Selected articles
“Bolter's Grand-daughter” by Angela Culme-Seymour and “In the House of Muhammad Ali: A Family Album 1805-1952” by Hassan Hassan
Bolter's Grand-daughter reveals a life packed full of movement, people, energy, flowers, scents and landscapes
“A Silver Legend: The Story of the Maria Theresa Thaler” by Clara Semple
Her coins are indeed beautiful objects, for she is cast as both human and an august empress ...
“For Lust of Knowing” by Robert Irwin
… the idea of any sort of European-wide consensus, let alone an interlocking conspiracy of deception amongst these quarrelsome individualists does not seem possible.
“Muhammad's Grave: Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society” by Leor Halevi
From these tenuous trails of historical memory, a whole rigid belief system would however be created by literate, male scholars to gradually strangle the freedom of a living, inspirational religion with the chains of clerical authority and a scarcely credible mythology
“The History Man, The Man Who Invented History: Travels With Herodotus’ by Justin Marozzi
… he acquires a tangibly different mentality - that of a man supporting cultural diversity wherever he finds it, rather than seeking the imposition of a new order by an outside power.
“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.
“Libya Archaeological Guides; Tripolitania”, by Philip Kenrick
My final test drive of this exemplary guidebook was to check up on half a dozen specific items that I have long puzzled over. I began with the gorgeous marble statue in the main entrance hall of Tripoli’s museum
“The Pashas: traders and travellers in the Islamic World” by James Mather
There was much patriotic talk of exporting English broad-clothe to the Levant, but in reality the trade was also underwritten by breaking the arms embargo of Christendom with the Turks
“Of Places in Turkey: A Pocket Grand Tour” by Francis Russell
Editing the glories of Anatolia down to just 83 entries is itself a labour of Hercules, but Russell quickly earns your respect by his eye for the telling detail, his love of nature, for taking the hard path ...
“Melchior Lorck” by Eric Fischer
… the heart of the matter is that Melchior Lorck deserves the five-volume treatment because he is the first famous Danish artist.
“The Grand Turk: Sultan Mehmet II – Conqueror of Constantinople, Master of an Empire and Lord of Two Seas” by John Freely
Whether Mehmet is to be assessed as a battlefield commander, a strategist, a diplomat or a monumental builder of cities, there are very few men who can equal his achievement.
“Wilfrid Thesiger in Africa - A Unique Collection of Essays & Personal Photographs”, edited by Christopher Morton & Philip N. Grover
It reveals the subtle transformation of Thesiger from a youthful explorer-traveller to a world-class photographer who has left a priceless archive of some 38,000 negatives.
“Travels: Collected Writings, 1950-93” by Paul Bowles
it was not until 1950 that he established a base in the Moroccan port of Tangier, complete with an open-top jaguar and a uniformed Moroccan chauffeur.
“Landfalls; On the Edge of Islam with Ibn Batutah”, by Tim Mackintosh-Smith
Mackintosh-Smith is on a quest 'to pick up the vibrations of his age, to echo sound the centuries'.
“Jerusalem, The Biography” by Simon Sebag-Montefiore
... a Holy City amongst broken arid hills on the edge of a desert, where for three thousand years pilgrims have come to repent, to pray, to celebrate, to wait for the second coming, to attempt to question God and to die.
“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 Fetish Room: The Education of a Naturalist” by Redmond O’Hanlon and Rudi Rotthier
Redmond has developed an entertaining but effective screen formed from a hoard of hilarious anecdotes and runaway stories
“Memoirs of a Dervish: Sufis, Mystics and the Sixties”, by Robert Irwin
This book is stuffed with a lifetime of reading, selective drug-taking, chanting, eastern travel and dancing, all undertaken in the search for God.
“The Golden Age, The Spanish Empire of Charles V”, by Hugh Thomas
... the process of conquest (savage and violent though it was) was often milder than the period of settlement, dominated by slave raiding, rape, the sacking of villages and burning of crops, leading to famine and wholescale depopulation.
“The Honoured Dead: A Story of Friendship, Murder and the Search for Truth in the Arab World” by Joseph Braude
Joseph Braude has crafted an ingenious, moving, clever, respectful and ultimately honest book about Morocco and the Moroccan people.