Selected articles
“Sahara Man: Travelling with the Tuareg” by Jeremy Keenan
... he investigates the Tuareg defeat of the Flatters expedition and the bizarre truth of this French misadventure with its madness, mass poisoning and cannibalism.
Prester John
I have inherited from my Anglo-Irish mother a strong eye. When we look hard we find things - lost notes and four-leaf clovers, invisible to less attentive eyes.
Praise the beauty of its eyelashes: Camel journeys in North Africa
If there is much gentle pleasure in a camel journey, of need there is none.
Takubelt, the Tuareg Festival of the Central Sahara
A desert festival is not for vegeterians. Everyday the small herd of mixed animals, tethered beside the tent of the musicians was steadily diminished.
The Garden of God: the Sahara
I was walking through a neolithic camping ground whose protective covering of sand had just been excavated by the wind.
Agadez and the Air Mountains of the Sahara
For those who have long stared at Saharan rock art, walking with a Peul herd, is like watching those millennia old images come bursting into life
In pursuit of Rome's Saharan frontier
… the silence was filled by the terrible burbling, bath gurgling sounds of my bull camel, who was rolling his tongue out in preparation for the mating season.
Make Music not War - Tuareg music festival
One clan were being asked to hand over ten Kalashnikov's and a thousand rounds in exchange for a new well and a small herd of camels to replace the losses of the war years
Travelling to Timbuctoo
An hour later, as dusk settled, a diminutive grey ferry, too old to have seen service at Dunkirk, came chugging across to pick us up. Men as lean as storks stood on each corner, leaning on bamboo poles to assist the groaning engine.
Pity you came the quick way - meeting up at Timbuctoo
For me it was as if the prehistoric rock art of the Sahara had been brushed back into life by the breath of God.
An introduction to Mali
Whatever you come to Mali for, it is the memory of the people that actually catch your imagination.
Sahara Night
Instead of providing a direct answer Omer told me to keep a look out for camels. They are much more dangerous than hijackers, he said, for they mistake the reflection of the moon on the road for water. I peered alertly out of the window, keeping an eye out for both camels and hijackers.
Timbuctu
Only after the colonial presence of the French had ended was the true wealth of Timbuctu to be revealed as the great private libraries of the scholar citizens had been patiently copied, preserved and transcribed.
Review of The Sword and the Cross by Fergus Fleming
The Sword and the Cross is a tale of two extraordinary men who lived in an extraordinary place during an extraordinary time. It is the story of General Laperinne and Father Foucauld: the two greatest figures from the turn-of-the-century French colonial conquest of Sahara