, television presenter and book reviewer, with a scrapbook of close to four hundred articles which can all be found via the Articles page.
His day job is co-running the acclaimed publishing house Eland Books with his wife, Rose Baring. Eland Books specializes in keeping classic travel books in print.
Books
-
![The House Divided: Sunni, Shia and The Making of the Middle East]()
The House Divided: Sunni, Shia and The Making of the Middle East
At the heart of the Middle East, with its regional conflicts and proxy wars, is a 1400-year-old schism between Sunni and Shia. To understand this divide and its modern resonances, we need to revisit its origins …
-
![In Search of Ancient North Africa]()
In Search of Ancient North Africa
DescriptioIn Search of Ancient North Africa is a journey into the ruins of a landscape to make sense of these stories through the lives of five men and one woman. Together these six lives, clouded with as much myth as fact, represent classical North Africa.
-
![Heirs of the Prophet]()
Heirs of the Prophet
Heirs of the Prophet Muhammed is a swaggering saga of ambition, immense achievement, self-sacrificing nobility and blood rivalry which also allows us to understand some of the complexities of our modern world.
‘A tour de force. One of the best summary histories of Islam from its beginnings until today I have come across. Informative, engaging, and excitingly written’ Ghada Karmi, author, In Search of Fatima -
![The Prophet Muhammad: A Biography]()
The Prophet Muhammad: A Biography
The Prophet Muhammad is a hero for all mankind. In his lifetime he established a new religion, Islam; a new state, the first united Arabia; and a new literary language, the classical Arabic of the Qur'an. Barnaby Rogerson's elegant biography not only looks directly at the life of the Prophet Muhammad, but beautifully evokes for western readers the Arabian world into which he was born in 570 AD.
-
![]()
Don McCullin: Journeys Across Roman Asia Minor
Commentary by Barnaby Rogerson
Journeys Across Roman Asia Minor is driven by an eye for beauty and an ear for history. It is an album of the most recent photographs taken by Don McCullin, informed by a life full of hard-won experience …
-
![On Travel and the Journey through Life]()
On Travel and the Journey through Life
On Travel presents a pyrotechnic display of cracking one-liners, cynical wordplay and comic observation, mining three thousand years of global wit and wisdom: from Pliny to Spinoza and from Albert Einstein to Aunt Augusta …
-
![A Book Full of Rogersons]()
A Book Full of Rogersons
The English tend either to look towards the Lord in his moated castle or the poor peasant at his gate, to polarise between nob and mob, capitalist and communist. This book takes us into another English landscape …
For more books by Barnaby Rogerson, click here
I have read dozens of narrative histories of the Arabs but I have never felt so transported, so entertained and so immersed.