A tribute to Jeremy Atiyah - the first travel editor of 'The Independent on Sunday'

Jeremy Atiyah (30/12/62 to 12/04/06), died suddenly last month while walking in Umbria. Here we publish the last piece he wrote for these pages, a humorous tale from his travels in Egypt

Sunday, 14 May 2006

From the back seat of a Mercedes, in the mother of cities, I am looking for an obelisk. "Slow down!" I shout, as we swerve between a group of schoolgirls and a line of parked vehicles. My driver calmly reminds me that we are on an urgent mission: to find relics of the city of On, the most ancient of all the cities ever built here at the base of the Nile's delta.

"But look out!" I cry, as we accelerate to overtake a donkey cart. We are heading into the path of two converging buses. Yet again, we emerge with an inch to spare on either side.

"Number One driver in Egypt," chuckles the driver, as I grip my seatbelt and concentrate on the scholarly words of the Roman geographer Strabo. "It was said," he wrote in the first century BC, "that, anciently, this was the principal residence of the priests, who studied philosophy and astronomy..." In Strabo's day, it was already 4,000 years old, and all he found was a mound and a few stones.

Might any of these stones survive? My driver has assured me that they do: there is an obelisk on a traffic roundabout, in the district of Matariyah, the last surviving relic of ancient On. Only modern Cairo's traffic comes between us and it.

On my first trip to Cairo in 1982, as a 19-year-old back-packer I had no map, guide or money. I saw little beyond my mosquito-infested hotel, which is why I have been so determined to make amends this time round, by covering 6,000 years of Cairo's historic sites in six days (hence driver No 1).

Amid honking traffic, I recall the sites I have seen so far, starting, six days ago, at the southern end of Roda Island, at the so-called Nilometer, the device originally used for measuring the annual flood of the Nile in the whole of Egypt. On a certain day each August, the height of the water was measured here: too little foretold drought, too much foretold floods. Harvests could be predicted and tax levels set throughout Egypt, according to the readings obtained. The Nilometer's tunnels have long been sealed, and the well shaft is dry. But no cities here could have existed without it.

Also on the first day, I made a fast drive up to the heights: to the top of the barren Muqattam, the cliffs of bare stone that impede Cairo's growth to the south-east. Romantic couples come here to canoodle in their cars, gazing down on their vast, smoggy city. From these cliffs, the white sandstone was quarried that clad the pyramids 4,500 years ago.

Dedicating the second day to Egypt's pharaonic remains, I started with the city of Memphis: not quite the first city of the area, but certainly the first imperial capital. From here, Upper and Lower Egypt were united under one ruler for the first time, some 5,000 years ago. Back then, it was the world's greatest city, with granaries, lakes and temples. But all I could see was a mangy dog chasing a woman, and a bullock. Two hundred tourists trudged diligently behind me, wondering what to look at.

Today Memphis is a smallish enclosed park, littered with broken statuary, amid groves of dusty, spiky palm trees. The foundations of the old city lie lost far beneath the ground. I spent a day touring pyramids that date back 45 centuries, starting with the stunning step-pyramid - Sakkara, the oldest freestanding, man-made structure in the world, followed by the "bent" pyramid of Dahshur, so called for the abrupt change in angle of its outside walls.

This was the true Egypt, down to the handsome, rogues sidling alongside me on the backs of camels. Did madam wish to sit on a camel? Did I wish to have my photo taken next to madam? Did I have any baksheesh? I gave them what they wanted."Egyptian Cadillac!" cried a man approaching on a donkey.

I still had the pyramids of Giza ahead of me. After 4,500 years, these have not yet lost their power to astound and awe, even though they now stand on the outskirts of the modern city. The son et lumière shows, the productions of Aida, the encroaching hotels, adjacent golf courses, tour buses, "special price" guides, camels, postcards, picture books, clap-trap - none of these detract from the experience of looking for the first time into the impassive face of the Sphinx, with the Great Pyramid of Cheops filling half the sky.

On the third day, I was ready to turn my attention to the living city of Cairo. Beyond the skyscraping hotels with their splendid Nile views, much of the city seems to have been trampled into the dirt by the supporting pillars of flyovers. Everything has been reduced to a uniform dun colour, thanks to dust blowing ceaselessly off the desert. Much of it, in result, is rendered invisible in the haze, hidden below the level of the roads, disdained, semi-ruinous and forgotten. But it is there. When the Romans came to Egypt, they built a city called Babylon (not to be confused with Babylon in Mesopotamia). What remains of their efforts are not only fortifications, but also culture. The city quarter now known as "Old Cairo", built on the site of ancient Babylon, is still the Coptic quarter of Cairo - the Copts being a relic of the Roman population, pre-dating the arrival of the Muslims in AD641.

Old Cairo today is not a lovely place. Coach-loads of slightly disappointed tourists creep along dusty alleys of cement and bare brick. Wobbling clay-built Roman walls protrude here and there, some conserved, others festering amid piles of rubbish. One of the old towers of Roman Babylon stands outside the metro station, but its base starts 10 metres below the ground. The Coptic churches too are at varying subterranean levels, according toage. The oldest are accessible down excavated steps and are little gems, lined with icons and filched Roman columns.

Cairo's Christian spring was a short one and a long Islamic summer soon dawned. North of Old Cairo is the site of the first Islamic city of the region, Fustat. I arrived here on my fourth day to visit the great Mosque of Amr Ibn al-As - the first in Cairo, dating from the 7th century, a huge white plain of marble, where the world came to pray amid forests of Corinthian columns.

The city of Al-Qahira, founded in 969, eventually became the seat of the Caliphate, and the largest, richest city in the world. This was the fabled medieval Cairo of bazaars, minarets and domes. Much has been lost; much continues to decay and crumble. But splendid mosques and madrassas and palaces survive by the dozen, and a connoisseur could spend weeks here.

