Moby-Dick draws readers into it. And many of its more creative readers have sought to capture its grandeur on film and stage. From the first film in 1926 to the present, these attempts have taken liberties with the novel, sometimes for good, sometimes for ill. But that is the challenge that Moby-Dick offers its readers, a text that is deep and wide, an ocean of issues and concerns that we must all, in some fashion, navigate.

• The Sea Beast (1926 film)

   

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  Forget about the whale vanquishing Ahab. In this silent film, John Barrymore stars as Ahab. Although he is dismasted, he kills the whale and an evil half-brother and gets the girl.

• Moby Dick—Rehearsed (1955 play)

   

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  Orson Welles, who might have made a superior Ahab, wrote this two-act play about an acting troupe told they are going to perform Moby Dick. Welles had hoped to make this into a film but the results were disappointing. This play within a play, however, has some moments that Melville would have appreciated.

• Moby Dick (1956 film)

   

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  Directed by John Huston, co-written by Huston and Ray Bradbury, and starring Gregory Peck as Ahab. Although Peck hardly sizzled with Ahab’s philosophical gravitas, the film did challenge polite 1950s codes about racial relations and hinted at blasphemy. And the final scene, with Ahab forever joined to the White Whale is powerful.

• Hakugei: Legend of the Moby Dick (1997-1999 Japanese animated tv series)

   

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  Ahab commands a spaceship against Moby-Dick, a beast that is terrorizing a planet. Lucky Luck, like Ishmael, signs on for duty, finding perhaps more than he had anticipated.

• Moby Dick (1998 tv mini-series)

   

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  Famous as Captain Picard on Star-Trek, Stewart showed his acting chops as Ahab in this immensely popular made for television film. Ahab’s obsession, said Stewart, is what rendered him a tragic figure. Because he is cognizant of his obsession, he is a man in agony. And that is how Stewart sort to portray Ahab.

• Songs and Stories from Moby-Dick (1999 performance art)

   

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  Performance and techno-artist Anderson had been drawn to Moby-Dick in high school. She realized her vision of the saga with an electric violin and a “talking stick” that resembled nothing so much as a harpoon.

• Moby-Dick: Then and Now (2007 play)

   

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  This is a clever staging of the novel by Ricardo Pitts-Wiley. Except this time around, the protagonists are kids from the ghetto and their quarry is the white whale of cocaine.

• 2010: Moby Dick (2010 film)

   

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  Here Moby has destroyed a submarine and dismasted its Captain, named Ahab. Ahab wants revenge. Ishmael is played by Renee O’Connor (formerly sidekick to Xenia, the Warrior Woman). Her name in the film is Michelle Herman (M.H. - get it? Herman Melville, in reverse).

• Moby-Dick (2010 Dallas Opera)

   

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  Ahab is an operatic figure, if ever there was one. Jake Heggie wrote the score, with Gene Sheer doing the libretto. Among the challenges were whittling down the book into something manageable for the stage. Spoiler alert: the opera does not open with the famous first line of the novel. But that line is heard – eventually. Photo by Karen Almond/Dallas Opera.

• Moby-Dick Big Read (2012 radio series)

   

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  The daily online release of chapters from Moby-Dick, recorded by a host of international and national celebrities.

George Cotkin is Professor of History at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and author of the forthcoming book, Dive Deeper: Journeys with Moby-Dick.

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To mark the anniversary of a now little-remembered national catastrophe – the nineteenth-century fire which obliterated the UK Houses of Parliament – Oxford University Press and author Caroline Shenton will reconstruct the events of that fateful day and night in a real-time Twitter campaign. Here’s the story so far. Join us tomorrow, 16 October 2012!

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We’re delighted to announce that the Oxford University Press Museum, based at OUP’s Oxford publishing office, reopens today following extensive refurbishment. Archivist Martin Maw celebrates the occasion by taking a look at the historic links between OUP and Jericho, the local area.

By Martin Maw

Almost 200 years ago, Oxford University Press relocated its printing house to the area known as Jericho in Oxford. The neighbourhood’s history has been closely connected to the Press ever since. In the 19^th century its streets were home to hundreds who worked at Oxford’s printing house and bindery, and the close family ties in the area formed what was almost a village inside the growing city.

The Press is much older than Jericho itself; Oxford University has been involved with the book trade since the 15^th century. Earlier print shops were set up in Broad Street in the centre of Oxford, at the Sheldonian Theatre and the Clarendon Building. When these became too small for its business, building work began in Jericho in the 1820s at what is today Walton Street. Construction was overseen by two architects: Daniel Robertson (who allegedly worked best after two bottles of sherry, and had to be transported around the Press site in a wheelbarrow) and Edward Blore. The new printing house was finished in 1830, and looked out to the north over the orchards and meadows that flanked the canal.

This landscape soon changed, as the neighbourhood began to mushroom around the Press. Never a planned community, Jericho quickly became a nest of houses and pubs with a bad reputation. The area already had a deprived air about it; Walton Street was home to the Victorian workhouse, on a plot of land known as Rats and Mice Hill.  The Printer to the University, Thomas Combe (1796-1872), felt the area needed a moral makeover.

