My first copy of Stamboul Sketches by John Freely
But the gift of the book that day, Stamboul Sketches - kick-started a lifelong love of drifting through Istanbul, on the look out for the odd things, as well as its ancient, glorious and modern monuments.
Review: 123 Places in Turkey: A Private Grand Tour by Francis Russell
You will also require a stick, thick trousers and tough boots if you aspire to follow in his footsteps, let alone join him in enjoying the view from the acropolis.
Review: “East of Asia Minor, Rome's Hidden Frontier” by Timothy Bruce
Until the publication of this book, no archaeologist had ever worked out the five-hundred-mile route, no historian had written about its forts and no travel writer had marched its length. Yet it guarded some of the richest and most civilized provinces of the entire Empire.
Review - “Syrian Episodes: Sons, Fathers, and an Anthropologist in Aleppo”, by John Borneman
For the respect so freely given to fathers and grandfathers is part of a pattern of obedience which extends to other patriarchal authority figures - to the rulers of the house, be they socialist Presidents, hereditary Kings, scholarly Sheikhs or coup-leading Colonels.
Review - “Cleopatra’s Wedding Present; Travels through Syria” by Robert Tewdwr Moss
These various transformations and ambitions are so honestly drawn, so fiercely fought-for and imagined that the reader is at once drawn entranced in his wake.
Review: "A History of Modern Morocco" by Susan Gilson Miller
As Susan Miller so convincingly shows us, independence was won not by pure-minded, turban-wearing, Islamic martyr-heroes coming down from the mountains on horseback, but by those who adapted and learned to use foreign technology to their own ends.
Review: “Two Arabs, A Berber and a Jew: Entangled Lives in Morocco” by Lawrence Rosen
On June 17th 1578 the young King Dom Sebastian of Portugal attended a service in the cathedral, where he was presented with a new standard embroidered with an imperial crown. For it was assumed that the dignity of the Kingdom of Portugal would ascend ever higher and he would become the first Christian Emperor of Morocco.
Review of "Gaddafi's Harem" by Annick Cojean
Septimius Severus (145-211) was one of the greatest of the Roman Emperors but remains one of the least known. I have always been fascinated that this man used to the heat of his native North Africa, should die in northern England during a campaign to conquer Scotland.
Review of "The Barbary Figs" by Rashid Doudjedra
“Rashid Boudjedra has his finger on the pulse of his country's heart and soul, does more than offer us a great novel about Algeria - he gives us a fascinating reflection on the ambiguities of history" - Le Monde
Review of The Sword and the Cross by Fergus Fleming
The Sword and the Cross is a tale of two extraordinary men who lived in an extraordinary place during an extraordinary time. It is the story of General Laperinne and Father Foucauld: the two greatest figures from the turn-of-the-century French colonial conquest of Sahara