I walked round the gorgeously archaic Mosque of Ibn Tulun. I gazed upon the magnificent façade of the madrassa of Sultan Qalaoun. I heard the call to prayer from the tiered minarets of the mosque of Sultan Hassan. I smelled the donkey droppings by the Bab Zuwayla. I browsed the trinkets in the Khan Al-Khalili bazaar. I even picked through the litter-strewn alleys of the Cities of the Dead, medieval cemeteries inhabited by the city's poor.

And I glimpsed the hidden domestic world of medieval Cairo, with its secret salons and invisible courtyards, at the Beit Al-Sihaymi in the Darb Al-Asfar, and in the so-called Gayer Anderson Museum, attached to the Ibn Tulun Mosque, where an eccentric Englishman lived out his orientalist fantasies with a Nubian boy-servant in the early 20th century.

I saved until last the Al-Azhar Mosque, the foremost centre of Islamic learning in the world where, in an atmosphere of utter tranquillity, earnest young men lounged on carpets, reading their Koran and debating in hushed voices.

On the fifth day I charged up to Saladin's citadel, the massive fortifications of which have commanded astonishing views over Cairo since the 12th century. The main structures that survive here today are not those of Saladin, but of Egypt's great 19th-century nationalist, Mohammed Ali. His mosque is purely Ottoman in style, decadent and sumptuous: half-mosque, half ballroom. In the courtyard wall stands a clock given to Ali by the French government in exchange for the obelisk that now decorates the Place de la Concorde. "The French gave us that broken clock!" my guide said in despair. "We are still trying to fix it!"

And so I hastened, on the sixth day, into Cairo's European century. The Paris of Napoleon III was the paradise that Ismail Pasha tried to reproduce here on the banks of the Nile, with its palaces, legations, handsome Italianate villas, leafy avenues, hotels, theatres and cafes. Dribs and drabs of this survive in suburbs such as Garden City, home to the huge British Embassy. But 20th-century Cairo expropriated most of what had gone before. By its end, the city's population had bloated to 16 million, and the amount of parkland per inhabitant could be measured in square inches.

But modern Cairo is not without its pleasures. A million Arab tourists come here each year, to visit its casinos and its opera house, ogle its belly-dancers, read its newspapers, follow its fashions, and to eat and drink in its restaurants and bars. I've tried to join them, drinking tea at Groppi's, dining at pavement cafés behind Ezbekiya Gardens where grilled chicken and rice cost £1, and in swanky Zamalek at Abou Seed, with its seductive music and sophisticated clientele.

"What are you doing?" I gasp, as my driver suddenly hits a speed bump at 50mph. "The obelisk is near!" he cries, accelerating again. We are here, at the fabled roundabout, the location of the last relic of On. What we find is not an obelisk, but a notice, and a laminated picture - of an obelisk.

"By God!" he shouts again, hurtling round the roundabout and putting three traffic cops and a donkey to flight. "The original has been removed!" And Ibeg him to let me walk home.

Abercrombie & Kent (0845-0700 612; abercrombiekent .co.uk) offers four nights at the Four Season Cairo at Nile Plaza from £849 per person, including return flights, transfers and b&b

A quest to the end of the Earth

Simon Calder on the former 'IoS' travel editor, Jeremy Atiyah, a 'weaver of magical stories', who died last week

Published: 16 April 2006

The Millennium Dome, for all its many flaws, got at least some details right. The first thing that visitors to the ill-fated tourist attraction saw was a giant bookcase, with a row of towering spines. Most prominent among them was The Rough Guide to China. With one slice of scenery, the designers deftly combined three key themes for the 21st century: travel, the ascent of the world's most populous nation, and the need for cross-cultural understanding.


One of the writers of this defining travel guide was Jeremy Atiyah, whose tragically early death in Italy on Wednesday has deprived us of an exceptional writer. The travel editor of The Independent on Sunday from 1997 to 2000, he continued to be a regular contributor to this paper and the daily Independent. His final piece is reproduced below.


With his pioneering guidebook to the People's Republic, Jeremy worked within strict parameters. Yet in his articles, he relished the liberty of imagination - as, for example, when he speculated about the true nature of Singapore:


"On the face of it, this place is just too good to be true. It must be the result of government spin. It will vanish as soon as my back is turned. The charming façades of those 'heritage' quarters will be removed to reveal ugly concrete blocks and piles of garbage. The lovely canopies of rain-trees embracing the highways will be replaced by hoardings of naked women. The quiet couples slurping noodles after dark on verandas will become rioting, spitting, drug- taking delinquents. The very history of this island state will be unwritten."


The day one met Jeremy, the world suddenly improved. Our first encounter was late in 1996, as the year drizzled to a damp conclusion. I had read his work, and wanted to meet the man whose words were at once effortless and enlightening.


Here was a writer whose intellect, culture and energy were masked by a winning courtesy; a real English gentleman with an easy, natural charm. Yet he was also a modern-day explorer. He was on a quest, it seemed to me, to trace the ends of the earth and weave magical stories that would gently transport his readers far beyond their normal horizons.


His stoicism was legendary: a week on a train across Siberia caused no more discomfort for Jeremy than three stops on the Northern Line for most of us. While wandering through the deserts of Jordan one day, he was caught, without food, in a storm that raged for 10 hours; he simply dug a trench and sat it out.


He formed some deep relationships, yet his innate spontaneity proved incompatible with a steady partnership. He described himself as "a nomadic revivalist, lamenting the appearance, 8,000-odd years ago, of more settled patterns of life". Even so, the women in his life - including his ex-wife, Xiaosong, and his last love Sophie, remained close to him until the last.


