Selected articles
Shades of Green: An investigation into the Gardening tradition of Turkey
Regimented lines of cedar, palm and imported fruit trees provided shade while porticoed pavilions were placed to catch the aromatic breeze, scented by fragrant shrubs and grasses.
Travelling with Children: Turkey
If this had been England, there would have been frowns, but it was Turkey, a land where smartly dressed businessmen all wanted to pat and kiss the babies just as much as all the stewards and stewardesses did.
Night Train from Stamboul
One door of the station bar opens onto the platform – where the blue sleeper carriages silently await their passengers – while from a lower door you can look directly out over the waters of the Bosphorus.
The Turkish shore
All this meticulous advance preparation is entirely necessary while you are in England but melts away once you are afloat on Turkish waters.
A Short History of Ancient Lycia, the Home of Liberty
To make their honoured guest feel welcome they transported galleys full of the golden sand of Egypt so that Cleopatra would feel at home. It worked, Antony and Cleopatra loved the sandy beach and the temporary escape from their royal cares
Ten Good Reasons to Go to Istanbul
Lunch late but well on fish and mussels, getting the last boat back so that you time your return to witness a sun set over the skyline of Istanbul.
Empire Builder: the legacy of Ottoman architect Sinan
As the great mosques are commanded by one dome, so is the Empire ruled by one Sultan, his authority buttressed by a descending authority of viziers, pashas, beylerbeys and aghas. Together, they shelter the believer.
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.