Three nights in the Sublime Porte

as the Venetians used to call Istanbul...

View over the Bosphorus towards the Yeni Cami (New Mosque)

I had the great fortune to be invited to join the RCA History of Design MA course trip to Istanbul earlier this week - they had booked to go in April, but due to the Icelandic volcano had to reschedule for now, which meant that some of the students could no longer come on the trip, though it was all paid for, so they had some extra places. I wasn't going to pass up the chance for a free trip to Istanbul, even if I did have to take annual leave!

The only time I have been before was, I think, 18 or so years ago, in a former life, when I was a Classicist - Richard and I went to do the British School at Athens Summer School, which was fantastic though I only vaguely remember it, and afterwards we took a bus to Istanbul, via a short stopover in Thessaloniki. Richard promptly got food poisoning (some dodgy prawns in a restaurant overlooking the Bosphorus) and I spent most of the 3 days we were there wandering around on my own, but not wanting to go too far afield since I was young and this was my first experience of the 'exotic' Middle East. Thinking about that on this trip, in light of all the other places I have travelled to since, which actually are in the Middle East, this former self seemed terribly naive. Nevertheless I had vivid memories of having visited Topkapi, and the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts - it may even have been this trip that solidified my interest in Islamic Art, who knows.

So it was a great opportunity to go back, albeit for another fleeting visit, as an Islamic art historian who actually knew a little bit about what she was looking at. Though I tried to impress on my colleagues, the course tutors, that Ottoman architecture was not my area, and I was there as just as much of a student as they. That didn't stop them from asking me questions about every conceivable aspect of Islamic culture and civilisation, some of which I could answer, most of which I couldn't.

But it was wonderful to go back and see again the major monuments - Aya Sofya, the Blue Mosque, Topkapi - and to visit places I had not seen before, like the jewel-like Rustem Pasha Mosque, a small monument perched above shops and completely lined with colourful Iznik tilework. I had a long list of places I would have liked to visit as well if I had had more time, and I tried to go to some of them, but a lot of places on the cultural map of Istanbul were closed for restoration projects. Istanbul is the European Capital of Culture this year, which means an injection of EU funds for restoration projects that are clearly direly needed - but a shame these projects were not finished in time for the launch of the Capital of Culture. We all agreed we needed to go back - but need to give enough time for all these restorations to finish.

One lucky thing - they have just taken down the scaffolding in Aya Sofya, which for the last 17 years has been supporting the miraculous central dome, while they carried out restoration and conservation of the paintings. Thing is, last time I went was before the scaffolding even went up, so I am fortunate enough never have had to visit Aya Sofya in its scaffolded phase!

What was awful, though, was the vast crowds of tourists, all in enormous tour groups which get bussed in from wherever they're staying and then bussed out again, without putting any money into the local economy. It's cruise season apparently so you can have upto 3000 people from a single cruise ship suddenly turning up in the queue for Aya Sofya or Topkapi. It really did make the experience of trying to squeeze your way around these awe-inspiring monuments tiresome in the extreme. Not only that, but it can't be good for the preservation of the buildings. At the Alhambra they have a cap on the number of tickets that they sell every day, and if you're unlucky enough to get there after they've sold out for the day, you don't get in. But there seems to be no such regulation at the major Istanbul monuments, so they have streams of thousands passing through every day. In the small spaces of the Harem in Topkapi, people were clambering over marble fireplaces and fountains just to get round the other tourists blocking their way. Horrible.

But I think my overriding impression of this trip is that Istanbul is Europe. Compared to the other parts of the Middle East I have travelled to in the last 18 years, everything about Istanbul feels European - especially of course the Istiklal Caddesi, the main shopping drag leading up to Taksim Square, which is where the Europeans used to have their embassies in the 19th and 20th centuries (some still do), and built historicist buildings in the styles then popular in more western parts of Europe, but also used innovative styles like Art Nouveau - we stumbled upon the delapidated Botter House, which was rather a treasure, though no-one is looking after it. Marta felt like she had been transported back to southern Italy. I still got chatted up in the Spice Souk ("You want a boyfriend for 3 days?" Ugh) but - I tried to tell myself - there are lecherous men in abundance in Europe, it is not a Middle East-specific nuisance.