Despite or (more likely) because of his fascinating, erratic existence, all who knew Jeremy felt close to him - enriched by his wisdom and his sparkle.


For those of us who lacked the sheer guts to venture to the edge and beyond, no problem: Jeremy would go there anyway, and report back with grace, humour and eloquence.


From Florence: Reflections on love and adventure in Italy of yore


Extract from Jeremy Atiyah's last piece for the 'IoS', which appeared a month ago
It has always seemed to me that I was born with the desire to live in Italy embedded in my DNA. It felt like an innate, instinctive desire for little coffees and bright light and expressive neighbours. And now it turns out to be true.


I have learnt that I can blame my grandfather. I never knew him because he died more than 40 years ago. But I am told that he was a passionate, cultured man who loved history, good food and robust discussion. The result was, in the late Fifties and early Sixties, that he ended up driving to Italy every summer with his lover.


It is the lover - now aged nearly 90 - who tells me this. She has told me about the blue Ford Consul motor car, and the roads that were not yet crowded with traffic. He was in his late fifties, she some 15 years his junior.


Their first destination was the aerodrome at Lydd, in Kent, where they loaded their car on to a plane. They were fun, those flights to Le Touquet: after a mere 17 and a half minutes in the air, you arrived in a world that was as exotic as India is today.


They then drove off, with the freedom of an entire continent beneath their wheels. Their route through France took them along roads lined with chestnut and walnut trees. They usually crossed the border somewhere above Domodossola, that little mountain village whose syllables so blatantly announce the onset of Italy.


Once there, my grandfather and his lover turned to their trusty guidebooks, two fragile, red Baedekers published in the first decade of the 20th century. These books have since come down to me: bundles of tiny print and exquisitely drawn maps on Bible-thin paper.


Why would my grandfather and his lover have wanted to rely on guidebooks that were 50 years old? Italy was still Italy, I am sure they would have said. The Italy of 1960 was still essentially the Italy of 1900. The intervention of two world wars was no more than a detail. As for me, I cling to the hope that neither of those Italys can be so irredeemably different from mine.


Florence, I am told, was the city to which they returned with most gusto. And enclosed in the Florence chapter, I discovered a bill, from a long-defunct hotel named the Albergo Berchielli, dated September 1962. Four nights, including breakfasts, drinks and laundry, comes to 26,000 lire, equating to roughly £10.


During my own visit to Florence I stayed in a chic, air-conditioned hotel by the Arno that cost £200 per night. How I would love to have crossed the decades, for the sake of a room in the Albergo Berchielli with an iron bedstead, stone tiles and a sink in the corner ...

Jeremy Atiyah

Travel writer and editor who took to a nomadic life for the sheer elation of wandering and discovering

Saturday, 15 April 2006

Jeremy Francis Atiyah, traveller and writer: born Woking, Surrey 30 December 1963; Travel Editor, The Independent on Sunday 1997-2000; married 1991 Xiaosong Que (marriage dissolved 2000); died Monti Sibillini National Park, Italy 12 April 2006.

'As I entered my 40th year, I turned myself into a vagabond." Jeremy Atiyah was many things - a teacher, a linguist, a brilliant writer - but above all he was a traveller. In January 2002, he walked out of his flat with a rucksack on his back, for yet another adventure. He rented out his home, shrugged off almost all material possessions - save for "a bicycle, an e-mail address and a mobile telephone" - and began the life of a nomad.

Part of the following three years was spent in London, researching at the British Library, and living as "a middle-class vagrant . . . blessed by supportive and well-off friends". He roamed on assignment for this newspaper, and others: searching for Shangri-La in China, and finding corners of Italy that have yet to be over-run by tourists. Above all, though, he simply travelled for the sheer elation of wandering, encountering and discovering.

Yet Atiyah was no aimless drifter on the fringes of society. His love of life, unselfconscious charm and natural curiosity meant he acquired friends with ease at home and abroad. The great warmth with which he was regarded made his sudden death in Italy (naturally, he was travelling) at the shockingly early age of 42 all the sadder.

Jeremy Atiyah was born in Surrey, during a blizzard, on the penultimate day of 1963. An early sign of his erudition came within a few weeks of his starting primary school, when he rapidly learned to read. For three years from 1970, the family moved to the Australian capital, Canberra, where his father, Professor Patrick Atiyah, had a teaching post at the university.

Upon their return to the UK, they moved to Royal Leamington Spa in Warwickshire. Jeremy attended the grammar school from 1974 to 1977; and later, when his father took up a chair in Oxford, Magdalen College School.

After A-levels, Jeremy Atiyah's love of travel became evident. At a time when venturing beyond Europe was still a rarity, he spent the summer travelling around India. Aged 17, Atiyah proved a shrewd backpacker, often staying at ashrams for a pound or two per night in order to extend his journey for as long as possible.

After spending his last few rupees on the bus to the airport for his flight home, he was surprised to learn that an airport tax had been imposed. Self-reliance to the fore, Atiyah trawled the check-in queue until he found a generous fellow traveller willing to lend him the money.

If he or his parents thought the Indian experience would get the travel bug out of his system, they were gladly mistaken; instead, the journey served to whet his appetite for more adventures.

Perhaps it was a yearning for elsewhere that dogged his university career. For someone with such a formidable and well-rounded intellect, Atiyah found life at Trinity College, Oxford surprisingly heavy going. He enrolled initially for Classics, but later switched to PPE. He graduated in 1985.

He had always demonstrated a love for words: procuring them, inventing them, exploring their power and potential. Happily, his graduation coincided with the launch of the Amstrad word processor, which for the first time offered the prospect of creating, editing and printing text for an affordable price - under £400. Astutely, Professor Atiyah bought one of the first models off the production line - and set his son on what was to prove a most illustrious writing career.

