Alexandria: A History and Guide (Tauris Parke Paperbacks)

"Alexandria is still alive and alters even when one tries to sum her up... Only the climate, only the north wind and the sea remain as pure as when Menelaus, the first visitor, landed three thousand years ago..." - E.M. Forster

In the autumn of 1915, in a slightly heroic mood, E.M. Forster arrived in Alexandria, full of lofty ideals as a volunteer for the Red Cross. Yet most of his time was spent exploring the magic, antiquity and complexity of the place in order to cope with living in what he saw as a "funk-hole". With a novelist's pen, he brings to life the fabled, romantic city of Alexander the Great, capital of Graeco-Roman Egypt, beacon of light and culture symbolized by the Pharaohs, where the doomed love affair of Antony and Cleopatra was played out and the greatest library the world has ever known was built. Threading 3,000 years of history with vibrant strands of literature and punctuating the narrative with his own experiences, Forster immortalized Alexandria, painting an incomparable portrait of the great city and, inadvertently, himself.