Tag: sabbath plus one jerusalem and tel aviv

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SABBATH PLUS ONE Church of the Holy Sepulchre Jerusalem + Queen Helena

Heir of All Things

“They brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means ‘the Place of the Skull’).” John 19:17

That palimpsest of architectural taste, a panoply of passion, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre marks “the unexpected … unforgettable” (Pierre Loti, La Galilée, 1895) spot. Or at least one of the spots identified as the place where Christ was crucified. It’s the most ecumenical building imaginable, shared by a cluster of Christian denominations: Armenian Apostolic; Catholic; Coptic; and Ethiopian, Greek and Syriac Orthodox. Priests and their acolytes competitively stride round, swinging incense, ringing bells and chanting loudly. Emperor Constantine the Great built the founding church in the 4th century to commemorate his conversion to Christianity. “The most magnificent of his monuments,” claim Teddy Kellek and Moshe Pearlman in Jerusalem Sacred City of Mankind (1968).

Emperor Constantine’s mother Queen Helena had identified the site based on the discovery of the remains of three crosses and a nearby tomb known as ‘Anastasis’ (Greek for resurrection). “Just the place for a basilica,” Evelyn Waugh imagines she would say in his historical novel of 1950, Helena. Adrian Wolff summarises Her Majesty’s achievements in Israel: A Chronology (2004), “327 AD Queen Helena (St Helena), a devout Christian, travels to Palestina, identifying original Christian Holy Sites connected with Jesus, constructing Byzantine style churches on these sites.” Todd Fink (Jerusalem and Central Israel, 2021) expands on Queen Helena’s oeuvre, “She helped establish the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the Church of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives (currently known as the Pater Noster Church), the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.” Reverend Andy Rider (Life is For Giving, 2018) adds, “God’s presence is thicker in ancient churches through hundreds of years of prayers. Step into it!”

William Thackeray gasps in Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo (2017), “The situation of the tomb (into which, be it authentic or not, no man can enter without a shock of breathless fear, and deep and awful self humiliation) must have struck all travellers.” Through the centuries, battling the pedagogy of the unpredictable, the church was destroyed, rebuilt, set on fire, hit by an earthquake and finally restored by King Abdullah II of Jordan. The Rock of Calvary is encased in glass: a divine vitrine. Private tour guide Ibrahim Ghazzawi suggests, “The crosses would likely have been wedged into cracks in the rock.” There are three domes; Orthodox Christians believe church domes represent heaven’s vaults. Philip Larkin’s poem Church Going (The Less Deceived, 1955) contains the line “A serious house on serious earth”. It is what it was.

Daphne du Maurier (Not After Midnight and Other Stories, 1971) describes a tour guide’s experience: “On, on, ever upwards, ever climbing, the dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre rearing above him … the Church of the Holy Sepulchre enveloped him. He was aware of darkness, scaffolding, steps, the smell of many bodies and much incense.” The church contains the final five Stations of the Cross. The earlier nine Stations line Via Dolorosa. “‘The royal banners forward go, the cross shines forth in mystic glow,’” quotes The Right Reverend Rowan Williams in God With Us: The Meaning of the Cross and Resurrection, Then and Now (2017). “To sing that hymn for the first time each successive year is for many of us the real beginning of the Passion season.”

Andre Moubarak’s 2017 guide One Friday in Jerusalem sets out the importance of Via Dolorosa, “On a narrow street only 2,000 feet long in Old Jerusalem, the storey of redemptive history drew to its agonising glorious climax. Maronites served as the first tour guides of the Holy Land for visiting Europeans – first the Crusaders, then pilgrims.”

Centre for Action and Contemplation teacher Cynthia Bourgeault believes, “The Passion is really the mystery of all mysteries, the heart of the Christian faith experience. By the word ‘Passion’ we mean the events which end Jesus’s earthly life: His betrayal, trial, execution on a cross, and death.” Reverend Jennie Hogan recommends, “Christ makes the way for us.”

Reverend Robert Willis details in The Architectural History of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem (1849), “The Church in its general plan may be described as a Romanesque cruciform structure, having a circular nave to the West, a north and stransept, and a short Eastern limb or choir terminated by an apse. An aisle runs through the circular nave, on three of its sides. Also there is an aisle at the end of each transept, and on the east and west sides of each transept; and an aisle passes around the apse, and has chapels radiating from it, in the usual manner.” Henry Van Dyke (Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land: Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit, 1908) mentions its “dim and shadowy” interior. Borrowing from Joseph Roth’s The Wandering Jews (1927), “Candles burn now for all the dead. Other candles are lit for the living.”