• THE PRESS BUILDING IN JERICHO, 19TH CENTURY

   

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• THOMAS COMBE AND STAFF, C.1870

   

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• THE PRESS QUADRANGLE, EARLY 20TH CENTURY

   

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• INSIDE THE PRINT SHOP, EARLY 20TH CENTURY

   

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• ST BARNABAS' CHURCH IN JERICHO, AS SEEN FROM OUP, 1955

   

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• OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS MUSEUM TODAY

   

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Thankfully, Combe was in a financial position to accomplish it. Appointed in 1838, he subsequently earned a fortune through the University’s paper mill at nearby Wolvercote. Without any immediate family but instilled with a devout sense of charity, he and his wife Martha spent much of their money on good works. Inside OUP, Combe funded night schools and social groups, such as a brass band, and became a patron of the arts. He and Martha were fond of the Pre-Raphaelite painters, and bought many early works by Rossetti, Millais, and Holman Hunt, including The Light of the World, which they displayed at their home in the main Press quadrangle.

Outside OUP, Combe was a churchwarden and he felt a similar Christian beacon should be shone across the road in Jericho. As a result, Combe paid for the endowment of St. Barnabas. It was completed in 1869, and must surely have exceeded all his expectations. Despite controversy over its ‘high’ Anglican air, ‘Barny’s’ (as it became known) emerged as a homely focus for the community, attracting a regular congregation from the surrounding streets and from members of the University. Combe’s own funeral took place there, and visitors can still see the carving of his favourite dog, Jesse, on the base of one church pillar.

This carving reflects the common practice of men at the Press to bring a dog or a fishing rod into the print shop, ready for the end of the working day. In Combes’ time, Jericho was semi-rural, and after work the men would head for the fields or the canal around Port Meadow, as families still relied on whatever could be locally caught or grown. This feature of life was drawn into the Press as well. Much of Port Meadow was given over to agriculture during the First World War, and by the 1920s an annual Gardening Association was active at the Press, with employees from Jericho exhibiting their prize produce at a summer fête that included music, skittles, and demonstrations by the Press’s own fire brigade.

The First World War, however, left terrible scars on the Jericho community. More than 300 men entered the forces from the Press. As the memorial in the main quadrangle of OUP records, 45 of these died. Many more returned wounded or traumatised, and few talked of their experiences. The impact on families and friends in Jericho must have been devastating. At the Armistice, gas lamps across the main gate of OUP spelt out “God Save the King” but it was a bittersweet moment of glory. The Press and Jericho had seemed dependably changeless. Now both were exposed as fragile, and damaged by events.

Perhaps as a result, Press employees began to take a keen interest in preserving their history. A staff magazine, The Clarendonian, first appeared in 1919, and featured many articles on the Combes, Jericho, social activities, and local families who had been involved with the Press for generations. Their close association proved even more valuable during the Second World War. The Press became essential to the war effort, producing naval code books in conditions of utmost secrecy. Its walled-off quadrangle proved ideal for the work. Likewise, the tight Jericho family structure that filled the printing house added to the security involved: everybody knew everybody else, and could keep an eye on them.

Despite local ups and downs, that community survived and flourished late into the 20^th century. It was only interrupted by the end of book printing at the Press in 1989. Computerization and harsh markets conditions finished Oxford’s grand, in-house printing tradition. Gradually, the neighbourhood around the Press changed, and ceased to house its employees. Nevertheless, the ties between OUP and Jericho stand as an extraordinary example of a unique institution depending on a neighbourhood with an equally unique character.

Martin Maw is an Archivist at Oxford University Press. The Archive Department also manages the Press Museum at OUP in Oxford. Read his previous blog post: “Sir Robert Dudley, midwife of Oxford University Press.”

OUP welcomes visitors to its museum, which traces the history of Oxford University’s involvement in printing and publishing from the 15th century to the present day. The OUP museum has recently undergone a complete refurbishment, incorporating new cases, panels, and activity stations. Anyone wishing to visit the museum must book a timeslot in advance. For more information visit the OUP Archives website.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has granted free access for a limited time to Thomas Combe’s biography.

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We at OUP are no strangers to the changes in publishing and all the different forms a ‘book’ can take. One of our recent medical titles has been adapted as an iPad application (or ‘app’) — Cardiac Imaging Cases: Cases in Radiology for iPad — so we asked the co-author what it’s like to practice and learn medicine in this new form.

By Charles White

For those of us who have been in the radiology business for a while, technology is always changing things for the better. Innovations such as PET scanning, multidetector CT, PACS, and voice recognition software have changed the way we practice.

Education has also been favorable affected. Teaching using PACS is far easier than using sheets of CT film as we once did. Even the way we learn from books is different. Previously this was done in a linear sequential fashion.


• Cardiac Imaging Cases

   

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• Home

   

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• Case 37

   

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• Index

   

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• Case 44: Coronary Artery Calcification

   

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• Photograph and Illustration

   

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Now, apps focused on radiology allow us to personalize our learning in a manner that best suits us. We can review an area comprehensively or quickly jump to a particular topic that is of interest at the moment, perhaps because we have encountered it in our daily work. We can evaluate ourselves using unknown cases. Apps allow us to link to literature for further detail and consult with others using social media. It permits real time display and discussion of difficult or interesting cases with colleagues at remote sites.

