Selected articles
Visit to the Palestine Exploration Fund, 2020
It was the first such survey and remains a lodestone of dispassionate information in a still all too passionate landscape.
Review: “The Only Minds Worth Winning” - T. E. Lawrence at The Imperial War Museum, 2005
He was also full of remorse at the staff job in Cairo that kept him safe for two whole years while two of his beloved brothers died in the trenches.
Exhibition review: “Forgotten Empire - The World of Ancient Persia”, at the British Library, 2005
Why did Alexander, who would burn Persepolis to the ground and incinerate whole libraries of sacred literature, cry at the tomb of the Cyrus?
Book review: “Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art”, by Peter Barber and Tom Harper - published and shown by the British Library, 2010
The meticulous bird’s-eye views of the streets and docks of Venice in 1500, Seville in the time of Philip II and Augsburg (caught mid-siege) in the reign of Emperor Charles V are like a species of time travel.
Exhibition review: “The Prince and the Pyramids, Cairo to Constantinople”, an exhibition of Francis Bedford photographs at Holyrood Palace and Buckingham Palace
The Egypt leg of the Prince’s trip is the most unchanged of all. I speak with very recent knowledge, having just returned from a slow cruise down the Nile with three Mrs Rogerson’s in one boat
Exhibition review: “Living with Gods & Imagining the Divine” at the British Museum and Ashmolean"
It shows us how the artists of the Late Roman Empire played around with various heroic options before bearded Zeus-Jupiter was recast as the face of Christ.
“Lifting the Seven Veils - Writing about Islam” - talk given at the British Library during “Sacred” exhibition, 2007
Those who cannot understand the recited verses of Arabic will always be in an outer circle, unable to approach anywhere near to the true understanding and power of the Koran.
Exhibition review: “Hajj journey to the heart of Islam” at the British Museum, 2012
They have assembled a wonderful medley of relics from the past: be it a souvenir flask with which a pilgrim would carry the holy water of the Zemzem spring back home or a gloriously ornate medieval Haj certificate (all counter-signed, witnessed and sealed to prove that the pilgrim had indeed performed the correct rituals).
Exhibition review: “Celts: Art and Identity at the National Museum of Scotland”
The Celts have no ethnic or linguistic identity. It is just our collective term for the shared material culture of the Iron Age Europeans living north of the Mediterranean, from the Atlantic to the Danube.
Review: Troy - Myth and Reality exhibition at the British Museum
The museum interior is a four-storey tower of enchantment.
Review: Assyrian Exhibition at British Museum, 2019
Assyrian stone carvers delight in hairstyles (which double as ethnic identifiers), every detail of horse trappings (which indicate rank) and the musculature of knee and calf.
Exhibition review: Paris Pays Tribute to Tangier, Treasures of the Kingdom of Morocco at Petit Palais, 1999
It is as if the Saracens have at last advanced north from their 732 defeat at Poitiers-Tours and stamped their first architectural mark on Paris.