Selected articles
Motya: Unearthing A Lost Civilization” by Gaia Servadio
… the uncovering of Motya has been fraught with controversy right from Schliemann's first raid-like dig.
“In the Glow of the Phantom Palace: Travels from Granada to Timbuktu” by Michael Jacobs
Michael Jacobs is an explorer of books and bars, ruins and restaurants - a scholar who can clearly lunch the best of us under the table.
“Sacred Sierra - a Year on a Spanish Mountain” by Jason Webster
This is a man with three best-selling books about Spain under his belt, who can speak and play guitar like a native, survive cocaine binges and police chases and has a flamenco-dancer from Valencia as his live-in lover.
“The Levant; Splendour and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean” by Philip Mansel
... a pompous Dutch Consul, complaining about homosexuality to Khedive Said, is cut short by the regal advice that he should try it out first before decrying it.
“The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean” by David Abulafia
Abulafia rises above narrow nationalism to exhibit an Olympian detachment over his vast and varied historical landscape.
“In the Name of God: A History of Christian and Muslim Intolerance” by Selina O’Grady
So when we hear how the Huguenots of France, or the Jews and Moors of Andalucia are to be protected and tolerated by a generous peace settlement, we need to set the alarm clock for the inevitable persecution that is to come.
“The Train in Spain; Ten Great Journeys through the Interior” by Christopher Howse
Howse’s real connections are all with carved stone and the printed word, especially with the lovers of Gothic architecture
Book review: “Agents of Empire: Knights, Corsairs and Spies in the 16th century Mediterranean World” by Noel Malcolm
... the book’s fine focus is trained on the condition and fate of the nobles, citizens, peasant cultivators and highland clansmen
Book review: “Footprints in Spain: British lives in a foreign land” by Simon Courtauld
Britain banned the practice of bull baiting in 1835 but, in Spain, the ritualized slaying of a fierce wild animal, timed to punctuate the annual calendar and local festivals, continues to this day.
China Tea in Gibraltar
For a skilled submariner could piggy-back his way through any surveillance, by waiting patiently and then tagging its way along by following (a bit like a limpet) underneath a noisy ship.
Relatively speaking: Sicily with my father
The essence of our travel gamesmanship is to sound as relaxed and carefree as possible while actually controlling every single movement. Picnic sites are especially fiercely fought over.
Be a Traveller in an Antique Land - Cyprus
On this varied landscape is reflected an extraordinarily rich architectural heritage of Gothic cathedrals, Venetian fortresses, Roman Mosaics, Ottoman minarets, Crusader castles, Ptolemaic tombs, Bronze Age sanctuaries and British postboxes which all stand in surprising harmony.
A Place Apart
This population, only to be numbered in its tens of thousands, is yet drawn from many of the world's most far-flung trading nations.
Garrison Library at Gibraltar
It was at the shelves of the Garrison Library that I first learned about the last crusade led by the doomed boy-king of Portugal, about the loss of 'English Tangier' to Sultan Moulay Ismail and about the heroic defence of the Rock itself against the combined forces of France and Spain in the dark years of the American War of Independence.