Simon Goldhill notes in Jerusalem City of Longing (2008), “The first shock to anyone used to the great cathedrals of Europe such as Chartres or Notre Dame, or ever to the vast institution of the Vatican, is just how hard it is to find the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.” This unresolved siting is matched only by the architecture: what the aforementioned author calls “the irredeemable confusion of the church itself”. George Knight (The Holy Land Handbook, 2011) considers it “gangly and unplanned”.

“When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified Him there, along with the criminals – one on His right, the other on His left.” Luke 23:33

(Extract with alternative imagery from the bestseller SABBATH PLUS ONE Jerusalem and Tel Aviv).

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SABBATH PLUS ONE Cats + Neve Tzedek Tel Aviv

Angels Unaware

“Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land.” Song of Songs 2:12

The boundary lines have fallen in very pleasant places. Really, it’s the ultimate urban oasis full of fluttering sparrows and darting swallows between distant oaks. Resident tycoons occupy swathes of this prized real estate. Between the many mansions flow bougainvillea festooned rose and vine laneways, riots of colour and love amidst herbage and verdure. Acacia and camphire and poinciana and weeping fig trees camouflage gaily painted architecture. “Pink and saffron mallows, and the yellow and white daisies, and the violet and snow of the drooping cyclamen, and the gold of the genista” visualises Henry Van Dyke in Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land (1908). Colette captures horticultural wonder in Chéri, (1920), “Walking along in the shade of the acacia trees, between trellised roses and huge clumps of rhododendrons in full blaze.” And again in Gigi (1944): “Such a beautiful garden … such a beautiful garden.” She romanticises in The Cat (1944), “Above the withered stump draped with climbing plants, a flight of bees over the ivy flowers gave out a solemn cymbal note, the idenitical note of so many summers.” In Save Me the Waltz (1932), Zelda Fitzgerald’s protagonist Alabama cries, “I love little trees, arborvitae and juniper.”

Neve Tzedek was established in 1887, predating the official founding of Tel Aviv by over two decades. “Tz is pronounced as one letter sounding a bit like an ‘S’,” clarifies our driver Yaron Reuveny. “Neve Tzedek is beside the famous Carmel Market which is really trendy with fast food bars. It’s really good to hang out there in the evenings. There’s a good vibe!” Neve Tzedek was the first Jewish quarter to be built outside Jaffa. Fragrant with the perfumed aroma of myrrh and aloes and cassia, coloured by the turquoise of jacaranda and tamarisk and wisteria, Neve Tzedek is for the rich and fabulous and their feline friends (coffee loving techno music mad Israelis set the world record for cats-to-humans ratio). This enclave simply oozes unforced charm: streets named desire. Marco Koskas’ character Juliette in Goodbye Paris, Shalom Tel Aviv (2020) immediately adopts a cat called Jean-Pierre upon settling in Tel Aviv. Henri Cole opines in Orphic Paris (2016), “Cats are cats, briefly put, and their world is the world of cats through and through.” Truman Capote (1948) noticed in Other Voices, Other Rooms that they have “tawny astonished eyes”. No doubt Gertrude Stein would add, “Cats are cats are cats.” Quite so. Cats: the exquisite link in the Great Chain of Being. Colette’s The Cat once more, “The zone of shadow … the zone of shadow.”

“‘In that day each of you will invite your neighbour to sit under your vine and fig tree,’ declares the Lord Almighty.” Zechariah 3:10

(Extract with alternative imagery from the bestseller SABBATH PLUS ONE Jerusalem and Tel Aviv).

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SABBATH PLUS ONE Louis Pasteur Street + The Jaffa Hotel Jaffa Tel Aviv

Love in a Hot Climate

“Now let my lord send his servants the wheat and barley and the olive oil and wine he promised, and we will cut all the logs from Lebanon that you need and will float them as rafts by sea down to Joppa. You can then take them up to Jerusalem.” II Chronicles 2:15 to 16

The sun stands still. Gazing across the Mediterranean shoreline (273 kilometres stretching north to Lebanon and tipping Egypt to the southwest), astonished by our own brilliance, mingling with the coastal elite, we are delighted how well the afternoon has turned out. “You will die! The Jaffa is gorgeous,” coos Parisienne Maud Rabanne, une dame cultivée. “Coucou! Have coffee on the roof terrace. It’s got the best view! The Jaffa is one of my favourite places. It’s fabuloso! C’est la vie! That’s what we say in Paris. We always mean it in a positive way. Montagne de baisirs. Remplie de joie d’amour et de bonheur. Tchin-tchin!” Cinq à sept. Coûte que coûte. Le paradis, c’est les autres.

