From The Holy Mountain

IF you love travel as well as history, you will probably like a book I have just finished, From The Holy Mountain by William Dalrymple (Harper Press 2011)

Holy … A Journey In The Shadow Of Byzantium

Dalrymple journeyed extensively through the former Asian holdings of the Eastern Roman Empire, now more popularly known as Byzantium.
"A rich stew of history and travel narrative spiced with anecdote, opinion and bon mots," was a good summing up by Sara Wheeler in The Independent.
I bought it on a recent trip to Doncaster because I very much enjoyed Dalrymple's first travel-history book, In Xanadu: A Quest.
From The Holy Mountain contrasts Dalrymple's modern experiences with the region's life in the later years of the East Roman Empire, with a concentration on religious sites.
Be warned that the book is not, in my view, as compelling a read as In Xanadu, and does not live up to the numerous rave reviews it received - but then it would be hard to find any book that quite deserved as much praise as was given to From The Holy Mountain.