I find it puzzling that I can’t remember which of Britain’s cathedrals was the first I visited.  I was born and raised in London, so commonsense tells me it ought to have been St. Paul’s, Westminster Abbey, or Westminster Cathedral, yet it’s a visit to Wells that’s lodged in my mind as my oldest “cathedral memory”.  But what was I doing in Somerset as a child?  I have no idea, but since that time I’ve spent countless hours exploring many (but not all) of these magnificent buildings.  I’m not alone.  Cathedrals such as Salisbury, Canterbury, and York are among the most visited attractions in the country.  Hundreds of guides to them have been written and published over centuries.  Some celebrate the architecture, others the history and spirituality of these ancient monuments to faith, community, and power.

With his Ships of Heaven, Christopher Somerville has added to the pile a very personal reflection on what some of these cathedrals mean to him and an affectionate book that celebrates some of the people who built them and those who maintain them today. He selects seventeen of the hundred-plus cathedrals in the UK and offers a vivid account of how they were built and what it takes to ensure their survival.  It’s not a book for anyone looking for the minutiae of religious or architectural history but it’s certainly an accessible introduction for those who want to learn more about these buildings that seem to grip people’s imaginations, delight the senses, and inspire affection, faith, and wonder. Most of my favorites are here, with one exception (Winchester – a cathedral I grew to love in the years I lived nearby), plus a few I’ve never seen such as remote Kirkwall.  I can’t think of a better way of saying how much I enjoyed Somerville’s book than it made me want to visit all of them.

Cathedrals project permanence and solidity with their overwhelming weight of ancient stone and wood, but their true story is a more surprising one of vulnerability and change.  All were built on fragile and decaying foundations.  Time and weather have been unkind to the structures, as have men determined to rob, spoil, and vandalize them.  In truth Britain’s cathedrals are marvels of evolution and survival, living structures protected, nurtured, and shaped by generations of faithful custodians determined that the buildings and their treasures, like the faith they represent, should be handed on to those that come after.

I recently spent two weeks crisscrossing Morocco, a trip that took in the Atlantic coast, the High Atlas Mountains, and two of its extraordinary cities, Marrakesh and Fès. The journey began in Marrakesh where we rented a riad, a traditional Moroccan house built around an internal courtyard, in the heart of the city’s ancient kasbah. For three days and in temperatures often exceeding 100 degrees, we explored the Red City’s ancient streets, alleyways, and markets, barely touching the surface of the Medina’s complex labyrinth.  There’s so much to see, both ancient and modern – the Saadian Tombs from the 16th century, the lavishly decorated Bahia Palace, the gorgeous Jardin Majorelle lovingly restored by Yves St. Laurent and Pierre Bergé – none of which should be missed.  But, as is so often the case in other cities, the heart, soul, and pulse of Marrakesh is to be found in its alleys, squares, and markets.  Get lost in the souk’s maze of streets, wander at night among the food vendors and hawkers in Jemaa el-Fnaa, have coffee in one of the hundreds of rooftop terraces, buy spices and sweets, and bask in the unique atmosphere of ancient and modern Marrakesh, one of the world’s most beguiling cities.

Leaving behind Marrakesh’s madness, we headed south into the High Atlas Mountains. If you crave a little respite from the heat and crowds of Morocco’s cities, the Ouirgane valley is a good place to find it.  With its orchards of olives and almonds and tiny Berber villages, this is a quiet, sleepy and strangely timeless backwater with a gorgeous mountain backdrop.  There’s not much to do except relax amid stunning mountain scenery, but that’s the whole point.

The drive from Ouirgane to Fès took ten hours, including an unscheduled and unfriendly encounter (the first of several) with Morocco’s corrupt traffic police who like to fleece unwitting tourists. Driving in Morocco isn’t especially stressful but the constant attention from police officers looking for baksheesh is wearing. (Tip: ask them for an official receipt and permission to take a photo of their ID card.  It’s amazing how quickly their appetite for conversation disappears!). It was a relief to abandon the car for a few days outside the walls of the Medina (Fès el Bali), a vast warren of streets so narrow and ancient that all motorized vehicles are banned, making it (I’m told) the largest urban space in the world with no traffic.

Fès is quite simply magnificent.  I can’t think of a city (not even Rome, Venice, or Athens) with an ancient past that’s so immediate and so tangible.  Founded in the 9th century and extended to roughly its present size in the 12th and 13th centuries, the Medina feels timeless. Maybe it’s the absence of vehicles, the density of the ancient buildings, the persistence of old crafts like copper-beating and weaving – the result is unique in my experience; a thriving, working city with such a clear and visible thread to more than a thousand years of history.  Little wonder it was designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage site. Because the Medina is so difficult to navigate, I did something I almost never do and hired a personal guide to help us find and explain its highlights.  I’m glad I did and would recommend it to anyone planning a trip.  The treasures of Fès are too numerous to list here, but it’s important to mention the Al-Attarine and Bou Inania madrassas and the leather tanneries.  As with Marrakesh, it’s important not to rush Fès and to allow lots of time to wander the streets, and savor the markets and coffee shops.  Its food scene is also impressive.  I celebrated my birthday in Nur, an outstanding restaurant owned and run by Najat Kaanache who has worked with some of the world’s greatest chefs.  It was fun to be with her in her kitchen after dinner and to hear about the challenges of running a fine dining restaurant in a Medina where all supplies have to be delivered by handcart or donkey! I was sad to leave Fès and the beautiful riad we rented in the heart of the Medina, but it was time to head to Essaouira on Morocco’s windy Atlantic coast for yet another perspective on this wonderful country.

