Selected articles
‘Arabs: A 3,000 Year History of Peoples, Tribes and Empires’ by Tim Mackintosh-Smith
I have read dozens of narrative histories of the Arabs but I have never felt so transported, so entertained and so immersed.
The Pale Abyssinian: A Life of James Bruce, African Explorer and Adventurer by Miles Bredin
"The Pale Abyssinian" leaves the moral character of James Bruce in tatters. He has however brought the ruddy, oversexed, 6 foot 4 inch Scotsman, vibrantly to life.
Review of “A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle that Shaped The Middle East”, by James Barr
Baalbek, in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, is the most magnificent temple in the entire Middle East, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
Possessed by Peake
I was familiar with the thick lips of the heroine Fuchsia and the cadaverous, high-brow of the anti-hero Steerpike years before I read so much as a line.
“Lords of the Atlas: The Rise and Fall of the House of Glaoua” by Gavin Maxwell
Beware. 'Lords of the Atlas' can instill a desparate craving for Morocco and the red-walled city of Marrakech.
“In the Empire of Genghis Khan: A Journey Among Nomads” by Stanley Stewart
I now think everyone should travel with Stanley Stewart across Asia. He is funny, clever but above all, he is believable.
“Writing off the Beaten Track: Reflections on the Meaning of Travel and Culture in the Middle East” by Judith Caesar
She is also sincere, disarmingly honest, decent, interested in a continuous process of revealing self-examination and focusing her observations on the small community with which she has become intimate.
“Travels in Arabia Deserta” by Charles Doughty
Doughty's curious archaic English will always succeed in repelling the casual reader from his book of Arabian travels.
“A Corkscrew is Most Useful: The Travellers of Empire” by Nicholas Murray
Nicholas Murray's book is also good on bringing to life those travellers whose pride, racism and heavy prose make their own books unreadable today.
“Dragoman Memoirs, the works of De Gaury, Storrs and Grafftey-Smith”
Most emigrants from Britain have no wish to come back but those that do are often compelled by the bleakness of the British winter to write down their memories.
“Trickster Travels; in search of Leo Africanus, a sixteenth century Muslim between Worlds” by Natalie Zemon Davis
Natalie Davis has created a brilliant book that succeeds in opening up new perspectives, not just on Leo Africanus but also on Mediterranean society at the time.
“The Punishment of Virtue” by Sarah Chayes
a busy enclave of house-bound CIA agents who have unwittingly re-occupied Mullah Omar¹s headquarters and filled it with gym equipment rather than venture outside
“The Messenger; The Meanings of the Life of Muhammad” by Tariq Ramadan
… they must also embrace other aspects from the lifetime of the Prophet: the freedom of women to speak out, to pray, study and learn
“The Hall of a Thousand Columns; Hindustan to Malabar with Ibn Battutah” by Tim Mackintosh-Smith.
… suddenly, we are up, up and away, on a genuine quadruple track Tim Mackintosh-Smith roller-coaster of historical, linguistic, geographic and spiritual inquiry.
“Syria - A Historical and Architectural Guide” by Warwick Ball
... though he has sunk his own share of shard-hunting trenches through the alluvial mud of Afghanistan and Mesopotamia, he has studied Syria with the broad-ranging lens of an art historian.
“The Court of the Caliphs: The Rise and Fall of Islam's Greatest Dynasty” by Hugh Kennedy
... with the very first line the reader is hooked into this epic roller-coaster of a historical narrative
“South From Barbary: Along the Slave Routes of the Libyan Sahara” by Justin Marozzi
... it was the five camels of the expedition who emerge as the dominant characters with a good walk-on part for Tuna, an oasis dog that adopts the party.
“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.
“Morocco: From Empire to Independence”, by C.R.Pennell
Fortunately C.R.Pennell, having taught students in Turkey, Australia and Libya as well as lecturing to disparate groups of cultural tourists, has become educated in the attention span of "the interested general reader"
“Prayer-Cushions of the Flesh” by Robert Irwin
... although it is seemingly set in 17th-century Istanbul, it actually portrays a never-land of the collective imagination