Egypt - Christopher Pick

Egypt has every ingredient to intrigue the traveller and stimulate the writer. An "antique land" littered with remains of ancient dynasties, its landscape offers a startling contrast between the green valley of the Nile and the desert to either side, while Cairo is packed with colourful images.;Chrisptopher Pick has selected British, American and European visitors' writing of the last two centuries. As the 19th century progresses the roll-call of familiar names accumulates: Chateaubriand, Disraeli, Kinglake, Flaubert, Lear, Holman Hunt, Lucie Duff Gordon, Amelia Edwards. And there is no falling off in the 20th century: E.M. Forster, Vita Sackville-West, Lawrence Durrell, Freya Stark, Howard Carter and Flinders Petrie. Christopher Pick has uncovered delightful passages from more obscure visitors as well; artists, archaeologists, pro-Consuls and British soldiery both in the last war and in the years before the Suez Affair in 1956. Rather than arrange the extracts chronologically, he takes us on a geographical progress through the country; it is a journey which will both enhance the view from a deckchair on a Nile tourist boat and slip a magic carpet under the most foursquare of armchairs back home.