I am looking forward to going to Istanbul in the near future.
It is a place I have always had a hankering to visit given its history and position-physical and symbolic -between East and West, the religious wars and tensions between Christians and Muslims down through the centuries.
I had a look on Amazon to see if I could find a book that might be a good guide for the trip. I bought this “Istanbul-a tale of three cities” and look forward to reading it.
It seems to be a well-researched, serious historical tome and not quite what I had in mind. It is written by a historian and academic and traces the history of Byzantium, Constantinople, and Istanbul as the city is known nowadays.
I reckon I will just about have enough time to read the book before I go as I think it is up to 1,000 pages long. Let’s hope it is accessible, informative and will give me some indication of ‘must see’ sights when I travel.
I will be, as Yeats wrote, “Sailing to Byzantium”.