This capability has transformed our previously linear approach to practice and learning to a truly multidimensional strategy.

Charles White is Professor of Radiology and Medicine, Chief of Thoracic Radiology, Department of Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, University of Maryland Medical Center, Baltimore, Maryland. Joseph Chen is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, University of Maryland Medical Center, Baltimore, Maryland. Together, they are the authors of Cardiac Imaging Cases, on which the Cardiac Imaging Cases: Cases in Radiology for iPad application is based. Learn more about the Cardiac Imaging Cases iPad application on this dedicated microsite. Marteau is a digital strategy agency specializing in mobile and emerging platforms.

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On this day in 1804, two Virginian explorers set out on a journey west in what would become the legendary Lewis and Clark Expedition. And in their footsteps, we can follow America’s expansion west.

Back in 1800 before the epic trip, the US population was 5.3 million. Ten years later, it increased to 7.2 million — a 36 percent increase. As shown in the following maps, this growth continued, and started moving west, adding territories and states along the way.

• 1800

   

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  Four years before Lewis and Clark begin their journey. US Census Data. Source: Social Explorer.

• 1810

   

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  Six years after Lewis and Clark complete their journey. US Census Data. Source: Social Explorer.

• 1820

   

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  US Census Data. Source: Social Explorer.

• 1830

   

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  US Census Data. Source: Social Explorer.

• 1840

   

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  US Census Data. Source: Social Explorer.

• 1850

   

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  US Census Data. Source: Social Explorer.

• 1860

   

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  US Census Data. Source: Social Explorer.

• 1870

   

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  US Census Data. Source: Social Explorer.

• 1880

   

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  US Census Data. Source: Social Explorer.

• 1890

   

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  US Census Data. Source: Social Explorer.

• 1900

   

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  US Census Data. Source: Social Explorer.

• 1910

   

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  US Census Data. Source: Social Explorer.

The population of the Northeast region — once the focal point of the US — shrank by 1.1 percent from 2000 to 2010. The Midwest also saw a decline in population (1.2 percent). Meanwhile, the South and the West grew, 1.5 percent and 0.8 percent respectively.

Sydney Beveridge is the Media and Content Editor for Social Explorer, where she works on the blog, curriculum materials, how-to-videos, social media outreach, presentations and strategic planning. She is a graduate of Swarthmore College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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There / was a star danced and under that was I born.
Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, Act II, sc.i

I am writing this on Shakespeare’s birthday, April 23rd, and it strikes me how apposite are Beatrice’s words in Much Ado to the birth, on 10 September 1896, of Adele Marie Austerlitz — later Adele Astaire — a personality and a performer of infinite, inextinguishable and irresistible mirth. In London in the 1920s, she was depicted as a misplaced Shakespearean sprite who “should be dancing by glow-worm light under entranced trees on a midsummer eve with a rout of elves, after drinking rose-dew.”

The name Astaire has become synonymous with the most sublime expression of the Terpsichorean art and a metaphor for ‘effortless’ perfection in any field of endeavour. (I have heard it said, for instance, that Roger Federer is the ‘Astaire of tennis’.) The Astaire being invoked on such occasions is, of course, Fred, creator of scores of imaginative dance masterpieces on film. But the name Astaire was not always celebrated in the singular. Adele was Fred’s elder sister and his first dancing partner. Throughout their twenty-five-year theatrical career, she was considered the more naturally gifted and the greater star. There is no film record of their work together and Adele’s retirement from the stage almost immediately preceded Fred’s first tentative foray into Hollywood. As a consequence, Adele, one of the original pop icons of the twentieth century, has not achieved the lasting universal fame of her brother.

Is it then, as some may surmise, a forlorn, even futile quest to try to penetrate the essence of a performer, especially a dancer whose artistry was never captured on film — one said to have possessed the combustive, elusive properties of a lilac flame? The performance historian should not be easily deterred by the apparent or actual impossibility of the task. In Adele’s case there is no shortage of first-hand accounts of her peculiar alchemy and, as her most ardent admirers included some of the greatest literary talents of the twentieth century, these accounts are nothing if not evocative and brimming with insight and immediacy. Moreover, they emanate from the power of live theatre to leave a deep impression on the collective and individual memory. The point is not even how accurately they describe Adele’s dancing technique and style but, rather, how revealing they are of a genuine phenomenon in the cultural imagination of the period. There is no guarantee that a filmed live performance could communicate the Astaire magic, which was intimately entwined in the here and now, or that such footage would not prove anti-climactic. Perhaps it’s better to let our imaginations feast on the vivid eyewitness accounts of those who breathed the selfsame air as Fred and Adele inside theatres and on nights long gone.


• Adele Astaire in Funny Face

   

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• Adele the Clown

   

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• Fred and Adele

   

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• Still dancing

   

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• The Astaires

   

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Adele was a natural dancer who could be graceful and clownish at the same time, but what those who saw her on stage describe is not so much her dancing genius as the sheer, triumphant force of personality. George Jean Nathan defined her presence as “a dozen Florestan cocktails filtered through silk” and said she had “the air of a Peck’s Bad Girl being blown hither and thither by a hundred powerful electric fans … a figure come out of Degas to a galloping ragtime tune.” But perhaps the critic in 1919 who used the analogy of a lilac flame put it best — a lilac flame burns vigorously from the life-giving elements of potassium and oxygen.

