Tag: books
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Book of the Month
So here is an exciting new feature-well a feature at least. Drop by Strabo’s Bookshelf on my home page for more travel orientated book recommendations Red Nile A Biography Of The Worlds Greatest River by Robert Twigger I had not heard of Robert Twigger until a serendipitous moment when his book Red Nile fell off…
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Alexandria, The End of The Affair
It’s an optimistic morning as I stroll along Rue Nebi Daniel, heading Downtown from the station just as the city is waking. Egyptian cities tend to emerge slowly from slumber; nights are often long, and mornings are reluctant. I think of Mahfouz as I walk; he would have taken a taxi or carriage. He wouldn’t…
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Cyanotypes & The Graves of Poets
Standing in the cold lifeless air of Westminster Abbey, surrounded by marble morbidity, the good and great and privileged interred at every turn, monarchs at the head of the table and poets consigned to a dim corner, and there, amid the flag stones of the nave lie the mortal remains of Charles Darwin, a three…
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Eye Spy in Damascus
Finding more time on my hands than one would realistically hope for I delved into the dusty recesses of long forgotten cardboard boxes and started re-reading books that have languished for the last seventeen years; they were all kept for a reason, quarantined due to pandemic not being one of them. They were books that…
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Syrian Literary List
14 Books to help understand more about Syria, its war and much more.
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Syria, Nine Grueling Years
Sitting in silence on a red sofa, gaze transfixed to a muted tv. January 2011. I had hardly left that sofa just watching history unfold via al Jazeera, this time I was squeezed between Syrian friends with tears in their eyes. We were in Syria and the revolution was in Egypt and of all the…
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That Time in Cairo When I Met Mahfouz
Cairo, a steaming mess of a city that has the capacity to at first seduce and serenade you then almost immediately slap and violate you, and yet, despite it all you keep coming back for more. And here I was, back again. On the balcony of my scruffy room in the Hotel Hussein, the hotel…
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Thesiger, Me and Mesopotamia
Wilfred Thesiger died the summer of 2003, the same year I moved to Damascus, I remember hearing the news on the BBC World Service while living in one up one down hovel in the Old City. For those familiar with his life and work its probably no great surprise that his was a source of…
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Day Trip to Basra
We had visas and letters of introduction and were quickly ushered towards the diplomatic booth, the guard look at the ink smudged pages of my passport with a bemused smirk and called to his colleague for guidance, the advice was simple, just stamp them in. He did and we were. As frontiers go Basra international…
John Wreford Photographer 