Inspiring Travel Writing from Barnaby Rogerson
Barnaby Rogerson was conceived upon a yacht and was born in Dunfermline. Eighteen years later he got a lift on a Naval destroyer leaving Gibraltar and returned to Fife as a history student at St Andrews.
After two jobs in publishing he worked for the Afghanistan Support Committee, as a tutor on a Greek island, as a barman and in the restoration of grottoes and the construction of garden temples. In the last ten years he has been a travel writer specializing in North Africa and the lands of the old Ottoman Empire. He also takes lecture tours and with Rose Baring set up Eland Books in 2000 which re-prints classic travel books.
After two jobs in publishing he worked for the Afghanistan Support Committee, as a tutor on a Greek island, as a barman and in the restoration of grottoes and the construction of garden temples. In the last ten years he has been a travel writer specializing in North Africa and the lands of the old Ottoman Empire. He also takes lecture tours and with Rose Baring set up Eland Books in 2000 which re-prints classic travel books.
Articles by Barnaby Rogerson
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Before You Die: To Dinner by Troika
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Barnaby Rogerson
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France
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Provence
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Before I die, I want to be half drunk on vodka and wrapped up in a fur blanket and driven on a troika sledge that is covered with tinkling bells through thick snowfields, past woods in order to arrive at a dinner held on a frozen lake.
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Before You Die: Ancient Pavilions
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Barnaby Rogerson
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Tibet
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other areas of Tibet
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Himalayas
Before I die, I want to be entertained for two days in an old palace in the Himalayas whose pavilions are covered in ancient carpets. I will not be able to remember much apart from the excellence of the fruit and the boy-dancers dressed like women...
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Before You Die: Parrots and Rum
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Barnaby Rogerson
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Brazil
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The Amazon Jungle
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Manaus
Before I die, I want to float for a week down a river in South America in a small but well-crewed boat, looking at parrots as I doze on a hammock sipping rum cocktails. Barnaby Rogerson
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Painters in North Africa
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Barnaby Rogerson
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Tunisia
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Tunis and the North Coast
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Tunis
Travelling through North Africa you do not need paintings. The streets are so triumphantly full of life, the markets so full of colour and the land so filled with light that you come indoors for a visual rest not an arresting statement. On domestic...
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Have You Met the Colonel?
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Barnaby Rogerson
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Libya
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Tripoli Region
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Tripoli
Libya creates a knee jerk response in conversation. "Have you met Colonel Qaddafi?" is followed by "is it safe?" After six years taking lecture tours round its unforgettable classical ruins, all I can say is it gets more efficient every year....
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Shopping and Sleeping in Marrakech
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Barnaby Rogerson
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Morocco
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Marrakech Region
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Marrakech
Just before Christmas I needed to update my guidebook to Morocco. The basic spade work had been done, a near inaccessible 60km-long Saharan beach had been swum at, an 11th century mountain-top fortress had been walked to and the remains of a 16th-...
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Agadez and the Air Mountains
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Barnaby Rogerson
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Niger
Travelling to the Sahara is usually a gruelling experience involving much dust, discomfort and private self-examination. It is not to be considered by the faint-hearted, even Ibn Battouta (who had travelled the seven seas and had taken tea with...
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Osama’s T-shirt and the Prophet’s Mantle
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Barnaby Rogerson
I saw the face of Osama bin Laden just before Christmas. I was wandering through the market-day crowds of a remote African town on the edge of the Sahara, looking for a café. The place was poor beyond the conceptions of a privileged 21st-...
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A Library on Islam
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Barnaby Rogerson
In moments of cold fury, my first girlfriend would predict a career for me as a Prep School librarian. I pretended great offence at the time though I was secretly charmed by the idea. Years later I was driven almost to the point of tears when a...
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The Tissa Horse Festival
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Barnaby Rogerson
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Morocco
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Northern Morocco
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Tissa
In front of a tent at Tissa, with a scalding glass of mint tea thrust into my hands, I came as close to the actual experience of battle as I ever wish to go. A dozen horseman galloped pell-mell to within a few yards of where I was sitting,...