The date chosen for International Dance Day, April 29th, commemorates the birthday of Jean-George Noverre (1727-1810), the creator of modern ballet. In his Letters on Dancing, Noverre wrote:

Dancing is possessed of all the advantages of a beautiful language, yet it is not sufficient to know the alphabet alone. But when a man of genius arranges the letters to form words and connects the words to form sentences, it will cease to be dumb; it will speak with both strength and energy; and then ballets will share with the best plays the merits of affecting and moving.

One of the two main qualities that distinguished Adele and Fred’s dancing was its eloquence and narrative power. When they made their London debut in Stop Flirting in 1923, Francis Birrell, writing in the Nation and Athenaeum, said they “uttered the least important word with every inch of their bodies, never being content with the employment of the essential extremities – tongue, hand, or foot.” Of Fred, the Birmingham Post reported, “he has not only winged heels, but winged arms and winged back” and, of Adele, “hers is not only the poetry of motion but its wit, its malice, its humour.” The Birmingham Dispatch provided an account of the mesmeric, transporting quality of the siblings’ richly nuanced somatic vocabulary: “Their humour lies in gesture, their attraction in the power to set us dancing with them, to send us in spirit, twirling and striding and frolicking in glorious abandon.” Which brings us to their other main distinguishing quality – delight; a warmth and openness and something intrinsically joyful and forward-looking. The Astaires in fact exemplified F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fundamentally romantic if elegiac conception of America as “a willingness of the heart.”

The best dancing tells us a story, illuminates a character or psyche, enables us to see the inner workings of music in motion, and above all, touches and exhilarates us at a profoundly human, elemental level — even as its exponents perform physical feats which seem preternatural or indeed divinely inspired. As I began, so I end with the Bard. Laurence Olivier described Shakespeare as “the nearest thing in incarnation to the eye of God.” Perhaps it could be said that the likes of the Astaires, of whom one London critic observed “they almost ceased to be human beings to become, as it were, translated into denizens of an Elizabethan forest,” are the nearest thing in incarnation to the music and laughter of God – the literal embodiment of a deep, redemptive joyfulness.

Born in Australia and educated at Sydney and Oxford Universities, Kathleen Riley is a classical scholar and modern theater historian. At Oxford in 2008 she convened the first international conference on the art and legacy of Fred Astaire. She is the author of the new book The Astaires: Fred & Adele.

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• The kids want in

   

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  Bandstand producer Tony Mammarella marshalls the show's daily queue, circa 1955-56. Courtesy of Agnes Mammarella.

• The Producer and the Cub

   

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  Bob Horn displays little enthusiasm for holding a live lion cub, but Tony Mammarella seems to approve. Courtesy of Agnes Mammarella.

• Controversy strikes

   

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  Bandstand host Bob Horn was arrested while driving drunk in 1956, at a time when the Philadelphia Inquirer, owned by the same company that owned Bandstand, conducted a campaign against drunk driving. The rival Bulletin gleefully played up Horn's arrest. Courtesy of John Jackson.

• A new host is needed

   

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  Bandstand host Bob Horn was brought down by a series of highly publicized transgressions. Courtesy of John Jackson.

• Lee Andrews and the Hearts

   

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  In the late 1950s American bandstand helped change the face of rock 'n' roll. The "old" represented by West Philadelphia's Lee Andrews (center) and the Hearts gave way to the "new" represented by Danny and the Juniors (next slide), who hailed from the same neighborhood as the Hearts, not far from American Bandstand. Courtesy of John Jackson.

• Danny and the Juniors

   

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  In the late 1950s American bandstand helped change the face of rock 'n' roll. The "old" represented by West Philadelphia's Lee Andrews and the Hearts (previous slide) gave way to the "new" represented by Danny and the Juniors, who hailed from the same neighborhood as the Hearts, not far from American Bandstand. Courtesy of John Jackson.

• A Boy of the Bandstand

   

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  Frankie Avalon with manager Bob Marcucci. Courtesy of Robert Marcucci.

• Fabian

   

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  Fabian (Forte) the reluctant teen idol discovered on his South Philadelphia row house stoop by Bob Marcucci. "But he's not a singer," protested Marcucci's partner Peter DeAngelis. "Does it really matter in this day and age?" replied Marcucci. Courtesy of Whirlin' Disc Records, Farmingdale, NY.

• Bobby Rydell

   

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  South Philadelphia's Bobby Rydell, who, along with Frankie Avalon and Fabian, became one of the "boys of the Bandstand." Courtesy of Whirlin' Disc Records, Farmingdale, NY.

• WFIL-TV

   

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  WFIL-TV's 46th and Market Street studios in the 1990s. The station (now WPVI) moved to a modern broadcasting complex on the northwestern outskirts of the city in 1963. Today the old building is used for storage by a local cable TV outlet. Courtesy of John Jackson.

• Clark and Mammarella

   

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  Dick Clark and Tony Mammarella finalize the daily American Bandstand song playlist. Note the tiny office the two shared. Courtesy of Agnes Mammarella.