The most pressing need for the young graduate, though, was to earn some cash. The late 1980s were difficult days in Britain, so Jeremy set off for Barcelona. Spain was blossoming after the suffocating Franco years, and the Catalan capital had just been awarded the 1992 Olympics, creating a strong demand for teachers of English. At the same time as teaching his mother tongue, he mastered Spanish with apparent ease - as he later did with German, Mandarin, Russian and Italian.

Even when living humbly in a cheap pension in the heart of Barcelona, Atiyah found the temptation of travel irresistible. One Friday night, the week's wages in his pocket, he happened to pass through the main station on the way home. The departure board showed a train to Granada about to leave, so he hopped aboard. In those days, Spanish Railways ran a creaky old network; he had barely a couple of hours in the fabulous Andalucian city before catching a northbound train, but the joy of the journey itself and the miscellany of fellow travellers he met repaid the investment many times.

In 1989, his brother Simon was posted to Hong Kong, and invited Jeremy over. At the end of the stay, Jeremy Atiyah could have caught a plane straight home. Instead, he opted for the railway less travelled - and what turned out to be a life-changing journey. He ventured north through China, at the time an alien land for independent travellers, to Beijing. Here, he boarded the Trans-Mongolian Express to Moscow - and, en route, met a young Chinese woman named Xiaosong Que who was on her way to study literature in West Germany. With a passion and certainty that transcended his usual amiable diffidence, he wooed and eventually married her.

Xiaosong was unable to join Jeremy on his next teaching assignment, in Saudi Arabia. But they travelled together through a Lebanon torn apart by the civil war, to search for his roots; his paternal grandfather was Lebanese.

Back in Britain, he taught English to Xiaosong, and reciprocally added Mandarin to his armoury of languages. This set him in good stead for researching and co-writing the first edition of The Rough Guide to China, which was published in 1995 and remains a bestseller. Yet the minutiae of hostels, train schedules and tourist attractions proved too constraining for Jeremy Atiyah's powers as a storyteller. He began writing for the travel sections of national newspapers - stories that were always multi- dimensional, bursting with life, and characters, and emotion.

When, in 1997, The Independent on Sunday decided to appoint its first travel editor, Atiyah was the natural choice. Despite having no formal training as a journalist, he created and managed an outstanding travel section. Each week he wrote a sparky, witty column that challenged conventional travel industry wisdom - indeed, he first questioned the moral and environmental legitimacy of mass tourism long before it moved on to the media agenda.

By the millennium, Atiyah had tolerated the institutional discipline of regular hours for quite long enough. He left on the most amicable of terms, and continued to write for both The Independent and The Independent on Sunday. At around the same time, his marriage with Xiaosong ended; her wish to settle down, and his to explore, proved irreconcilable, but they remained close and on the best of terms until his death.

In the 21st century, most of Atiyah's time and energy was invested in bigger writing projects. He spent the winter of 2000/2001 in the deep-frozen Siberian city of Irkutsk (naturally acquiring fluent Russian in the process), and wrote an extraordinary history of Tsarist Russia's adventures in North America.

In 2002 Atiyah decided to take his lifestyle to its logical conclusion and forsake the comforts of a conventional home; after all, he seemed at home everywhere. By 2005, though, he had settled on Italy as the ideal country to nourish his creative spirit. He bought a cheap old property in Puglia, at the heel of Italy, and spent much of last year making it habitable. His latest professional reinvention combined writing with researching walking trips in Italy - designing adventures, if you will. As he once observed: "the human foot is designed for endless traipsing".

It was while on assignment in Umbria that he suffered a fatal heart attack - a tragic yet poetic death for a man who wrought miracles with words, a romantic who rose above these unromantic times.

Simon Calder

The Rough Guide to China was first published not in 1995, but in 1987, writes Catharine Sanders. (Jeremy Atiyah's collaboration with David Leffman and Simon Lewis was in fact issued in 1997.) The first edition was researched and written by myself and Chris Stewart ­ now rather better known as the author of Driving over Lemons. Rhonda Evans also contributed.

We had completed several further months of travel and research in China to produce a second updated edition shortly before the events of Tiananmen. The then American parent publisher Harrap Columbus decided to pull the plug, fearing a drop in American tourists to China, and our material was subsequently bought in and passed on to the new team.

On the road to romance in Italy

His grandfather motored the length and breadth of Italy with a lover by his side. Forty years on, Jeremy Atiyah retraces their route

Published: 05 March 2006

It has always seemed to me that I was born with the desire to live in Italy embedded in my DNA. It felt like an innate, instinctive desire for little coffees and bright light and expressive neighbours. And now it turns out to be true.

I have learnt that I can blame my grandfather. I never knew him because he died more than 40 years ago. But I am told that he was a passionate, cultured man who loved history, good food and robust discussion. The result was, in the late Fifties and early Sixties, that he ended up driving to Italy every summer with his lover.

It is the lover - now aged nearly 90 - who tells me this. She has told me about the blue Ford Consul motor car, and the roads that were not yet crowded with traffic. He was in his late fifties, she some 15 years his junior.

Their first destination was the aerodrome at Lydd, in Kent, where they loaded their car on to a plane. They were fun, those flights to Le Touquet: after a mere 17 and a half minutes in the air, you arrived in a world that was as exotic as India is today. The first thing my grandfather did on landing was to buy a packet of Gauloise cigarettes. He did it for the aroma, he declared; he did it for France (he had a passion for authenticity).

They then drove off, with the freedom of an entire continent beneath their wheels. Their route through France took them along roads lined with chestnut and walnut trees; they usually crossed the border somewhere above Domodossola, that little mountain village whose syllables so blatantly announce the onset of Italy.

