Monday 6 July 2009

City of Durrell, Forster and Cavafy

Rose de Menasce at the Sporting Club, 1914. She was a friend of Constantine Cavafy in the 1920s and of Lawrence Durrell in the 1940s. This photograph serves as the frontispiece of Vintage Alexandria.

'Vintage Alexandria offers a tantalising glimpse of the early decades of Egypt's twentieth century. A photographer as well as a historian, Haag demonstrates an eye for both the evocative and the documentary. ... Readers familiar with the work of Lawrence Durrell, Constantine Cavafy and E M Forster will appreciate this vision of a city "as brilliant, sophisticated and advanced as any in the Mediterranean"'.
                                           - The Times Literary Supplement