• A Star Witness

   

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  Dick Clark was the star witness of the U.S. House of Representatives hearings on broadcasting payola in 1960. Courtesy of John Jackson.

• A web of intrigue

   

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  Federal investigators' chart of Dick Clark's music-related business interests. Source: U.S. House of Representatives, Responsibilities in Broadcasting Licenses and Station Personnel, 1960.

• A movie star

   

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  Dick Clark starred in three movies. Because They're Young was released in 1960. Courtesy of the Doug Lumpkin Collection.

• Clark and Slay

   

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  Dick Clark with record producer Frank Slay, 1960. Courtesy of Frank Slay.

• I'm with the band.

   

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  One of rock 'n' roll's greatest hit-making teams. Lester Sill, Dick Clark, Duanne Eddy, and Lee Hazelwood at the Hollywood Bowl, 1960. Courtesy of the Duanne Eddy Circle/Fan Club.

• "Boom Boom"

   

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  American Bandstand favorite Freddy "Boom Boom" Cannon whose records were issued by Swan, a company partially-owned by Dick Clark. Clark reportedly wanted Cannon to record "The Twist," but the singer declined because a record of his had just been released. "The Twist" was subsequently recorded by Chubby Checker. Courtesy of John Jackson.

• The Twist

   

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  Chubby Checker, with a big assist from Dick Clark and American Bandstand, changed the way the world danced. Courtesy of Whirlin' Disc Records, Farmingdale, NY.

• The British Invasion

   

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  The Beatles and Swan Records executives receive an award in 1964 for the group's number one hit, "She Loves You." Left to right: Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Tony Mammarella, Ringo Starr, Bernie Binnick, and George Harrison. Courtesy of Agnes Mammarella.

• Coast to Coast

   

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  After American Bandstand moved from Philadelphia to California, the show's dancers began to exhibit a more professional quality, but in the process Bandstand lost much of its youthful innocence. Courtesy of Photofest, NY.

• The 70s

   

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  Dick Clark, looking very 1970-ish, welcomes the Fifth Dimension to American Bandstand in 1976. Courtesy of Photofest, NY.

• The 80s

   

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  American Bandstand in 1986. Courtesy of Everett Collection, Inc.

• The 80s

   

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  American Bandstand in 1986.

We’ll miss you Dick Clark!

John A. Jackson is the author of American Bandstand: Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock ‘n’ Roll Empire and the prize-winning Big Beat Heat: Alan Freed and the Early Years of Rock & Roll. He lives in Amity Harbor, New York.

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In Titanic: The Last Night of a Small Town, John Welshman gathered 25 pictures of this ill-fated voyage together and we’d like to share a few with you.

• The scale

   

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  Titanic propeller with shipyard workers before launch. Courtesy of George Grantham Bain collection/Library of Congress.

• Families torn apart

   

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  Titanic passenger, 3rd class, Frank Goldsmith (left) and his family at 22 Hone Street, Strood, Kent. Courtesy of George Grantham Bain collection/Library of Congress.

• Survivors on deck

   

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  Unidentified Titanic survivors aboard the Carpathia rescue ship. Courtesy of George Grantham Bain collection/Library of Congress.

• A welcome rescue

   

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  Arthur Rostron, Captain of the Carpathia, being presented with a silver “loving cup” by survivor Molly Brown. Courtesy of George Grantham Bain collection/Library of Congress.

• Victims at any age

   

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  Photograph of the “Hoffman orphans” before they had been identified as the Navratil children. Courtesy of George Grantham Bain collection/Library of Congress.

Author John Welshman offers a minute-by-minute account of the doomed liner’s last hours, based on a representative cross-section of those who sailed in her: men and women, old and young, passengers and crew, wealthy and poor. Drawing on published autobiographical accounts, diaries, private papers, archival materials, and a wide array of other sources, Titanic: The Last Night of a Small Town offers a unique account of one of the most memorable disasters in modern history.

John Welshman is Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at Lancaster University. He is the author or editor of six books on twentieth-century British social history, including Churchill’s Children: The Evacuee Experience in Wartime Britain. Read John Welshman’s previous posts “One Voyage, Two Thousand Stories,” “Fellowes and the Titanic,” and “Everyday people aboard the Titanic.”

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These grand hotels provided far more than just accommodation. In what way were these hotels products of colonialist need and conduct?

The first hotels appeared in Egypt long before the concept of tourism existed. They were there to facilitate the workings of the British Empire, to provide way stations for officials shuttling between England and its domains in India. Later they were bases for explorers and adventurers fanning out into Africa, indulging in the imperial obsession of mapping, collecting, categorizing and ‘civilizing’.

Where did you gather information on these glamorous hotels, such as Cataract in Aswan, the Winter Palace in Luxor, the Cecil in Alexandria and Cairo’s Windsor Hotel?

For the facts, The Egyptian Gazette. The British Library in London has an almost complete run from about 1882 onwards. I worked my way through year by year, piecing together what was built when and by who. The Winter Palace, for example, has always maintained that it was built in 1886 and it has a restaurant named for that date. But as I discovered, it was in fact inaugurated in January 1907. A correspondent from the Gazette attended the party and described the occasion in detail. For the color in the book, I’ve included plenty of extracts from accounts written by travelers to Egypt from the 1840s onwards. Later on, particularly in the first decades of the twentieth century, there were a bunch of useful memoirs written by foreign residents who typically worked in the civil service — despite living here they were frequent visitors to the hotels, which all held weekly dances and balls, and pretty much provided a social life for many foreigners resident in Egypt.

