Gamal Nkrumah interviews the author of a courtroom satire or better still a seminal avant-garde work, Andrew Humphreys, on Egypt's Belle Epoch hotels that hosted Florence Nightingale, Agatha Christie and Sir Winston Churchill In Andrew Humphreys' Grand Hotels of Egypt in the Golden Age of Travel, Egyptian hotels were once the stuff that dreams are made of. The author embarks on a spiritual journey to the heart of Egypt's hoteliers in the age of the Victorians and Edwardians. "I am a journalist-cum-writer," he concedes. But this in no way compromises the quality of his meticulous research work. Journalists are usually, well, not to put too fine a point to it, not always the best writers. Luxor and Aswan's hotels, in as much as Cairo's, were cooked up by Thomas Cook. Grand Hotels of Egypt revolves around the salient question of where did the Belle Epoch era tourists hung out? "I felt it is an important story," Humphreys declares unapologetically. And, he is absolutely right. The thought-provoking aforementioned quote is one way of looking at the hotels of Egypt in the Belle Epoch. This is not a book about extraordinary European travelers, rather about Europeans, sick or bored stiff, who came to recuperate and let their hair down. What a saccharine bunch they were. All this is entertaining stuff. But what counts is where they sojourned for the remedial repose. Adventure and escapades are the leitmotifs of this book, and therefore it indulges and refreshes the soul. Humphreys begins picturing himself as he wanders round the hotel. And if there is such a thing as global culture in the age of colonialism, the five-star, European-style hotel must be it. That may sound obvious but where else would you rather be if you were a European travelling to hitherto unknown and exotic destinations, most located in the tropics in an age when there were no air conditions, or the other amenities of the time. Humphreys reveals his humanist side in his sensitivity to the sensibilities of Egyptians past and present. That latter preoccupation has made Humphreys the rare English travel writer whose main subjects seem to be alienation, conspicuous consumerism in an age of colonialism and a social setting described in relentless detail. The spa retreat of Helwan had four hotels and its own guide books. Today it is a sprawling industrial conurbation, one of the most polluted in the country. "Heliopolis ad Helwan broadened the offerings of Cairo but they were sideshows. While visitors arrived eager to experience for themselves the wonders of the pyramids and the new Egyptian Museum, they were just as excited, if not more so, by the prospect of the attractions of the modern city. A journalist writing in The New York Times of 13 January 1901 reported meeting a lady in London who told him she'd spent the previous winter in Cairo and could highly recommend the racecourse but when he asked her about the Pyramids she couldn't comment because she hadn't seen them". Humphreys' seminal work on a select number of carefully picked hotels of Egypt during the colonial era is at once enthusiastically panned and shrewdly targeted. The political message would have unnoticed if not for his choice of hotels and recounting of their particular histories. "These grand hotels provided more than just accommodation. They were outposts of Europe planted on Egyptian soil," Humphreys points out. "The hotels were also anchors for the country's European enclaves," he promptly adds. Egypt was not a God-forsaken unreachable colonial outpost by the time most of the hotels Humphreys describes were constructed. "It might seem surprising that an English lady of the Victorian age, travelling only in the company of another female friend, should think so little of journeying to Egypt, but by this time the Nile and its wonders were very much the topic of conversation in fashionable drawing rooms in London, New York, and Paris," the author expounds. Europeans did not travel to Egypt with an ominous sense of foreboding. In a frantic effort to escape the rigours of a European winter, Western tourists were hot on the trail of the pharaohs. European travelers were quickly immersed in the perilous escapades of the Saharan sands and captivated by the mesmerising Nile Valley. "I'm English, so this book takes a very English, very Western perspective," the author admits. Humphreys' engrossing work is not simply a brief canter across colonial Egypt in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The chaos and the confusion of colonial politics did not put off European tourists. Post-Napoleonic Egypt has always been part of a wider world. One could have quibbles about the structure of Humphreys' book, even though it does not give the impression of having been put together hastily. However, Humphreys concedes that he had to chose a select few not only of hotels, but also of the cities in which they were located. "Space didn't permit me to include some of the Suez Canal cities," the author points out. Humphreys Grand Hotels passionately articulates the transformational role that the