There’s something about ocean towns. Maybe because they look out to empty expanses and distant places or because they encourage people to wind down a little, there’s that indefinable mood, that sense of a place exhaling and relaxing.  Essaouira is famous for its blustery beaches, its quaint fishing port, and its walled Medina, and has attracted surfers, hippies, and musicians (like Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa) for decades.  It’s a chilled-out, pressure-free place with a small souk and a plentiful supply of bars and restaurants.  Check out Caravane Café for dinner in its elegant courtyard, take tea at L’Heure Bleue Palais, and stroll around the fish market at sunset.  The locals say if you stay a few days, you may never want to leave.  True for Essaouira and true for Morocco.

The Comforts of Home is the ninth installment in Susan Hill’s very successful series of Simon Serrailler mysteries.  By now the pattern is well-established. Each novel seeks to weave a tapestry using two threads: the increasingly complicated personal life of Serrailler and one or more crimes under investigation. In The Comforts of Home the domestic thread is the dominant one and Hill looks as assured and adept as she always does writing about Serrailler’s complicated relationships with his sister, father, and other family members.  The “crimes”, such as they are, feel cursory and halfhearted here, as if Hill’s normally skillful plotting has deserted her temporarily.  A tenth installment is due later in the year, so it’ll be interesting to see what balance she strikes in the next novel.

All in all, this isn’t one of the strongest books in the series.  Having said that, reading a new novel from Susan Hill, this one included, feels like pulling on a favorite sweater: warming, comforting, familiar and reassuring.

Political life has become so debased in recent years, with elected leaders snuggling up with dictators and totalitarian regimes interfering in democratic elections, that it must be difficult for thriller writers to come up with plots more preposterous than real life.  The premise of Tom Bradby’s latest novel is that the UK’s Foreign Secretary and about-to-be Prime Minister is a Russian spy.  I doubt anyone would find such an idea far-fetched in today’s world.  Kate Henderson, head of MI6’s Russia desk, has to find the truth while watching her back in an organization in which no one is above suspicion.

Tom Bradby is a well-known journalist and news anchor in the UK.  I had no idea he was also a novelist until I read a glowing review of Secret Service in the Financial Times.  I enjoyed reading it, but it’s no genre masterpiece.  It’s a simple enough tale, with sharply drawn characters, and enough pace and tension to make it a perfect, undemanding summer read.

Rachel Cusk’s three connected novels – Outline (2015), Transit (2017), and Kudos (2018) – were my summer vacation reading this year.  I had read Outline when it was first published but decided to re-read it to get a proper grasp of the entire trilogy.  The novels have been acclaimed widely and I was keen to understand why because my first experience of reading Outline hadn’t been especially enthralling at the time.

The novels have very little in the way of a conventional plot. They all feature a single narrator, a published writer called Faye.  We don’t learn much about Faye’s basic biography.  We know she’s divorced, has children, and has moved back to London from the countryside.  We know she teaches creative writing and attends literary conferences. In all three novels we follow her through a series of apparently disconnected encounters and conversations: with students, fellow writers, a festival organizer, a former boyfriend, a builder renovating her apartment, and so on.  Our picture of Faye grows in increments through these encounters.

Although I’m very glad to have read all three novels and was very impressed by them, they probably weren’t ideal vacation reading (at least for me). These are demanding, sinewy books; cerebral, chilly, and difficult to penetrate. Cusk has serious ambitions for these novels, nothing less than how to live today and how to interact with others. Something necessarily difficult and complicated is at work here, something that demands effort, persistence, and patience – much like life itself.

I had been coveting the monumental two-volume review of Freud’s work ever since Phaidon published it in 2018, but with a price tag of $500 I was unlikely to ever give in to the craving.  I must have dropped a few heavy hints along the way because these beautiful books showed up on my birthday this month.  I can’t imagine a more perfect gift.  With more than 600 pages and nearly 500 illustrations, this is a wonderful piece of publishing and an entirely fitting tribute to one of the greatest painters who ever lived.

The two volumes are arranged chronologically and begin with an insightful essay by Martin Gayford (who previously wrote a captivating account of sitting for a portrait by Freud).  The illustrations are simply sumptuous.  These are books to pore over, to return to time and time again, and to savor.

I know very little about Arabic literature and don’t recall ever having read anything by a Syrian novelist before starting Khaled Khalifa’s most recently published book.  Shame on me.

The dying wish of Abdel Latif is that he should be buried next to his sister in their native village of Anabiya. What would have been a simple enough request at any other time becomes in Syria’s civil war a terrible three-day odyssey for his children as they transport his remains from Damascus to the family burial site.  In a landscape shattered by years of violence, the siblings pick their way through one checkpoint after another, bribing or negotiating with soldiers and militia men loyal to the regime or rebel groups, and racing against time before the corpse begins to decay.