How did you find all the period photographs and images?

The difficulty with the image selection was one of imbalance. We could have filled a whole book with images of Shepheard’s, which seems to have been a very popular subject for photographers in the early 20th century, but for somewhere like the Windsor Hotel in Cairo there’s nothing. Well, not quite nothing — there is one beautiful vintage photo, which hangs on the wall in the hotel’s lounge. We had to ask the hotel owners for permission to borrow it for a few hours to get it scanned so it could appear in the book. Many of the other images we found at auctions and antiquarian stores, plus a number of collectors were kind enough to allow us reproduce some of the things they had. Very few of the images in the book have ever been published before.

Was it travelers or occupying (British, French) forces that had more of an impact on the way these grand historic hotels in Egypt back then were run and how they catered to foreigners?

It was both. The hotels were where the two groups met. The tourists valued the company of the local residents because they hoped to hobnob with the grandees of Cairo society; the residents viewed the annual influx of tourists as a welcome change from the same old faces. The tourists filled the bedrooms but it was local custom that kept the restaurants, bars and ballrooms busy (which, incidentally, was where the money was made).


• Shepheard’s

   

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  Entrance to Shepheard’s Hotel, around 1900.

• Tourist Poster

   

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  A poster from 1937, printed in London, tempting the British to exchange rain-sodden skies for the warmth of Egypt.

• Postcard

   

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  From The Light Side of Egypt (1908) by British comic postcards illustrator Lance Thackeray.

• Tourist Poster

   

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  A poster designed by H. Hashim and printed by the Institut Graphique Egyptien, probably in the mid-1930s

• Tourist Poster

   

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  Another poster advocating spending the season in Egypt. This one was painted by Roger Bréval, a European artist who kept a studio in Cairo during the 1920s.

• Hotel Cecil

   

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  The fact that it was designed by an architect of Italian heritage perhaps accounts for the vaguely Venetian stylings of the Cecil’s attractive façade.

• The Egyptian Porter

   

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  The aim of the Egyptian porter, according to author Evelyn Waugh, was always to carry away the smallest piece of luggage possible. Several would throw themselves on a guest’s assembled baggage with the strongest emerging with a bundle of newspapers, an air cushion, or a small attaché case; the slowest or weakest would end up carrying the trunks.

• Semiramis Hotel

   

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  An item in The Egyptian Gazette of 9 October 1907 recorded the arrival in Cairo of two large motor omnibuses by Cuegier of Paris for the Semiramis Hotel. They were built, it noted, to carry 12 passengers, exclusive of luggage and servants, and would cover the distance between the hotel and the railway station in 8 minutes.

• Winter Palace

   

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  A party of Edwardian-era tourists pose on the grand front steps of what The Egyptian Gazette called “the finest and most elaborately-schemed hotel within the land of Egypt”

• Thomas Cook in Egypt.

   

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  From offices in Ludgate Circus, London, Thomas Cook set about the conquest of Egypt in 1869. The work was continued by his son John Mason Cook, who, within a decade, became one of the most influential men in the country. Source: Thomas Cook Archives.

• San Stefano

   

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  In the early years of the twentieth century San Stefano was the fashionable place for Alexandria’s elite to promenade. Source: Mohammed El Mekabbaty.

• Mena House

   

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  Taking tea on the terrace at the Mena House—the scene painted by the artist Ihap Hulvsi for the poster that adorns the front cover of the book. Source: Oberoi Mena House Archive.

• Shepheard’s

   

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  A wholly new Shepheard’s was inaugurated in 1891. Originally, the hotel had just two stories, but demand for rooms was such that in summer 1906 a third floor was added providing beds for a further 90 guests. Source: Library of Congress.

• Shepheard’s

   

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  The décor at Shepheard’s was so over the top its halls and salons resembled theatrical sets for a production of Salomé or perhaps Aida. Pillars copied from Karnak mixed with Moorish arches and stained glass with Persian rugs. One writer said it put him in mind of Chartres Cathedral converted into a harem. Source: Library of Congress.

• The Pyramids

   

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  The Pyramids were never meant to be climbed. When built they were sealed with an outer casing of polished stone fitted so admirably it was difficult to see the joints. Denuded of this casing over time, the monuments became playthings for early tourists, to be clambered over, raced up, and picnicked upon. Credit: Corbis Images.

• The Pyramids

   

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  The Pyramids were never meant to be climbed. When built they were sealed with an outer casing of polished stone fitted so admirably it was difficult to see the joints. Denuded of this casing over time, the monuments became playthings for early tourists, to be clambered over, raced up, and picnicked upon. Credit: Thomas Cook Archives.

• Afternoon at the hotel.

   

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  Guests enjoying an afternoon refresher on the hotel’s front terrace, some time in the 1940s. Credit: Library of Congress.

• Grand Continental

   

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  Caleches waiting for custom outside the Grand Continental in the first decade of the twentieth century. Source: Library of Congress.

