Selected articles
“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
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.
“Mirrors of the Unseen: Journeys in Iran” by Jason Elliot
..beneath the surface of this seemingly conventional travelogue, there is a questing spiritual inquiry.
“Morocco; the Islamist Awakening and Other Challenges” by Marvine Howe
Her personal insights into the political manoeuvres of the 50s and 60's alone make this book a valuable and fascinating testimony.
“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.
“Travels with a Tangerine: A Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn Battutah” by Tim Mackintosh-Smith
… we are kept quite on tenterhooks as we follow our hero, Tim Mackintosh-Smith, on his erudite tour through the Arabic and Turkish speaking lands of Morocco, Egypt, Syria, Oman, Turkey and Crimea.
“The House by the Thames and the People who Lived There”, by Gillian Tindall
Munthe was also possessed by an abiding fascination for tramps and street musicians.
“Damascus: Hidden Treasures of the Old City” by Brigid Keenan
Her subject is not public architecture, the five M's of a Muslim city - mosques, mausolea, markets, medrasa and military-monuments - but the closely guarded domestic space.
“High Tea in Mosul: the true story of two Englishwomen in war-torn Iraq”, by Lynne O'Donnell
The persistent edge of fear, the innate political caution of a people brought up under Saddam's dictatorship followed by the numbing experience of living through the allied aerial bombardments and the creeping tide of street violence, assassination, bombing and kidnappings after the invasion.
“The Cloud of Dust” by Charlie Boxer
Time and time again I felt in the company of a young Dostoevsky, albeit in a jean jacket wandering through the dark streets of Edinburgh rather than in a greatcoat on the avenues of St Petersburg.