Once there, my grandfather and his lover turned to their trusty guidebooks, two fragile, red Baedekers published in the first decade of the 20th century. These books have since come down to me: bundles of tiny print and exquisitely drawn maps on Bible-thin paper.

Why would my grandfather and his lover have wanted to rely on guidebooks that were 50 years old? Italy was still Italy, I am sure they would have said. The Italy of 1960 was still essentially the Italy of 1900. The intervention of two world wars was no more than a detail. As for me, I cling to the hope that neither of those Italys can be so irredeemably different from mine.

The format of an Edwardian guidebook is surprisingly familiar. Here is the section on how to reach Italy by rail. Here are the sections on conduct, climate and transport. Here are the potted histories, chronologies, introductions to art, maps, and hotel recommendations.

While the books are scrupulously polite regarding the Renaissance, they are less so when it comes to contemporary Italy. Much is made of the "able-bodied loafers" who clog Italian cities; Italian trains are "often, if not, indeed, usually, late". With regard to tips, the traveller is advised "to have no scruple in limiting his donations to the smallest possible sums".

I keep finding slips of paper from between the pages of these books: entry tickets to museums and galleries and theatres in Milan, Vicenza, Padua, Venice, Florence, Ferrara, Rome ... It was a crooked path through Italy that they drove, but its cultured theme is unmistakable.


Florence, I am told, was the city to which they returned with most gusto. And enclosed in the Florence chapter, I have just discovered a bill, from a long-defunct hotel named the Albergo Berchielli, dated September 1962. Four nights, including breakfasts, drinks and laundry, comes to 26,000 lire, equating to roughly £10.

During my own visit to Florence I stayed in a chic, air-conditioned hotel by the Arno that cost £200 per night. How I would love to have crossed the decades, for the sake of a room in the Albergo Berchielli with an iron bedstead, stone tiles and a sink in the corner.

One year, north of Rome, they crashed the Ford Consul into a ditch. His joie de vivre drained away, and she was obliged to step down and knock shyly on the door of a farmhouse. The young men of the family emerged in caps and waistcoats to heave them out.

Later they were exploring the ruins of the Roman Forum, studying the line drawings of the Temple of Castor and the Temple of the Divine Julius. Suddenly they glimpsed a rose among the stones. Today a petal from the same flower, still red after a 45-year pressing in the book, slips down from beneath a map and floats to the floor. I carefully restore it to its place.

They continued south to Naples and Amalfi. One year they even got to Sicily. For us, the foreignness of Sicily in 1960 is impossible to imagine: the bronzed skins of the local youth, the intense light, the pungent aromas, the loudness of the chatter, the power of the priests and of the vulgar, crumbling Baroque and the faint menace of the Mafia.

Soon after crossing the straits of Messina, their camera was stolen from the car. The chances of retrieving it seemed slight. And yet the carabinieri got on its trail: by some miracle, they recovered the camera. The matter was solemnly recorded in the local newspapers, and my grandfather's lover kept all the cuttings.

These cuttings tell the story of a tiny local drama, regarding the lost camera of an English tourist and his lady in Sicily. Here is a grainy old photograph of a policeman. It happened more than 40 years ago, but I will never tire of thinking about it.


THE GRAND TOUR: 10 MUST-SEE DESTINATIONS


1. San Remo
WHY GO? This was a top resort before the Second World War. It's still the place to head to for old-fashioned Riviera glamour. Place a bet at the Art Nouveau casino, an ornate palace.
WHERE TO STAY? The Royal Hotel (00 39 0184 5391; royalhotelsanremo.com), for its faded opulence and a vast, salt-water pool in sub-tropical gardens. Doubles start at €222 (£158) with breakfast.


2. Milan
Why go? For more than two centuries, British tourists have flocked to Milan to visit the most famous opera house in the world, La Scala (for bookings, contact 00 39 0286 0775; teatroalla scala.org). A tour of La Scala is socially acceptable. Where to stay? The Grand Hotel Et De Milan (00 39 0272 3141; grandhoteletdemilan.it), where Giuseppe Verdi often stayed. Doubles start at Û528 (£377) without breakfast.


3. The Italian Alps
WHY GO? Much of the Italian Alps, especially round Lakes Como and Maggiore, is a must for nostalgics, with 'belle époque' hotels, palazzos, luxuriant gardens and lakeside views.
WHERE TO STAY? For very posh accommodation, try the palatial 16th-century Villa d'Este Hotel
(00 39 031 34 81; villadeste.it) at Cernobbio, on the shores of Lake Como. Doubles start at €465 (£332) with breakfast.


4. Venice
WHY GO? The quintessential tourist destination looks much the same today as it did in 1960 (or indeed 1760).
WHERE TO STAY? The world-famous Danieli Hotel (00 39 041 522 6480; hoteldanielivenice.com) tops the hotel list in my 1906 Baedeker guide book and it's still one of the very finest places to stay in the city. Doubles start at €415 (£296) per night, including breakfast.


5. Florence
Why go? Long marvelled at as Italy's most beautiful city, Florence can be overwhelmed by tourists. For the Uffizi, the Accademia and the Bargello book visiting slots in advance (00 39 055 294 883; or book online at weekendafirenze.com). Where to stay? In a 16th-century Medici palazzo just outside town, the Villa La Massa (00 39 055 626 11; villalamassa.com). Doubles start at Û260 (£185) per night.


6. Siena
WHY GO? This intriguing city, with its narrow and crooked streets, is one of the finest places in Italy to sample medieval art and architecture. It is also the location for the Palio, the world's most spectacular horse race.
WHERE TO STAY? At the 17th-century Grand Hotel Continental (00 39 0577 56011; royaldemeure.com) in the heart of the city. Doubles start at €216 (£154) with breakfast.