• SS Sudan

   

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  Passengers disembark from the SS Sudan, which came into service, sailing between Cairo and Aswan, in 1921. The ship still operates on the river today and was used in the 1978 film version of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile. Source: Thomas Cook Archives.

Do you have a favorite grand hotel, whether the Cecil, Shepheard’s Mena House, Gezira Palace, Semiramis, Winter Palace, or Cataract?

By far the most significant was Shepheard’s, nothing to do with the Shepheard’s that now stands on the Corniche. This is the Shepheard’s that once stood on what’s now Gomhurriya Street overlooking the Ezbekiyya Gardens until it was burnt down in January 1952. It was in existence for 101 years exactly and at its height it was one of the most famous hotels in the world, on a par with the Paris Ritz and London Savoy. Internationally it was as emblematic of Egypt as the Pyramids. But what I particularly love is that it was a hotel known for its vitality. Royalty and heads of state kept away – they favored the more exclusive Savoy, Semiramis and Mena House. Instead, Shepheard’s attracted movie stars and writers, raffish aristocrats and fortune hunters (of the male and female kind). It was, by all accounts, a fun place to stay. The fact that the hotel has so completely vanished with nothing on the site to mark that it ever existed only adds to the mystique.

A number of illustrious people stayed in these grand hotels, from Amelia Edwards, Lucie Duff Gordon and Florence Nightingale to Agatha Christie, Conan Doyle, Winston Churchill, and T.E. Lawrence. Whom would you have liked to meet in the lobby?

The person I would really have liked to have met wasn’t a guest but an employee. From 1937 Joe Scialom presided over the Long Bar at Shepheard’s. He worked in white jacket and black bowtie, spoke eight languages, and acted as banker, adviser, umpire and father confessor to his clients. During his tenure the Long Bar was known as St Joe’s Parish and he ministered according to a philosophy of “Mix well, but shake politics”. He invented the Suffering Bastard, a potent mix that continues to be included in all good cocktail manuals. He served throughout World War II and the stories he could tell would really have made my book worth reading. Joe was tending the bar on that Saturday in 1952 when the hotel was burned down. He escaped the inferno “slightly ruffled and really annoyed” (his words to a reporter). He left Egypt in 1956 and continued working as a barman. His final job was at Windows on the World in the World Trade Center before he finally retired to Florida. He passed away as recently as 2004, but I only came to know of Joe in the last couple of years and so never got to meet him.

You argue that the prestige of these hotels rested not only on the people who frequented them but the men like Samuel Shepheard and Albert Metzger who founded them. How does this differ with the new hotels that are built in Egypt today?

When Shepheard’s was burned down in 1952 it was the end of an era. When Egypt began to rebuild its tourism industry in the wake of the Revolution the new generation of big hotels were state-owned structures that were leased to foreign multinational corporations to manage. The flagship was the Nile Hilton in 1959, and since then it has been all Sheratons, Ramadas, Marriotts and their ilk. Fine if what you expect from a hotel is a room that exactly resembles the one you stayed in in Seattle or Frankfurt or Seoul, but I can’t imagine anyone being sufficiently excited in 50 years time to write a history of Egypt’s hotels in the second half of the twentieth century.

What is it about the hotel life of Egypt’s golden age of travel that fascinates so?

We’re all suckers for nostalgia and the stories of these hotels represent something we’ve lost. They embody the notion of travel as adventure, intrepidly going places other people haven’t been, and witnessing things seen by few others. We imagine travel back then was like one big, freewheeling Indiana Jones movie. Perhaps for some it even was. But what we forget is that travel 100 years ago was also something only the wealthy could afford to indulge in. These old hotels looked like palaces because the people they were built for tended to live in pretty palatial residences back home. So when we read stories of the golden age of travel we’re not only indulging in nostalgia but also in a bit of wish fulfillment, imaging ourselves living out the lives of the historically rich and sometimes famous.

Andrew Humphreys is the author of The Grand Hotels of Egypt: In the Golden Age of Travel. He first traveled to Egypt from England in 1988 and liked it so much he decided not to go home. He found the city’s hotels an appealing mix of the practical and the peculiar. An appreciation of contemporary hotel life led to a fascination with the hotel life of the past, and to this book. Andrew, a journalist and editor, now lives in London but remains a frequent visitor to Egypt and an avid frequenter of its grand (and not so grand) hotels. He is the author of National Geographic Traveler, as well as guidebooks to both Egypt and Cairo for Lonely Planet and Dorling Kindersley. He has worked for a variety of publications including The Wall Street Journal and National Geographic, and his journalism has also appeared in The Sunday Times, The Telegraph, Time Out, Canvas, and Conde Nast Traveller. In 1997 he co-founded The Cairo Times, a leading English-language Cairo newspaper.

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Is there a connection between devotion to Santa Muerte and the more “domesticated” version of death represented by the Mexican Day of the Dead?

To a certain extent, yes. Devotion to Santa Muerte involves veneration of death herself (conceived of as a female entity) whereas Days of the Dead (November 1 and 2) focus on the commemoration of departed relatives and loved ones. However, many Mexicans who partake in Days of the Dead rituals completely reject the idea of spiritual devotion to a folk saint who personifies death.

