“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.
“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.
“In the Name of God: A History of Christian and Muslim Intolerance” by Selina O’Grady
So when we hear how the Huguenots of France, or the Jews and Moors of Andalucia are to be protected and tolerated by a generous peace settlement, we need to set the alarm clock for the inevitable persecution that is to come.
Book review: “The Carians - from Seafarers to City Builders”, edited by Olivier C. Henry and Ayse Belgin-Henry
Caria might look just a small province within the national frontiers of Turkey, but under this sort of close attention to detail it expands to become a cultural universe of its own.
Book review: “The Discovery of Albania, travel writing and anthropology in the 19th-century Balkans” by Johann Georg von Hahn
The sight of a beautiful youth awakens astonishment in the lover, and opens the door of his heart to the delight which the contemplation of this loveliness affords.