7. Rome
WHY GO? It's hard to avoid being nostalgic in a city that has dominated Europe on and off for 2,000 years. For a true Grand Tour experience, dress up a bit, go to the Spanish Steps, meet your lover andchuck a coin into the Trevi fountain.
WHERE TO STAY? For traditional hotels you are spoilt for choice. Try the Grand Hotel Plaza (00 39 066 74 952; grandhotelplaza.com). Doubles start at €265 (£189) with breakfast.


8. Naples
WHY GO? Capital of the south, this mad, chaotic, tragic city remains the tear-jerker that it has been for the past three centuries. Come here to become a teenager again, ride a scooter, eat a pizza, to hold a shouted conversation from a balcony.
WHERE TO STAY? At the Grand Hotel Parker's (00 39 081 761 2474; grandhotelparkers.it), which overlooks the city from the hills. Doubles start at €220 (£157) with breakfast.


9. The Amalfi coast
WHY GO? Tourists have been coming to this region since the days of ancient Rome, and for very good reason: it's beautiful. Hop across to the legendary island of Capri for an afternoon.
WHERE TO STAY? In Sorrento, at the Excelsior Vittoria (00 34 081 877 7818; excelsiorvittoria.com), a newly-renovated, 19th-century hotel, with terraces of orange and lemon groves. Doubles start at €390 (£278) including breakfast.


10. Palermo
WHY GO? Sicily has always been a vital stage on the Grand Tour - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Italian tourist par excellence, called the island "the key to the whole".
WHERE TO STAY? Just outside the city at the slightly shabby chic belle époque Grand Hotel Villa Igiea (00 39 091 543 744; villaigieapalermo.it). Doubles start at €277 (£197) without breakfast.

Visit Madrid's civil war sites 70 years on

This year marks the seventieth anniversary of the start of the civil war. Jeremy Atiyah traces the tide of battle from Madrid's trenches to the spot where a poet was killed

Published: 05 February 2006

Modern Spain is an optimistic, exhilarating country. People come here to enjoy themselves. They come to dance, to eat grilled sardines, to drink sangria, to lie on beaches, to visit modern art galleries, to stay in beautiful historic cities and towns. It is almost as if the events of 70 years ago never happened. But sadly, they did - which is why I'm touring Spain now, in search of any visible scars.


Madrid, which was under fascist siege for most of the war, is my starting point; I've just read Laurie Lee's account of arriving here in 1937. He had already begun to sense for the first time the "gaseous squalor of a country at war ... an infection so deep it seemed to rot the earth, drain it of life, colour and sound". Today, Puerta del Sol in the centre of Madrid teems with shoppers and tourists. In the anomalous year of 1937, all Lee noted here was emptiness and silence, with the cafés closed, a few huddled women queuing in shuttered shops, and a "fusty aroma of horses, straw, broken drains, and fevered sickness".

Even poor Ernest Hemingway, in town at the same time, was subject to privations. The Hotel Florida, where he was staying, suffered regular shelling. It was only thanks to his excellent connections with the Spanish government and the Russian general staff that he managed to procure any benefits at all. (Every morning, it was reported, the other guests in the hotel woke up to the smell of eggs, bacon, and coffee being prepared for Hemingway, courtesy of the Communist International.)

As for Civil War relics in Madrid, there is one obvious one, hanging in the Reina Sofia Museum: Guernica, Picasso's remarkable representation of the destruction of a small Basque town by aerial bombardment. The war has left other less obvious traces, too. In the Casa de Campo, the city's equivalent of Hampstead Heath, Republican trenches can still be seen, though they are generally unnoticed among the joggers and picnickers. Hemingway's Hotel Florida may have vanished, but if you want to see where the great meat-eater used to enjoy dinner, try El Botin at Calle de Cuchilleros 17, where the old oak beams and suckling pork are as they were.

And there is no need to stop with Madrid. The war was as pitiless elsewhere. In Toledo to the south, you can explore the mighty Alcazar, celebrated by Nationalists for the memory of Colonel Moscado, who barricaded himself inside here at the start of the war. You can still see the cellars where his people sheltered, as well as his own office, which has been left untouched since the siege, bullet holes and all. One of the most famous incidents of the entire war occurred here. A regretful telephone call came through to Moscado to inform him that his 24-year-old son Luis was being held prisoner, and would be shot within 10 minutes if the Alcazar were not surrendered to the Republicans immediately.

Moscado's brisk response was to shout to his son over the telephone: "Commend your soul to God, shout Viva España! and die like a hero! Goodbye my son, a last kiss!"
"Goodbye father," answered Luis. "A very big kiss."

Nobody in the war had a monopoly on atrocities. Down in moody Granada, Spain's most famous living poet, Federico Garcia Lorca, was at work on Bernarda Alba in the summer of 1936 when war broke out. He was a mere writer, but on 16 August, he was arrested in Granada by Nationalist forces who detested him for a hundred reasons. On the night of 18 or 19 August, he was driven to a remote point near the village of Viznar, at the foot of the Sierra Nevada, and shot dead. Apart from the volumes of sublime poetry, all that remains of Lorca today is a simple monument erected at the presumed site of his murder.

Meanwhile, it was to the north of Madrid that the worst battles of the war were being fought. The Guadarrama range, between Madrid and Segovia, was a bloody border area between the Nationalist and Republican lines; its hills and passes provide the location of For Whom the Bell Tolls. Hemingway is known to have carried out his research for the book by travelling the mountains by foot, horseback and car.

It is still a lovely area. The routes from Madrid and El Escorial to Segovia take you through it. And despite its increasing popularity as a weekend playground for Madrileños, who come skiing in winter and hiking in summer, it still remains largely the wilderness that Hemingway describes, dotted with remote villages. Not far from here is the "attraction" that most Madrileños shun: the Valley of the Fallen, Franco's Brutalist memorial to the civil war, a concrete cross nearly 150m high, built on a monstrous crypt hewn from solid granite. Franco himself was buried here in 1975.