So - up with Turkey joining the EU, I say!

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18 years since I went to Istanbul last. Yikes. These are the kinds of things that make you start to feel old. It is 10 years ago since I got back from my doctoral research year in Madrid! I timed my return to Oxford in order to attend Bev & James's wedding - so that means it's their 10th anniversary on Thursday! (Congrats guys!!) K and I moved into our mostly unfurnished bedsit on St Clement's the day before I think, and I quite clearly remember: a) having to take a bath with no hot water, and b) K burning toast - as we rushed to get ready for their wedding...

Not only that - generation-defining icons like Twin Peaks is 20 years old (such clear memories of obsessively swapping notes with Ali the morning after, during double Geography lessons at school), and Back to the Future is 25 years old!! They're about to show an anniversary screening at the Ritzy! I wonder how it will have aged...

More prosaicly, last week I had my 8th anniversary in my job. I only remembered as I was walking out at the end of the day!

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So we've got Ed as new leader of the Labour party. Good. It seems only now that he's been elected - despite the small margin - that commentators are noticing what was clear to all: that he is suitably untainted by association with either Blair or Brown, unlike the other frontrunners. We all want a change. Still, there has been some witty commentary on the two Miliband brothers running against each other - 'Milidum and Milidee' being the best I think (courtesy of Jim Crace in the Guardian), though 'Milibandwagon' always amuses too.

Open City

This has been a good week for making the most of living in London.

It started with going to see/hear Raja Shehadeh at the Royal Festival Hall. K had managed to double-book himself, so I went along with Alison, and we had a great evening. He read from his new book, A Rift in Time, which grew out of family research he did into the life of his great-uncle, a political exile from the Ottoman government of Palestine, which is interwoven with his own contemporary story of struggle against the Israeli occupation. Then there was a Q&A led by the director of Profile Books, his publisher, then opened to the floor.

Perhaps unsurprisingly the questions were less about his new book than about his views on the current peace talks (pessimistic) and about the potential for challenging human rights abuses through legal means - something he has spent his whole working life doing, which he seems to feel others are now doing just as successfully, if that's really the word. His recent writings - especially Palestinian Walks - have been about trying to reclaim the land, and his approach to the crisis in Israel/Palestine is long-term and root-and-branch: that basically the settlements not only need to stop being built, but need to be torn up, borders got rid of, and the whole region turned back into something approaching the broader territory encompassed by the Ottoman occupation, shared and lived in equally by all races and religions. He doesn't seem to think that is far-fetched, but I can't see it happening for a very long time.

As Alison said, it was just so refreshing to hear someone so articulate talk in an impassioned but entirely fair and reasonable way about the situation in the Middle East, without giving in to emotion or point-scoring. He signed copies of his book - I got one for Paz and asked him to sign it for her in Arabic. That will be a nice Christmas present, and also a nice exchange for the book she just gave me, the fifth and last in Tariq Ali's Islam Quintet, personally signed by him when she went to hear him talk at the Edinburgh Festival last month.

Then there was a screening of a short film that a father-and-son team have made inspired by Shehadeh's Palestinian Walks - part interview with him, part 'dramatisation' of one of the most memorable scenes of that book, the encounter with a settler during a walk along a stream through the hills around Ramallah where he lives, and their discussion of whose land it is and which of them has the right to walk there. Very poignant.