Is there a correlation between the meteoric growth of the cult of Santa Muerte over the past ten years and the paroxysm of violence in Mexico related to the global economic crisis and the war on drugs?

Most definitely. More that 40 thousand Mexicans have died in the drug wars since President Felipe Calderon took office. Mexico, tragically, has some of the world’s highest murder and kidnapping rates, ranking in the top ten in both categories. Santa Muerte proves to be especially attractive to those Mexicans who feel the proximity of death in their daily lives. Drug traffickers, law enforcement agents, prisoners, prostitutes and others who make their living in the street are particular groups who seek out the saint’s protective scythe.

Do you think the cult is in the process of institutionalizing?

Yes, but slowly. There are now many Saint Death temples in both Mexico and the US. Doña Queta (the godmother of the cult) leads monthly public worship services at her famous Mexico City shrine. And a monthly magazine, published in Mexico City, provides ritual instruction and advice to Santa Muertistas. However, the great majority of devotees venerate the Bony Lady (one of her common monikers) on their own, without any affiliation with the temples or Doña Queta’s shrine.

• Death a la Mexicana

   

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  Santa Muerte chapel, Santa Ana Chapitiro, Michoacan

• Santa Marihuana

   

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  Altar discovered at a drug bust in Houston

• The whole world in her hand

   

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  Shrine at home of Vicente Ramos Perez, Morelia, Michoacan.

• The White Girl

   

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  Santa Muerte in white, Santa Muerte chapel, Santa Ana Chapitiro, Michoacan

• Awaiting the Groom

   

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  Shrine at home of Vicente Ramos Perez, Morelia, Michoacan

• Cloaked in Crimson

   

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  Affairs of the Heart, jewelry supply store, Mexico City

• Seven-color Santa Muerte

   

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  For miracles on many fronts, Sonora Market stall, Mexico City

• House of (Saint) Death

   

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  Plaque at the home of Doña Queta in the barrio of Tepito, Mexico City

• Temple of Death

   

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  Santa Muerte church in the Morelos district of Mexico City

• Protected by Death

   

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  Bus company security agent and Santa Muerte devotee wearing two pendants of the saint, Mexico City

• Among Saints

   

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  Saintly Troika, Saint Jude, the Virgin of Guadalupe and Santa Muerte, among others, esoterica shop, Catemaco, Veracruz.

• Death in Dollars

   

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  Santa Muerte temple, City of Puebla

• Santa Muerte Godmother and Professor

   

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  Doña Queta Romero and author in front of her home, barrio of Tepito, Mexico City

• In the clutches of Saint Death

   

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  Shrine at home of Vicente Ramos Perez, Morelia, Michoacan

• Death’s Aroma

   

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  Santa Muerte incense, estoterica shop, Richmond, VA

• Death to My Enemies

   

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  Santa Muerte votive candles, Saint Death Temple, city of Puebla.

• Death’s Birthplace

   

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  Dona Queta’s famous Mexico City shrine

• Shaman and Professor

   

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  Santa Muerte priest, Guadalupe Santiago at his Los Angeles temple and author, R. Andrew Chesnut

What is the stance of the Catholic church on the cult?

The Church in Mexico has officially denounced it as heretical, with certain bishops and priests even condemning her cult as satanic. To date, the Church in the US has made no official pronouncement. In fact, just this week both the Archdiocese of Washington and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops refused to comment on devotion to Saint Death in this country. Interestingly, all devotees whom I interviewed in Mexico except one told me they were Catholic.

You situate the Santa Muerte devotion within what you term the “religious marketplace” or “faith economy.” Could you elaborate?

As is the case in the US, the world’s largest and most robust religious economy, Mexico is now characterized by religious pluralism. The great majority of Mexicans are still Catholic, but Pentecostals, New Ages groups, Santeria, and now Saint Death all compete with the Church for their souls. In a relatively free religious economy in which no one faith has a state-sanctioned monopoly on spiritual production, faith-based organizations are compelled to compete with each other for market share. Those groups that offer attractive religious goods and services will prosper while those that don’t will stagnate or perish.

Do you believe that Santa Muerte will draw American attention to the current situation in Mexico, or the plight of millions who immigrate to the United States for economic and political reasons?

Yes. In particular I believe it will illuminate the folly of the interminable hemispheric drug wars, which have resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and billions of dollars in wasted expenditures.

Does the growth of the cult of Santa Muerte in the United States strike you as evidence of a larger process of “Hispanicization” in this country?

Without a doubt. Even more striking is the Hispanicization of the Catholic Church in this country. At least one third of Catholics in the U.S. are Latino, and if it weren’t for the influx of Latin American immigrants, the church would have hemorrhaged members over the past half-century, just as mainline Protestant denominations have.

Given the Santa Muerte’s obvious connections to medieval European religious beliefs and symbols, do you believe that the devotion will eventually catch on across the Atlantic?

Not on a large scale, but probably among certain counter-cultural groups, such as Goths and neo-pagans. And of course the Bony Lady is already there, especially in Spain with its sizeable numbers of Mexican and Central American immigrants.

R. Andrew Chesnut is Bishop Walter Sullivan Endowed Chair of Catholic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA. He is the author of Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint.

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