Machine generated contents note: 31.12.10 -- Arrival in Alexandria -- A yellow room at Le Metropole -- Maurice and the Red Tents -- How Cleopatra made it happen -- 1.1.11 -- Cleopatra the First -- Mahmoud and Socratis -- New Year bombing -- The Dead Fountain cafe -- Essex clay -- I look myself up -- 2.1.11 -- Slightly poisoned -- Muslims and Copts -- Monty's bar -- Jesus, the missing years -- 3.1.11 -- Cleopatra the Second -- The rough-book -- E.M. Forster and the Ptolemies -- Boxes of tragedies -- Death by needles and beaks -- 4.1.11 -- Partial eclipse -- Sir Anthony Browne's foundation -- Mr G and Mr W -- She Who Must Be Obeyed -- Blood from his nose -- An arms salesman -- 5.1.11 -- V, the schoolgirl -- Teenage years -- Sodomy in Greek -- Burning books -- A boy called Frog -- Paul Simon and Jimi Hendricks (sic) -- 6.1.11 -- Cleopatra the Third -- Miss Taylor -- Signs of a beard -- Pompey's Pillar -- A bomber and a carpet -- 7.1.11 -- Cleopatra the Fourth -- In Oxford --

Contents note continued: A kiss from V -- Julius Caesar's little war -- A cruise down the Nile -- 8.1.11 -- Maurice gets Marowitzed -- Lighthouse island -- Mahmoud and the church bomb -- Ides of March -- 9.1.11 -- A lesson front Holladay -- Continuators -- Watch the office men -- What classicists do -- A night at The Frogs -- 10.1.11 -- Cleopatra the Fifth -- An actress at St Mark's -- Sex with Crissie -- Maurice's Nubian night -- Socratis on Caesar -- Aulus Hirtius, V and me -- 11.1.11 -- The Metropole red-and-green Ball -- Tied Down in the tents -- Frog and the Mermaids -- 12.1.11 -- Secret seventies -- The Latin for hangover -- Alexandrian rules -- Southern Bug -- Somewhere on Love's Island -- Alphabets in the sky -- 13.1.11 -- The middle of the story -- Mark Antony waits at Tarsus -- Perfumed sails -- Successors to Caesar -- A queen cannot choose her pimp -- 14.1.11 -- Cleopatra the Sixth -- Grey days at Big Oil -- Bureaucracy student -- A different Antony Brown -- 15.1.11 --

Contents note continued: Cleopatra the Seventh -- Space barons -- V in the Red Tents -- Calthorpe Arms -- The Thatcher who must be obeyed -- F for Farouk -- Duke's rout -- 16.1.11 -- The purpose of parties -- Mark Antony's wars -- Generous happenings for a general -- The new Caesars -- 17.1.11 -- Queens by night and day -- Dreams of dogs -- Romans and Alexandrians in the newsroom -- Leading articles -- The Scargill gaffe -- 18.1.11 -- Last nights of an editor -- Farewell to Calthorpe and other Arms -- Lost notes -- What happened at Actium -- 19.1.11 -- Mahmoud and the troops -- Death of Antony -- Socratis's mother sings -- Coincident cancers -- 20.1.11 -- Maurice and Cleopatra reunited -- How to die without pain -- E.M. Forster on the North Sea -- 21.1.11 -- V comes to Cheltenham -- How to read a Latin poem -- The afterlife of Romans -- Drink and move on -- 22.1.11 -- Last night, last words -- Farewell to Le Metropole -- Noises from the border -- The right choice of driver.

"When Peter Stothard, editor of the Times Literary Supplement, finds himself stranded in Alexandria in the winter of 2010 after his flight to South Africa has been cancelled, he sets out to explore a nation on the brink of revolution. Guided by two native Egyptians, Stothard traces his own life-long interest in the history of Cleopatra, and his repeated failure to write the book about her that he had always wanted to. In Alexandria, part memoir and part travel literature, Stothard was the sights and sounds of the ancient city to reconnect with the formative experiences of his childhood education, and his literary career. Melancholy and sometimes humorous, Alexandria offers a first-hand glimpse into the fracturing police state of Hosni Mubarak, before the uprising in Tahir Square changed everything."