But what made it so 'London' - if it isn't already great enough that we have access to this kind of event - was the fact that Michael Palin was in the audience, and Stephen Fry was 'performing' in the main hall just underneath us, and when we went down in the musical lift (the RFH choir sings scales at you, upwards or downwards depending on which way the lift is going! A sound installation by artist Martin Creed) there he was signing copies of his new autobiography, with a huge queue snaking round the main foyer of the Festival Hall. Alison and I casually walked past and stared at him for a bit, before heading our separate ways!

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Then this weekend it is Open House - when hundreds of the city's amazing buildings throw open their doors and let you poke around inside. We were a little more organised than usual this year - at least we managed to book ourselves onto a tour of the London Library, which is somewhere we've always been curious about (not being able to afford the £400-odd fee to become members and find out from the inside!).

They have just finished a renovation and expansion project, and members of the architects firm were there to talk to us about that, which was interesting, but actually I wanted to know more about the Library! Basically it was founded as a gentlemen's club for the intellectually lofty, from what I could make out. We couldn't go into the reading rooms which was a shame, though we peered voyeuristically into them from the corridor. There were hardly any "members" around - the librarian who was taking us round thought perhaps they were all out enjoying Open House. More likely they stayed away from all of us! The stacks were fantastic though - with cast iron grilles allowing you to look all the way up or all the way down through the floors (not good if you have vertigo!) and with book-shelf height carefully worked out to avoid the need for ladders. They have a very individual cataloguing system which is entirely alphabetical within its thematic sections - in the "Science & Misc." part of the stacks (excellent!) 'Fishing' was followed by 'Flagellation' which was followed by 'Flags'!

After a restorative coffee, we walked from St James's along to our next port of call, the 'Roman baths' underneath King's College on the Strand. No-one seems to know when these were built, though possibly they're Tudor. From the horrible busy-ness of the Strand, we passed into the deserted square mile of the City of London - it is always so strangely empty at the weekends, when the business people that populate it during the week seem to stay away. We wondered as well if everyone was off looking at the Pope, as London did seem strangely empty yesterday. We were heading for the Guildhall where we spent a few hours - K got excited by the 15th-century Great Hall and crypts, I got excited by the fact there is a Roman amphitheatre underneath it!! Which was only discovered in 1988!!


We also visited the 1:500 scale model of the City of London on display in the 'City Marketing Suite' behind the Guildhall, which shows you what the skyline of central London is going to look like once all the current and projected skyscraper projects are completed - intended-to-be-iconic buildings which already have names ('The Shard', 'The Pinnacle') which are going to completely dominate The Gherkin and ruin the view. But quite fascinating to see it visualised in this way. There was a good interactive and a rather charismatic architect there answering people's questions.

We dipped in and out of quite a lot of Wren churches, which you seem to fall over on every corner in that part of the city, K making use of his recent purchase, the Pevsner for London's City churches. It was revealing of quite how much rebuilding was done immediately after the Second World War, since this part of the city was pretty much destroyed by bombing in the Blitz. We checked historic photos of where we were walking on the Museum of London's iPhone app, Street Museum. They don't have many photos on there yet, but it's a really interesting way of looking at and thinking about where you happen to be standing. We were going to go to the Bank of England, but this was the queue when we got there:


It reminded one of the queues you see on the news sometimes when there are reports in, say, Argentina of the country's economy being on the brink of collapse. K wondered whether they all thought they were going to be given money when they got inside. Perhaps they all knew something we didn't. Still, it's amazing that this many people turn out to look at buildings on Open House!

We got the bus home to Brixton, and because we weren't quite ready to go home, we went to visit Lambeth Town Hall, which was also Open, and got a personal tour by Lib Dem councillor and former mayor, Daphne Marchant, which was an idiosyncratic experience. Though we had come to that meeting of the Planning Committee last year - at which our Residents' Association successfully challenged the Lambeth College development next door - it was interesting to see the Council Chamber and hear a bit more about what goes on behind the scenes.

After that we went to experience the beer garden of our local pub.

Time to join Facebook?

