Society

If you haven’t been lost in Marseille then you can’t have been there. As Alexandre Dumas wrote, this is a place that is ‘always getting younger as it grows older’. But while you’ll certainly be lost at some point, you won’t be stuck and you won’t be bored. You can meander through the 16 contrasting neighbourhoods, or cross the town easily via metro, bus, bike, tram or even ‘Le petit train de Marseille’ — the Marseille fun train. Head straight to the Old Port (600 bc) where Foster and Partners’ mirrored canopy (2013 ad) gleams in the hot sun, then up the hill to the lovely, listed Intercontinental Hotel Dieu

From ‘The Khalifate’, The Spectator, 1 May 1915: It seems that the Ottoman Empire is likely to crumble away, and in that event, whether it happens soon or late, the question of the Khalifate will cause many searchings of heart to the Mohammedan world. In an intimate and most important sense Britain is concerned in this matter. The spiritual security and satisfaction of Moslems vitally concern the British Empire. It is not only that we owe it to the innumerable Moslems under our rule that their wishes and susceptibilities should be strictly respected; the communion of feeling throughout Islam is so strong that the British Empire, as a great Mohammedan Power, owes it

 Lampedusa The young hang about in packs or speed around town, two to a scooter. Old women group together on benches around the town square in front of the church. The men continually greet each other as though they haven’t met for years. The likelihood is small. With fewer than 6,000 inhabitants, and as close to Libya as it is to Italy, Lampedusa is the sort of place from which any ambitious young Italian would spend their life trying to escape. Yet every day hundreds and sometimes thousands of people are risking their lives to get here. ‘Please tell people we have nice beaches,’ one islander pleads. And indeed they do,