Before You Die: a Splendid Old Hotel by Andrew Mueller

Baron Hotel, Aleppo, Syria. In a more touristy town, this splendid old hotel would long since have been turned into a theme park. As it is, the Armenian family who run the Baron have hardly had reason to dust the place since T.E. Lawrence signed the bill now framed in the lounge, and the embroidered linen, bakelite telephones and creaking oak furniture are all just as he (and Yuri Gagarin, the Ceaucescus, King Faisal, Agatha Christie and General Montgomery, among others) would have left them. Andrew Mueller