influx of Europeans, whether expatriates or casual visitors, to the country played in the development of European-style Belle Epoch hotels in Egypt. Whether you like perusing books casually and letting your imagination wander afar or back in time or you prefer hearing it straight, then Humphreys' Grand Hotels could be for you. The reader is transported through decades to two very different centuries than ours. And, the curious conundrum is that the reader can both see the continuities in the architectural designs of the Belle Epoch period and the glaring dissimilarities. "The Paris Ritz, Cairo's Shepherds' and London's Savoy were all put on an equal footing in the same trinity of the most important of the world's hotels," the author states categorically. That is hard to believe today. For even though there are a number of fine five-star hotels in Egypt, few could compare to the best of the world's most famous contemporary luxury hotels. To begin with there was something a little perverse about taking your summer holidays in Egypt or any country south of the Mediterranean. Italy was a favourite destination for the early British tourists, Egypt was out of the question. But soon enough, the English became more adventurous and ventured beyond Europe. Egypt was one of the first destinations outside Europe to receive a considerable number of British and other European visitors. Westerners were no longer hampered by such temporal concerns as the heat and dust of the tropics. And, Egypt after all was supposed to be sub-tropical. Notwithstanding the fact that at least Cairo and Alexandria lay beyond the Tropic of Cancer, the heat for much of the year was rather oppressive. Egypt's otherworldliness and its dry climate at a time when many people and not just the poor were consumptive were the country's main attractions. The deserts, Eastern and Western, were inhospitable. But the Nile Valley itself was an oasis of paradisiacal greenery. The beaches were out of bounds and no Victorian lady, or gentleman for that matter, in their right mind, would seriously consider sunning themselves on Egypt's Mediterranean or Red Sea coasts. Some of contemporary Egypt's most luxurious holiday resorts are now found in Sinai and the country's extensive coastline. This was obviously not the case in Victorian times. Cairo and Alexandria were not as crowded and polluted as they are today. Indeed, they were among the plushest and most cosmopolitan cities in the world and compared favourably with the very best in Europe. The pyramids were awe-inspiring and the newly discovered treasure troves of the ancient pharaohs were being excavated and unearthed. And, Cairo was a fast changing city. Take the suburb of Heliopolis itself that was created presumably on the site of its ancient Egyptian namesake. The Heliopolis Palace Hotel, inaugurated in 1910 as one of Cairo's opulent hotels. Since the 1980s it metamorphosed into the presidential palace -- the official residence of ex- president Hosni Mubarak. However, Humphreys could not simply review all of the country's sumptuous hotels. So he selected San Stefano and Cecil in Alexandria, Shepheard's, Mena House, Continental-Savoy, Gezira Palace, Semiramis, and Windsor in Cairo. The author also examined the history of Luxor's Winter Palace and Aswan's Cataract. Of all of the hotels Humphreys that has written about in Grand Hotels of Egypt, Shepheard's is the one that stands closest to his heart. "The whole of the book is encapsulated in that chapter," Humphreys says. "The Shepheard's chapter is the most important in the entire book. Not only was it the first European- style hotel in Egypt, it also tells the story of the development of tourism in Egypt. It is the first real international hotel in Egypt," the author expounds. British aristocrats championed the Continental-Savoy and Europe's wealthy invalids sought therapeutic remedies in the hot, dry air of Aswan and Luxor. Aswan, in particular, was regarded as something of a health resort. "This is where the book ends," the author explains. His work is in a sense an all-too-stately tribute to remembrance. "This is the story I am telling," he emphatically proclaims. Humphreys' judgements are hard to refute. But there is a great deal here in Grand Hotels that is enlightening and entertaining. Humphrey's work is also instructive. The pyramids were merely an amusement and another complicating issue is that the contemporary discomfort with what actually interested some of the tourists of the time. "They went to slave markets in the 1840s. Until the 1840s Cairo's slave market was a source of great fascination for European travelers," the author notes. And, how did the Egyptians see the tourists? Well, not surprisingly with a great deal of suspicion. European attitudes, there was lots of snobbishness," Humphreys observes. "The otherwise generally sound Amelia Edwards refers to local children at one point as 'imps of darkness', while as late as 1929 Evelyn Waugh in his travel book Labels favours a hotel in Port Said on the grounds that he will not meet any 'Gyppies'."
