Selected articles
Review: “East of Asia Minor, Rome's Hidden Frontier” by Timothy Bruce
Until the publication of this book, no archaeologist had ever worked out the five-hundred-mile route, no historian had written about its forts and no travel writer had marched its length. Yet it guarded some of the richest and most civilized provinces of the entire Empire.
Reading Between the Lines, an article on Osman Hamdi Bey - Parisian painter and Ottoman archaeologist
In Young Woman Reading, the book that lies open, respectfully wrapped in a linen cloth embroidered in silk, is written in Persian in Arabic script.
Travelling through the Troad with Don McCullin
Antinous was the beautiful, brave boy from the hills of North-West Turkey who loved hunting. He had become the Emperor’s acknowledged lover but at the height of their relationship he had drowned in the Nile, possibly an act of self-sacrifice on behalf of his beloved Emperor
Review: Troy - Myth and Reality exhibition at the British Museum
The museum interior is a four-storey tower of enchantment.
Troy Story 1: Lost and Found
The museum interior is a four-storey tower of enchantment.
A journey across Roman Asia Minor with Don McCullin
We were an odd group, one thin Turk from Antakya, one plump English publisher, a Turkish speaking New Yorker and the world’s most famous war photographer, Don McCullin.
On the Road Again with Don McCullin: Heading to Southwest Anatolia on the final leg of our Roman Roads adventure
I watched as the rain brought the colours of the circular marble floor of the orchestra pit into life, so the face of Medusa and her serpents glowed within an aura of ten rows of stylized feathers.
Tehran Museum Talk
But Iran had done well. The Tehran Museum of Modern Art had exchanged an unshowable female nude from its basement in order to reclaim a central piece of its literary and artistic history.
Moving Mountains
Iran is quantifiably, and continuously, more magnificent than anything I had imagined.
Herding travel writers across Iran
Fortunately the second rule of group travel, remained inviolable and intact: when you happen upon delicious looking street food in a covered bazzar, you buy sufficient for all.
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.
The Exploration of Light: European painters in North Africa, from Delacroix to Klee
The Women of Algiers flickers with jewel-like intensity so that even the shadows are filled with colour.
Tunis
The burnt-out, blackened city would however be re-created in the seventeenth century, as the old trade routes were re-opened and the profits of the corsairs captains poured into Tunis. This is the living city one can still see and admire today.
The Roman amphitheatre at El Jem
Nothing, not photographs, not television documentaries, let alone the outpourings of travel writers can prepare you for your first glimpse of the vast bulk of this monument as it hovers above a Sahelian horizon of olive orchards.
Travelling Circus, Tunisia
I was longing for them to fall in love with the ancient gilt-embroidered velvet suits but instead they picked out a selection of hair grips and a pink plastic telephone.
Carthage: gateway to Tunisia
I have listened to Tunisians passionately arguing that these infant bones are not evidence of human sacrifice but belonged to still-borne babies and infant mortalities
The trials and tribulations of sailing up the Nile
The cooks always exhibited the most charming manners: "Madame, I have met you twice already, here at breakfast but also in my dreams…’
A trip to Cairo
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.
Sailing Down the Nile
Following in the wake of Anthony and Cleopatra as they sailed down the Nile can set up dangerously high expectations.
Western Desert of Egypt
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