I have had some really nice letters, cards and emails from people, congratulating me on the publication of my book. However, one of the pieces of correspondence that awaited me on my return to work was a little more strange...


Written on a typewriter, from an Italian gentleman named Bruno Filipponio, this letter assured me that he "ardently desired" a copy of my book, and without explaining why he was not in a position to pay for it, requested me to send him a free copy, for which he offered me in exchange a book entitled Pironti: Osservazioni e chiose su vernacolo e dialetto (I can't find any trace of this book online, and it's not altogether clear what it is about - the Pironti apparently being a noble family from Ravello, with distinguished scions going back to the 13th century...). Though this book was "a treasured family heirloom", he was nevertheless willing to deprive himself of it in order to receive a copy of my book - would I agree to the exchange? It went on in yet more purple a fashion: "I know that I ask much and offer little, I know that I seem brash and boorish in my request....", and that if I was not able to "satisfy" him, could I reply quickly - even if briefly - "in order to avoid a long wait and a yet more bitter disappointment"...?

I put this aside for a while, having several hundred emails to deal with after what was effectively 6 weeks out of the office, then turned my thoughts to it again a few days ago. I wrote a quick reply, which Luisa kindly translated for me, confident - since Lisa's photo of my book on sale in Venice - that the book was available in Italy, and anyway why couldn't he order it online? It's not prohibitively expensive... (though the fact that the letter was written on a typewriter suggested the correspondent might not be au fait with the interweb...)

But something about the rather poetic way it was written made me wonder who this Bruno Filipponio was, so I Googled him, and quickly discovered that he had been an Olympic torchbearer for the Rome Olympics in 1960! But yet more curious - I came across a posting dated January of this year, on the blog of a Catalan Professor of Philology, Mariàngela Villalonga, who had also received a letter from Bruno Filipponio. And not only that, but the quotes she gave from the letter ("desidero ardentemente", "E' un caro ricordo di famiglia, ma sono pronto a privarmene pur di avere quanto ho chiesto; accetta lo scambio?") showed that it had been worded in the exact same way as my letter!

Like me, Mariàngela had gone online to find out who this chap was - and had found reproduced on the website of a Bolognese company the exact same letter as ours, just with the titles changed, of the book requested and the book offered in exchange; she also managed to find identical letters from our correspondent, received by Italian writers in 1977 and 1963! And that an Italian friend of hers receives a letter from him every time he publishes a new book!

Bruno Filipponio has been scrounging books off their authors for nearly 50 years!!! I wonder if he has ever bought a book in his life?? Indeed I presume that the books he offers in exchange are books previously sent to him by their authors, perhaps decades ago!

Mariàngela suggested that perhaps we should start a Facebook group for authors who have received letters from Bruno Filipponio! It is the first time I have actually been tempted to join Facebook!!

Snapshots

I have a fair bit to catch up on from the last month, but I thought I would write it around snapshots of what I have been doing and seeing in that time.

Owls in the British Library

Well, as I had been warned, the British Library was absolutely packed over the summer, and unless you got there by 10 or very soon after, you could pretty much kiss goodbye to the idea of getting a desk or finding an empty locker down in the cloakroom... People resorted to interesting lengths to reserve desks for themselves - I spotted this one in Rare Books as I was popping out for a coffee break: a little cloth owl, and a bashed-up old notebook. Later on in the day I remembered to look and see whose desk it was, and it was occupied by a very respectable-looking middle-aged Japanese lady - she was working away surrounded by piles of bona fide-looking rare books, with the toy owl still in the same position...

We got into a very cosy habit working with Juliette - my arrival time in the library was slightly erratic and she would always save me a desk. We moved around a little bit - she got a bit bored of looking at the mustachioed Italian who alternated his beige or grey cardigans on a weekly basis...

