Alexandria: A History and a Guide

1922

Brasch Collection DT154 A4 FQ39

Alexandria: Whitehead Morris Limited

I was born in Alexandria, but left as a young boy. My memories of the place are of a warm, sunny, cosmopolitan, multi-lingual, European city steeped in history, where Arabs, Greeks, Jews and Italians lived in harmony. Living in Alexandria instilled in me a sense of history. Later, when I studied history in Australia, E. M. Forster’s Alexandria: A History and Guide gave me my first grownup insights into the history of my birthplace.
Published in 1922, the maps of Alexandria in Forster’s History and Guide depict the city as my parents and grandparents would have known it. They show the location of the Greek schools and churches we attended, the National Bank of Egypt where my father worked, the beach at Aboukir and park at Nouzha where I played, and the harbour where my father took me sailing.
(Chosen by Dimitri Anson, Research Fellow, Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, Otago)