Philip Mansel's Top Book Recommendations

Philip ManselSmyrna, or Izmir as it’s now called, is a large port city on the western coast of Anatolia. It was a natural export outlet for figs, carpets and all the other products of Anatolia and beyond. It was a huge commercial city from about 1650, full of Greek, Turkish and foreign merchants. Although there were terrible riots and massacres in 1770 and in 1821, on the whole the different communities got... (Source)

Norman StoneIt’s quite an old book – it has been reissued but it originally came out about 1973. It’s about the attempts of the Greeks to take over Anatolia in 1919. This was his doctorate, and it’s terribly well written. He’s been through all the British and the Greek documents, which can’t have been easy. (Source)

Philip ManselIt tells us about the huge variety of life there. This is a brilliant and highly intellectual portrait of a city between 1900 and 1947. It shows you how modern and cultivated it was, introduces you to the Greek and Jewish families that lived there and ultimately tells you why people started to leave. (Source)

Philip ManselCavafy is a typical Levantine. He came from Constantinople and Liverpool, where his family was in the cotton trade. So he had an international background and was very familiar with English literature. His family eventually settled in Alexandria. They suffered financial decline and he took a lowly job in an Egyptian ministry. His Arabic wasn’t actually very good – he was culturally and... (Source)

Philip ManselLaurence Grafftey-Smith was an Arabist, and a member of the British government’s Levant Consular Service from 1916 to 1947. He lived in Egypt, really knew it and obviously loved it. This book tells us of the inner workings of the British government, by somebody on the spot who could manipulate people and events more easily than Whitehall or in some cases the ambassador. This is a consular view,... (Source)

Philip ManselSome of the best introductions to the realities and mentalities of this area are by English and French travellers of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. That was before the Ottoman Empire began to weaken, so they had to respect its power and influence. Their observations are in many ways more refreshing than those writing in the 19th and 20th centuries, who often show western condescension towards... (Source)