Death is Hard Work is a meditation on loss. Lost lives, lost loves, lost freedoms. Don’t read it to learn about what happened in Syria. Read it to learn about regret, disappointment, and loyalty.

What has happened in recent years in Syria will stand as one of the greatest humanitarian disasters of our era, an episode of appalling brutality and cruelty, and an indictment of those Western governments that did little or nothing to stop it.  Khaled Khalifa refused to leave the hell that is Syria today, staying to be a witness to what happened in his country, and he has given us an important, beautiful, and sometimes darkly comic chronicle of what really happens in a time when evil prospers.

I almost never abandon novels before finishing them. I can’t remember the last time I did. It isn’t a matter of stubbornness.  I tend to choose books that have been recommended by friends or by reviewers and that generally has the effect of weeding out things I’m likely to end up hating. But then I bought Julie Orringer’s latest novel, The Flight Portfolio.

The signs were so positive.  A glowing review in The New York Times and a recommendation from a friend who knows me well and whose taste in novels I trust.  So, why did I dislike The Flight Portfolio so much, to the extent that I had to abandon it because every day felt like a miserable slog? Three reasons. First, the writing is often clunky, clichéd, and over-elaborate.  The author simply can’t resist extraneous adjectives and adverbs and inevitably chooses the most obvious ones. Second, the novel is far too long.  Cutting by a third would have improved it. Third, such a promising plot (the true-life extraction from Occupied France of artists, writers, and intellectuals threatened by the Nazis) was almost suffocated by a silly, romantic sub-plot. What do these mistakes have in common? A bugbear of mine: insufficient editing.  Far too many literary novels in my experience are being published without any obvious editing (or with an obvious lack of editing). The Flight Portfolio could have been so much better with judicious, expert editing.  Without it, it ended up bland, uninspiring, and slightly pretentious.

Kate Atkinson writes the kind of novels you gulp down greedily and quickly.  That’s especially true of her Jackson Brodie series, in which Big Sky is the fifth and most recent installment.  It’s a novel that zips along quickly, thanks to Atkinson’s wry, easy, slightly conversational style. And it’s precisely that style that’s the problem here.  Big Sky is about corruption in high places and more specifically about human trafficking and child abuse. Few subjects are as serious as that, yet Atkinson’s tone throughout is unwaveringly light and jocular.  It seemed hugely inappropriate and it spoiled completely my enjoyment of a novel by a writer I usually admire very much. I can only assume her intention was to make the horror of abuse even more horrific by setting it in a quiet seaside town and populating it with slightly clownish characters.  If so, her plan didn’t work.  The effect (on me in any case) was to trivialize an enterprise that destroys everything it touches and that’s inexcusable.

The term safari derives from the Kiswahili word for journey or expedition.  In recent years “going on safari” has become a slightly pretentious way of talking about something that for most tourists means little more than staring at and photographing wild animals from the comfort of an air-conditioned 4×4 or minivan. Safari is big business and a key money spinner for countries such as Kenya, Tanzania, Botswana, and South Africa.  Go in high season to the Serengeti and the Okavango Delta and you’ll see traffic jams as well as wildlife. Like so many forms of mass tourism, safari is something of a mixed blessing. On the one hand its economic importance has led governments to clamp down on poachers and that’s helped protect some endangered species. On the other side, hundreds of thousands of visitors in tens of thousands of vehicles have inflicted significant damage on wild habitats.

The Masaai Mara is one of the most popular safari destinations.  A thousand square miles of savannah grasslands dotted with acacia trees and with blue-tinted mountains on the horizon, it’s home to one of the Earth’s richest concentrations of wildlife. It’s a place of singular, wild beauty and environmental significance, a place that inspires and intimidates.  I went a few times in the mid-1980s when tourism in Kenya was still relatively undeveloped, setting up camp with a few friends and guided and protected by local Maasai tribesmen for a little money.  It’s a very different place today.  Dozens of lodges give accommodation to large numbers of visitors, especially in the high season, and scores of vehicles shoot around its roads and tracks looking for elephants, lions, leopards, rhinos and giraffes.  The experience can feel more than a little preposterous.  And yet there’s real magic to be found.  On a recent visit in the low season, I watched a hunting party of five cheetahs stalking their early morning prey, walked along the bank of the Mara river and saw crocodiles and hippos feasting on the carcasses of wildebeests who had drowned during the recent migration from Tanzania, and sat under an acacia tree watched by curious baboons.  And throughout those precious few days I felt so privileged to be in a place of such dramatic, extravagant beauty and to get close to so many wonderful creatures.

Perhaps I did a little good in those days. Contributing a little to an impoverished economy and adding myself to the crowd of visitors that reminds the Kenyan government that these precious places and animals need protection and conservation. But maybe I did a little damage also. Damage to those vulnerable habitats and damage with my carbon footprint.  Something to think about as I remember time spent in one of the most beautiful places in the world