It was an immensely productive month - as Glaire commented in an email, I was obviously ready to do this. I sent off my book proposal and sample material, and got about halfway through revising the thesis. Some of it is not very polished, and I created work for myself in some ways by deciding to add a new chapter - by turning my object appendix into an object-focused chapter - but I feel very satisfied with how much I got done. Plus I felt extremely relaxed by the end of it, and not at all keen on going back to work - especially with the 'age of austerity' looming and no-one quite knowing what is going to be in store for museums and heritage institutions in the upcoming Comprehensive Spending Review...

With Nick at Blickling

We got away for the Bank Holiday weekend (typical late August weather, as you can see from the photo!!) and went to visit Nick in Norfolk. We had a rather crazy weekend staying with him at his mother and stepfather's, along with their 3 young grand-daughters (all under 5), the parents of their daughter-in-law, Nick's brother and his wife, and four labradors!! It was actually great fun, though we slipped away during the day, to take in the gorgeous Norfolk countryside and exercise our National Trust membership cards a little - not being drivers, we don't get to do that very much! K had a bunch of places that he wanted to visit for various research reasons, and it was great just spending time with Nick and catching up. We also got to be the first dinner guests at Suzie & Drake's wonderful thatched cottage, which they had only moved into 2 weeks before!


The South Bank had a Morris dancing festival - inspired by the sarcastic remarks apparently made by Sebastian Coe at the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Beijing: in reaction to the acrobatic Chinese dancing, he quipped that in London in 2012 we could instead look forward to the performance of 5000 Morris dancers. South Bank took him at his word, and pop artist David Owen created some memorable Morris dancing related images - one of them was (ha ha) Morissey, waving a bunch of wildflowers; another was the famous head from the bookcover of A Clockwork Orange, wearing a flower-festooned hat... But I liked this Star Wars Stormtrooper the best!

We actually didn't see any of the Morris dancing, but we did go to hear The Imagined Village playing at Queen Elizabeth Hall, which was excellent! The night before going back to work too, so I certainly was not sitting around at home moping over my 'back to school' feeling...


People have been emailing me to tell me they have spotted my book for sale in far-flung places! So far, the furthest-flung is the American University of Cairo bookshop - in Cairo! But this photo was taken by Lisa, "in an academic bookshop in a narrow street in Venice, about two weeks ago"... You can just spot it there in the middle on the top shelf!

Have you seen my book for sale anywhere exotic? I'd love to know!


I had one day back in the office last Monday, then went off again on a 3-day courier trip to Munich - installing a few pieces in an exhibition that is soon to open at the Haus der Kunst, commemorating 100 years since a major Islamic Art exhibition held in Munich in 1910. This one has a combination of 'historic' objects - which had been shown at the 1910 exhibition - together with contemporary works, which seems to be a current trend in exhibition curating in Germany these days. The exhibition in Berlin which I couriered in January took a similar approach. It was early days in the installation - I was the first courier - but I was impressed by the quality of the pieces. The Haus der Kunst is a rather ugly Fascist building - it was built in 1937, and seems ironically to be one of few buildings in Munich that actually survived the Allied bombings in 1945 - though they seem to have turned it into quite a thriving cultural and exhibition centre.

Munich was lovely - I had never been before - and it was really nice to catch up with Marion (hello! I know she reads this!). The Glockenspiel in the picture above is one of Munich's major tourist attractions - it is installed in the impressive belltower of the neo-Gothic Rathaus, though it dates from the early 20th century. It commemorates two events from Munich's history. Everyone gathers in the main square for 11 o'clock when it starts to play, and there is a great cry of approval when the Bavarian jouster knocks his Austrian opponent off his perch - lots of fun!

But what a busy week! I was giving a lecture yesterday - in a study afternoon on Seville - so as soon as I got back from Munich, I had to think about that. No wonder I feel like a zombie today!


And last, but by no means least, our calendar image for the month - K's grandfather, Robert, who died this time last year. This lovely photo of him was taken during the war, when he must have been in his 30s. He didn't change a bit all his life!