Selected articles
Memorial address for Alida Harvie
For the beautiful young Alida was warmly embraced by Lloyd George, beamed at by Mr Baldwin, Ramsay Macdonald bestowed a wintry smile, the be-monocled Austern Chamberlain offered a more formal salute and even Mr Winston Churchill gave her a puckish smile.
A brave bitch by Keith Rogerson
A cold shudder struck us both and we raced to the cliff edge walking along it, staring down at the shingle beach about 80 feet down a steeply sloping ridged drop.
Funeral address for Keith Rogerson
Though enchanted by the sea, he was not a natural cog within any system. When they shared a cabin together, Andrew Waugh remembers how my father used to ‘lose’ a portion of his paperwork by posting them into a crack he had opened into the metal bulkhead.
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.
My Mother / Kathy's Youth
... on one memorable occasion we arrived home to find her racing around the garden in her car, apparently trying to run down my father
Spirit of Place
He remembered with documentary accuracy what an indifferent, if not bored and shirty, student he had been as both boy and young man, only interested in music, films, cigarettes, booze and girls.
Observing the Baring family
The first Lord Ashburton was a brilliant young diplomat who won over the hostile society of colonial America after the 1812 war and was arguably the first to establish the special relationship, sealing a new style of peace-making by taking an American girl home to be his wife.
Memorial address for Nico Rogerson, 1943-2017
Nico was always active, as close to Peter Pan as any mortal I have met. He lived life to the full, wonderfully alive to the moment, and forever charmed by the prospect of the next adventure.
John Baring - Lord Ashburton
John was knighted twice, built two country houses, was married twice, served as the Chairman of two great British institutions and helped establish two Country Operas. He had worked for the Prince of Wales and was a personal friend of the Queen. It is not a record that is likely to be equalled.
People of the Gardens: Five generations of the Rochford Family
Whether for real or in their imagination they looked back to a 14th-century heyday when they were in possession of slender tower-castles in the West of Ireland
Visit to the Palestine Exploration Fund, 2020
It was the first such survey and remains a lodestone of dispassionate information in a still all too passionate landscape.
Exhibition review: “Forgotten Empire - The World of Ancient Persia”, at the British Library, 2005
Why did Alexander, who would burn Persepolis to the ground and incinerate whole libraries of sacred literature, cry at the tomb of the Cyrus?
Exhibition review: “The Prince and the Pyramids, Cairo to Constantinople”, an exhibition of Francis Bedford photographs at Holyrood Palace and Buckingham Palace
The Egypt leg of the Prince’s trip is the most unchanged of all. I speak with very recent knowledge, having just returned from a slow cruise down the Nile with three Mrs Rogerson’s in one boat
Exhibition review: “Living with Gods & Imagining the Divine” at the British Museum and Ashmolean"
It shows us how the artists of the Late Roman Empire played around with various heroic options before bearded Zeus-Jupiter was recast as the face of Christ.
After the Death of the Masters: Travel Writing after Wilfrid Thesiger and Norman Lewis
While Emma ends up defending a tribal slaughter perpetuated by her husband, her professionally minded ex-colleagues (there to feed the starving) go on strike when their regular supply of air-freighted meals is suspended.
Norman Lewis (1908-2003)
He was also a crack shot and a determined and successful lover of women – to the extent that at one period of his life, he was running three separate ‘establishments’.
Michael Jacobs (1952-2013)
Michael was always a brilliant communicator, which he could do perched at a bar, in a university lecture hall, slumped across a sofa after midnight or at an international literary festival.
Bosphorus Review interviews Barnaby Rogerson
We love stumbling across wisdom in all the different ages of humankind, and try to avoid falling into the trap that our contemporary culture is any significant way, wiser than that of our ancestors.
Andrew Graham-Yool (1944-2019)
He was not interested in contracts, systems or office hours, but accepted the dictats of a deadline and a mission with absolute conviction.
Jan Morris (1926-2020)
Jan had been thrown out of the Club after changing her sex. “Nothing to do with wearing skirts” and then her noble head rolled back and roared with laughter at the memory of it.