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Buy a digital subscription Go to the Digital EditionJeremy Stafford-Deitsch’s Kingdoms of Ruin at first glance appears to be the classic coffee-table book, destined for a ten-minute browse before consignment for eternity to the bookshelves. In fact it is a significant contribution to the genre of ruin literature, and its text is a match for its pictures. It includes an accomplished history of early Turkey, a superb photographic odyssey through some 75 ancient sites, and a very useful bibliography.
There is an intriguing first chapter titled “Significance in Ruins”. This verges at times towards the pretentious (for instance, “there is significance in ruins because significance itself is ruined” or “ruins embody what modernity cannot” or “ruins embody the intuition that this world is not the whole story”). But perhaps a degree of pretension is inevitable in any general discussion around the question any ruin enthusiast must have asked themselves a hundred times, which is “why do I find these shattered stones of ancient civilisations so compelling and fascinating?”
Like every other author who has asked this question – from Rose Macaulay to J-J Rousseau – he fails to come up with a good or concise answer, but I found the discussion thought-provoking. He believes ruins can induce a temporary insanity because “contemplated in solitude, such ruins defy the aesthetic categories of scale, harmony, order and beauty on which sanity depends”. He finds beauty in their disorder. They provoke an intoxicating feeling of discovering the Sublime, although he cannot be precise about what exactly the Sublime is. This is the outpouring of a cultivated, well-travelled author/photographer entirely captivated by his subject.
His photographs, for me, are most successful in detailed shots – for instance, of an upended cornice block from Termessus or of the great neo-Hittite relief from Ivriz. He has great feeling for the texture of rock and an eye for detail. But I would have enjoyed a little mood and drama and more pictures that place the ruins in the landscape that surrounds them.
Rupert Scott’s anthology of travel writing, Tukrish Coast Through Writers’ Eyes, is published by Eland
Only Kastamonu in the hinterland of the Black Sea, boasts the naked plum (üryani erik). In Daday, a valley just outside the town, a handful of villages have been encouraged to keep cultivating this plump, purplish-blue variety. When it is ripe and oozing with fragrance and sweetness, the delicate skin peels off easily to expose the amber-coloured flesh.
More cookery features
There was never a dull moment growing up in the British Consulate in Sixties Istanbul. Griselda Warr selects photographs from her mother Gillian’s album and tells tales of shooting stars, benign espionage and a call girl wronged
She may be unconvinced by Noah’s Ark, but Min Hogg finds plenty to feast on as she journeys across the vast borderlands where Turkey approaches Armenia and Iran. From Kars to Van, from Silk Road to honeycombs and colossal breakfasts, she brings a wry, painterly eye to her lively account
These empty homes on Istanbul’s Asian shore were once full of life, hopes and dreams. Maureen Freely studies the haunting photographs of Metehan Özcan
The magic of southwest Turkey can still catch you unawares, especially if you sail. Botanist Ro FitzGerald boards a fine ketch and plots a course for that stunningly beautiful corner where the Aegean meets the Mediterranean.
An architectural extravaganza built in America’s Gilded Age for the man who invented the bottle top, the Everett House in Washington DC has a long and colourful connection with Turkey. Thomas Roueché charts its history. Photographs by Jürgen Frank.
John Henry Haynes was the father of American archaeological photography. Many of his images are the only record of a vanished Anatolian heritage. On the centenary of his death, Robert Ousterhout pays tribute.
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