Moving north into Aragon, you enter a landscape that is far harsher. This is a good region if you are in search of the unspoilt, but a very bleak region for fighting a war (as George Orwell found out). Its most disturbing monument is the small town of Belchite, 20 miles south of Zaragoza. Before the war it had been a busy little town of 4,000 souls; today it is ghost town, left as it was after its destruction nearly 70 years ago.

And finally to the east, to the sunny shores of the Mediterranean; these were the last Republican areas to fall to Franco. Orwell got his first sight of Barcelona in December 1936. "Every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with the red and black flag of the anarchists," he marvelled. "Every wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle and with the initials of revolutionary parties; almost every church had been gutted and its images burnt ..."

To his delight, he saw only poor people in the town. Nobody was saying "Señor" or "Usted". On the Ramblas, Orwell described crowds of people who "streamed constantly to and fro" while loudspeakers "were bellowing revolutionary songs all day and far into the night". It wouldn't stay like that. When Orwell returned after four months at the front he found that everything had reverted. Suddenly, it was full of sleek men in suits smoking cigars and with fashionable girls on their arms again; all the revolutionary fervour had gone. Orwell had a shock in store. Suddenly, a battle broke out between the Anarchists and the Republican authorities. The Anarchists seized the telephone exchange. The Ramblas became the front line. Up at the Plaza de Catalonia every building became an armed fort. The Hotel Colon had a machine gun post right inside the first "O" of Colon, enabling it (according to Orwell) to "spray the square to good effect".

In today's Barcelona, amid the buskers and newspaper kiosks and old men feeding the pigeons, it all seems highly implausible. But if you raise your eyes above the heads of the sleek men and their fashionable girls you can still spot bullet holes in the walls of the old telephone exchange.

The last three days of March 1938 were effectively the last three days of the war. Valencia was among the very last towns to fall. As Nationalists entered the city, frightened women came forward to kiss their hands, while roses, mimosa and laurels were flung from the balconies of the middle classes. At the quays, there were scenes of mass panic, as thousands of Republicans attempted to flee the country by ship. The door was closing on Spain. It would not be a happy place to visit for another 40 years.

Go To Gujarat The One-Hit Wonder

India is a place to be savoured. It can't be done in a single holiday. Jeremy Atiyah suggests one very good region to start your journey

Published: 18 December 2005

Tourists hoping to conquer India in a fortnight are doomed to disappointment. The lesson is this: if you want to visit small towns, travel cross-country, meet locals not in the tourist trade - then you have to concentrate on a single region. But which region? Some candidates were obvious: Rajasthan, Goa, Kerala. But would my experience of these tourist destinations be sufficiently authentic?

It was my tour operator, Trans-Indus, which first suggested Gujarat. Until now, all I knew about Gujarat was that it had a thuggish state governor and that it had suffered a terrible earthquake in 2001.

But now I also know that it is one of India's most prosperous states and the birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi. It has mosques and temples, wildlife reserves, beaches, old forts and exquisite handicrafts.

So Gujarat it would be. A two-week itinerary was prepared, with a guide and driver placed at my disposal. The hot season was beginning to broil, but in an age of air-conditioning I had little to fear.

And at Bhavnagar, I immediately found myself in an old maharajah's pad, the Nilambagh Palace. Out and about, the trappings of the "authentic" India were instantly to hand: the lounging cows, the piles of fruit, the bubbling tea, the frying food, the burning sun, the waving children, the rascally sadhus, the multitudinous domes and minarets...


Gujarat, I was delighted to note, even turned out to be blessed with several large patches of wilderness. Not far outside Bhavnagar stretch the grasslands of the Velavadar nature reserve, grazed by herds of skittish blackbuck deer. Over the coming days I would enjoy similar safari-esque experiences, both at Sasangir (home of the last Asiatic lion) and the Little Rann of Kutch (frequented by India's only wild ass).

But culture was the main thing. On my second day in Gujarat, I panted up a mountain outside the town of Palitana to reach one of the holiest sites of the Jain religion. At the summit, pilgrims in white cotton robes shuffled amid towers and trees; the only sounds were of distant chanting, bells in the wind, and the squawking of green parrots. The views extended over half of Gujarat.

And beaches? Oh yes. Descending from the temples to the baking plains, I set off for Diu on the southern coast of the Saurashtra peninsula. Strictly speaking, this is not quite Gujarat; as a former Portuguese colony, it falls under direct rule from Delhi. An advantage of this, for the tourist, is that Gujarat's anti-alcohol laws do not apply here. Suddenly, the scenery was lush and tropical. In damp churches, primitive wooden effigies of forgotten saints were rotting in the tropical air. Diu was a place to enjoy a cold beer and a meal of fried fish cooked by an old woman called Fatima D'Souza, before spending the night in a place like the Pensao Beira Mar.

Next morning I headed inland once more. My destination was Junagadh, though this dusty, historic town seemed to warrant a stay of days rather than hours. Its centre is dominated by the palace of the old Muslim Nawab, who in 1947 had declared his intention of joining Junagadh to Pakistan. So many Gujarati towns are dominated by epic palaces, the remnants of that disreputable but seductive century - from around 1840 to 1940 - when India's princes found themselves free to spend their burgeoning revenues on culture, music, art, lakes, palaces and hunting - but seldom on their subjects.

In Gondal, later, I once again enjoyed a maharajah's ease at the Orchard Palace hotel, eating amid shady terraces, ancient retainers and dilapidated furnishings. The spindly manager showed us the antique car collection of the royal family of Gondal. "Oh yes," he murmured, sadly, caressing the bonnet of a 1940s Chevrolet. "Things were better then."

