Diary – 23 November 2017

At the top of Machu Picchu last week, I saw two wide-winged condors swoop over Sacred Valley through a rainbow that curved between two holy mountains. Weary after many books and travels, I felt restored and inspired by this magic. There was hardly anyone in Machu Picchu; its cliffs vertiginous, its cloud jungle lushly impenetrable, it was discovered by outsiders only a century ago. Built as a royal estate and shrine by Inca conqueror Pachacutec around 1450, during our Wars of the Roses, no one knows when or why it was abandoned — because of Spanish conquest, or decades earlier due to civil war?

Earlier I set out from Cusco, once the Inca capital, a holy city that in some ways reminded me of Jerusalem. Its Temple Mount was the Temple of the Sun, once gleaming in sheets of gold. I was in Arequipa and Cusco for the Hay Festival. When the planes were cancelled, we had a ten-hour drive via dirt road over the Andes, through mountain villages where the people still wear a mix of indigenous costume and wide-brimmed Spanish hats. They farm terraces, raise llamas, and speak Quechua.

Before the trip, I attended the spectacular centenary dinner for the Balfour Declaration at Lancaster House, with descendants of many of its creators: Lloyd Georges, the photographer Christopher Sykes, grandson of Sir Mark Sykes. The dinner was hosted and organised by Jacob Rothschild and Roderick Balfour, who entered with the prime ministers of Israel and Britain. Jeremy Corbyn refused to attend but sent deputy Tom Watson and shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry. In his speech, Benjamin Netanyahu claimed imminent developments in the peace process; no one was convinced but he was surely hinting at the potential of the new relationship between Israel and Saudi Arabia.