Having accompanied the Prince of Wales on his tour of European countries in 2017, I was lucky enough to accompany HRH on his tour of Jordan and Egypt. We flew to Aqaba and then I went alone with a driver to Wadi Rum and more specifically to the camp of Lawrence of Arabia. He directed his attacks on the Turks from here during the Arab insurrection in 1917.
From here I went to paint at Um Qais, a Roman and then Byzantine site to the far north of Jordan. I was particularly interested to go there, a place I have not visited before and a site with splendid views of the sea of Galilee and the Golan Heights.
Cairo was the next stop and I painted in the sacred Muslim mosque of Al Azhar and then at the Giza Pyramids. The final day was spent in Alexandria, a place that has haunted me since reading the “Alexandrian Quartet” by Lawrence Durrell.
