Anthony Sattin 
'O My America!', by Sara Wheeler - review
You might not expect Sara Wheeler, the intrepid literary traveller, to be anxious about passing the half-century point. Surely a person who can survive the mental and physical rigours of… Read more
A duty to protest
A few years ago, in West Africa, a woman came up to me and said, ‘You know what’s wrong with our men? They go crazy once they get power. Crazy… Read more
Twists and turns through history
Jeremy Seal is a Turkophile, but don’t look to him for a grand history of the republic or lives of the Ottoman sultans. That is not his way. He prefers… Read more
Malice in the Middle East
What does it take to shock a writer? At the beginning of his study on the shaping of the modern Middle East, the academic James Barr describes his eyes bulging… Read more
Sixties mystic
The misery memoir is the fad of the moment. We seem to have a limitless desire to delve into other people’s hardships. Robert Irwin has gladly shown the way to… Read more
The dominoes rally
First Tunisia, then Egypt. Whatever next? The laws of the Arab world are supposed to prohibit any domino effect: the military is supposed to be too strong, the governments too… Read more
The last five hundred years
In the aftermath of the destruction of New York’s World Trade Center, an elderly Arab from the Gulf told me that he thought it was the work of American agents.… Read more
Two sides of the dark continent
How would you like your Africa? Sweet and smiling or bold and bloody? A reassurance of a fundamental human goodness or a suspicion that we are all rotten to the… Read more
Earning an easy chair
If you were left a legacy by a friend would you tuck it away, blow it on art, or buy something for your home or the person you share it… Read more
In the steps of Stanley
Of all the world’s under- developed and misruled countries few can compete with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The former Belgian Congo, more recently known as Zaire, has lived… Read more
The future is black
The title of Peter Godwin’s beautifully written and magnificently poignant memoir is taken from Zulu lore, which states that solar eclipses are caused by a celestial crocodile eating the sun.… Read more
A place of wonders and horrors
For his fifth travel book, Philip Marsden has returned to his roots; not to his native Cornwall, but to the country that gave birth to his travel writing. Marsden first… Read more
East and West — when the twain meet
As far as love affairs go, the relationship between British travel writers and Islam has been both intense and long-lasting. From Orientalists such as Richard Burton and Edward Lane installed… Read more
Payment on delivery
Picture this scene: in the delivery room of a Botswana hospital, a woman howls with the pain of childbirth and her midwife becomes increasingly bothered that she is disturbing the… Read more
A fantasist of the first order
Many years ago, in one of those precious moments of seren- dipity, I came across a novel called Ali and Nino, set in the Azerbaijani city of Baku. This seductive,… Read more
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