Not that Gujarat was just about palaces. I now took a different route, north, into the Great Rann of Kutch, a desolate wilderness of salt flats that marked the borderland between India and Pakistan.
Architectural masterpieces were few: even the famed city of Bhuj, since the earthquake of 2001, is not the attraction it was. In spite of the damage, however, the villages of Kutch remain a treasure trove. Their crafts are among the finest in India. I regretted having only a day in which to meet shawl makers, weavers, potters and painters; for them the earthquake seems to have brought hope. Foreign funds are arriving. Co-operatives have been established to maintain traditional skills, sell merchandise and entertain tourists. You will never feel more strongly motivated to buy souvenirs than in Kutch.

After the Great Rann, my next destination was the Little Rann. Here I took a room in a delightful village-style camp called Rann Riders, the property of an organic farmer and Islamic gentleman-scholar called Malik, now 65 years old, who, until a few decades ago, had been destined for a small kingship. Thanks to Indira Gandhi's abolition of the old royal titles of India, this had not come to pass, but the 24 villages of his former jurisdiction still showed him respect. At dusk a camel-drawn cart took me away along dusty tracks to surrounding villages. I will never forget the welcoming villages of Dasada and Zinzuwada. Old men in fancy shoes milked their cows; women with pots on their heads stood in carved teak doorways; a monumental Hindu gate, festooned with faceless gods, crumbled in the sunset.

My only anxiety, in this rustic haven, was the thought that I would soon be heading for one of India's greatest cities. Ahmadabad was next. When we got there, a goodly proportion of India's teeming millions were out on the streets selling vegetables. My hotel, the House of MG, was a boutique that would not have looked out of place in Chicago. Perhaps this was the place to end the tour.

But Rajasthan was only a short drive away. So I fled to the state border and checked into a room that resembled an exotic museum, in a hotel called Udai Bilas Palace, beside a lake in Dungarpur. When the son of the last maharajah came to chat to me at sunset, he pointed at a stork's nest in the tree above the swimming pool. "Our aim," he explained calmly, "is to keep things simple." Keeping things simple? In India? I laughed. Having reached Dungarpur, I was in no mood for simplicity. Udaipur was within touching distance. From there, I could drive on to Jodhpur. And then to Jaipur. And then to Delhi, and...

A peacock screamed. The maharajah's son looked up. And I suddenly remembered, with a savage pang of regret, that India could never be conquered in a fortnight.

Jeremy Atiyah flew to Mumbai with Virgin Atlantic (08705 747 747; virgin atlantic.com) which offers flights from £425 from 25 December to 31 March 2006. He travelled around Gujarat courtesy of Trans-Indus (020-8566 2729; transindus.co.uk), which has a 15-day tour, including flights, full board b&b and guides, from £1,998 per person

Sofitel Metropole Hanoi

A bed for the night in Vietnam

By Jeremy Atiyah

Published: 25 September 2005

The location
In the old town of Hanoi, on a quiet street, just a couple of minutes' walk from the central Hoan Kiem Lake. It is to Hanoi what the Raffles is to Singapore: quite simply the classiest hotel in town. More than 100 years old, it was already regarded as the best hotel in Indo-China during the time of French rule. In the 1920s, guests included Somerset Maugham (who finished The Gentlemen in the Parlour here) and Noël Coward, who was "not allowed out of the hotel, as there was a revolution in progress". Later, Graham Greene, in The Quiet American, said the hotel was populated by French officers and their wives. (Today a Graham Greene cocktail at the Bamboo Bar, contains gin, dry vermouth and cassis). Outside, the Metropole still resembles a rambling villa, with a sleepy line of waiting bicycle rickshaws. Inside are dark wood, creaking stairwells and photos of ancient Mandarins, and beautiful staff.


The USP
All the top people stay here - but you can often get a bargain room rate.


The comfort factor
Very high, although the emphasis is on understated colonial elegance, rather than on vulgar New World glitz. The 232 whitewashed rooms have vintage furniture, shuttered windows and floor-to-ceiling curtains. Finding chocolate truffles and meringues on your pillow, you will probably dream that you are in France.


The bathroom
A fine array of brightly coloured and subtle-smelling unguents await, possibly to distract your attention from the bathroom itself, which is in need of modernisation - the flapping shower curtain is not quite in keeping with the five-star facilities.


The food and drink
The hotel contains two of the best restaurants in Vietnam. Prices are high by Vietnamese standards, but low for an international, five-star hotel. The Beaulieu is a traditional French restaurant, which is as old as the hotel itself and has an astounding wine list. From $28 (£16) a head for a set three-course meal. The Spice Garden is an excellent Vietnamese restaurant, where you can sample the dishes of old Hanoi, including items as humble as noodles and spring rolls. Set menus from $26 (£14) per head.


The people
Rich tourists, jet-setters and conference delegates; I saw one group of Russian oil-magnates and their bodyguards trying to stay sober in the Spice Garden. Also expect a steady stream of prime ministers, presidents, royalty and movie stars.


Things to do
Join a one-day cookery course conducted by the chef of the Spice Garden Restaurant. She starts at the market (travelling by bicycle rickshaw) and then shows you how to put together some basic dishes such as sautéed pumpkin branches with garlic, Hanoi deep-fried spring rolls and Vietnamese banana flower salad and marinated pork grilled in bamboo. Otherwise, lounge in the Bamboo Bar by the pool while a glamorous female pianist plays nearby. And, of course, beyond the front door there's the whole of Hanoi to explore.


The access
Children welcome. No wheelchair access.


The damage
Doubles usually available for $130 (£72) per night.


The address
The Metropole, 15 Ngo Quyen, Hanoi, Vietnam (0870-609 0961; www.accorhotels.com/asia).