Ihave only been to Alexandria once, some years ago, when Hosni Mubarak was still in power, but it struck me as a sad city. Of course the library was not the library. The lighthouse was not the lighthouse. The city was not the city. I looked around for the remnants of the Greeks who had made it their own, but there seemed little left of them.

Is there a cause we are financing so considerable it is decent to pass the cheque on to the next generations?

Alexandria was on my mind again this week while reading a new biography of the city’s most famous modern poet, Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933). He was part of that world which migrated across the Mediterranean. Born in Alexandria, Cavafy and his family spent time in Liverpool before moving back to Egypt, fleeing to Constantinople, before ret

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