The cooks always exhibited the most charming manners: "Madame, I have met you twice already, here at breakfast but also in my dreams…’

In Cairo a blind man can smell what month it is through the scent of the squeezed fruit juices. We hit the end of the mango season but were plumb in the middle of guava and tamarind and at the beginning of bitter orange.

Following in the wake of Anthony and Cleopatra as they sailed down the Nile can set up dangerously high expectations.

I had to pinch myself time and time again to check that I was not in a dream as I swam in the spring-fed pool of Cleopatra