From front to back, the publication marking the 130th birthday of The Egyptian Gazette, the Middle East's oldest English-language daily newspaper, is rather like a tasty and nutritious meal. The newspaper first hit the newsstands in January 1880, when a quarterly subscription cost the princely sum of eight shillings. The anniversary book selects news items from then until the present, covering important events like the British bombardment of Alexandria in July 1882 and the landmark speech given by US President Barack Obama at Cairo University in June 2009, which signalled a new start with the Muslim world. Reading carefully the highlighted stories and news items, it is easy to trace the shift of interest and viewpoint from a newspaper run and edited by a British staff catering for a British community, to one with an Egyptianised outlook to local and international events under a local management and English-speaking staff. Who would understand this gradual shift better than those who were actually part of this process between the late 1950s and late 1980s? Ramez el-Halawani who started in The Gazette as a reporter in 1958 and ended up as its Editor-in-Chief from 1978 till 1980, recalls in this book the good old days. He sheds light on the way the newspaper was run under its first Egyptian Editor-in-Chief, Amin Abul-Enein, and recalls the ‘emotional outbursts' associated with two important events he witnessed with The Gazette: the death of Gamal Abdel-Nasser and the Egyptian Army crossing the Suez Canal in 1973. During his editorship, el-Halawani maintained the same policies as his predecessor. The newspaper stood for African and Asian rights against the challenges posed by Western imperialism, as he says. El-Halawani did, however, take the newspaper away from its 1940s image to ‘a more modern, relaxed look'. "We started a Cairo press review [which continues to this day] and we managed to introduce more local stories, some reporting crime which had been taboo until then," he says. The contribution of Sami el-Shahed, who is a veteran Gazetteer, to the anniversary book includes a note on the emergence of The Gazette, elucidating the ‘vision and mission' of the founders at the time. He explains that the stress was always on British interests, with local events being reported from a purely British perspective. El-Shahed, who worked in the translation section and newsrooms in the 1970s until being appointed Editor-in-Chief in 1980, a post he held for nine years, presents an overview of the events covered by The Gazette from the time of its birth, as well as an insight into The Gazette itself ��" its desks, its staffing policy, editorials and other relevant details. El-Shahed stresses at the end of the book that The Gazette's archives need to be preserved on microfilm. He has really hit the nail on the head. Getting this project launched is all a matter of money. Under the title ‘Irreplaceable Cultural Asset in Peril', el-Shahed urges a national and international campaign to save these invaluable documents, as this newspaper has been chronicling a significant segment of the history of this country for 130 years now. The book presents a selection of editorials from 1945 until 2010, reflecting the newspaper's views about significant events. Another nice thing about this 108-page publication is advertisements from days gone by for movies, fashions, toothpaste, cosmetics and even fruit juice. If you think about it, these are the very things we still find advertised today. The only difference is that the media technology of yesteryear was very modest. In addition to the keynotes of Safwat el-Sherif, the Chairman of the Shura Council; Ali Hashem, the Board Chairman of el-Tahrir Printing and Publishing House (the owner of The Gazette and its weekly edition, the Egyptian Mail); and Ramadan Abdel-Kader, the incumbent Editor-in-Chief, Abdel-Halim Nureddin, the veteran archaeologist and Professor of Civilisation, reviews 130 years of discoveries, pinpointing the most exciting archaeological finds across the country.