Moshe Sakal describes a similar view in his novel The Diamond Setter (2018), “Tel Aviv sprawls out on the right, the rocks of Jaffa on the left, and straight ahead lies Andromeda’s Rock, a plain looking rock that juts out of the water with an Israeli flag billowing on its peak.” International architect John O’Connell hints, “Should you arrive at the hotel, go further up and down the hill, as the Roman Catholic church will be on your left, and nearly opposite it is a very fine and abandoned Ottoman building. A robust ensemble. Try to see the internal court, where I have failed to do so! Such supreme life and joy!” Ah, that will be the Old Saraya House taken over by clubbers, bats and thespians. Abandonment begone!

We’re enjoying a Mitfordesque moment (Love in a Cold Climate heated up from 1949) on that terrace: “So here we all are, my darling, having our lovely cake and eating it too, one’s great aim in life.” We’re feeling “very grand as well as very rich”. The pleasures of passing hours. It helps that this heroic hotel is emphatically designed by everybody’s favourite minimalist maestro, master of the monastic John Pawson, along with Israeli architect and conservationist Ramy Gill. Oracle of our own orbit, balancing on a notional pedestal, we don’t need a doctorate in aesthetics to appreciate John Pawson’s masterwork. John O’Connell is on a roll: “Mr P’s oeuvre is so restrained. Everything’s resolved.” It’s a breath of fresh air, or at least an intake of the coolest sea breeze imaginable. Soon we will be expounding riddles with the grand piano and dwelling on Gertrude Stein (Tender Buttons, 1914), “Cold climate. A season in yellow sold extra strings makes lying places.”

The 1870s Saint Louis V Hospital, built by French businessman François Guinet to the design of architectural practice Grebez and Ribellet and managed by the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Apparition, has been sharply reimagined under John Pawson’s crisply contained direction. Delamination of extant solid form – from the remnants of a 13th century Crusaders’ bastion in the lobby to the peeling paint of the dusky pink loggias – leads to a richly layered intertextual discursively informative spirited patina of the raw and the worked throughout the revelatory restoration and clever conversion and audacious augmentation and sensual solution. Faded lettering over the arched doorways lining the loggias reads: ‘Communaute’, ‘Tribune’, ‘Salle Ste Elizabeth 2me Don Blesses, ‘Salle Ste Clotilde 2me Don Fievreux’, ‘Salle Ste Marie Pensionnaires’, ‘Orphelinat’. As Hans Ulrich Obrist (Ways of Curating, 2014) would interject, “… conversations … are happening between various narratives”.

Beyond the lobby with its Ligne Roset corduroy sofas and Damien Hirst spin paintings and lacquered backgammon tables lies a courtyard garden of sacred and human geometry (an unflowered greenscape) linking the ancient with the old with the new with the futuristic. John Pawson venerates yet challenges the original architecture, creating an unfolding sequence of voids and vistas and virtuosic visions. There’s an endless tightly choreographed play between past and present, architecture and art: a nuanced paradox of togetherness and oneness. As Elizabeth Bowen contends in The Heat of the Day (1948), “To turn from everything to one face is to find oneself face to face with everything.” There lies the definite ascetism – to be freed from oneself. Not even an Israeli Frances Hodgson Burnett (The Secret Garden, 1911) could summon up such discreet walled splendour. Corrugations of percolated sunshine ripple across the stone floor, climbing over chairs, falling over tables. Beyond the courtyard lies the Chapel Bar. The beyondness of many things. This world is our oyster and ours alone. It’s all it’s cracked up to be. Postcard home material. We’re checked in; we’ve checked out. Being here; doing it.

A private paradise. A secret world. A hidden kingdom. Cloistered espaliered sequestered formal glory. The very essence of unexampled exclusivity. If luxury could be bottled … heaven’s scent. A multiple epiphanic realisation of complete beauty. It was as if Elizabeth Bowen was in The Jaffa and not The House in Paris (1935), “Heaven – call it heaven; on the plane of potential not merely likely behaviour. Or call it art, with truth and imagination informing every word.” Marilynne Robinson (When I Was a Child I Read Books, 2012) insists, “Call it history, call it culture. We came from somewhere and we are tending somewhere, and the spectacle is glorious and portentous.”

Ah – the Chapel Bar – from litany and liturgy to luxury and libation, à la carte over elegy, mixology supplanting doxology, heterodoxy replacing orthodoxy, every hour is happy in this soaring sanctuary for sybarites. The only blues are the saturated cerulean hues of the ribbed vaulted ceiling. Beautiful in its loftiness, this bar is an explosion of sizzling rarity, of dazzlingly dilettantish individuality. There are no equals. There were no prequels. There’ll be no sequels. The perfect pitstop to slake your thirst, it’s like being at a house party if all your friends are knowingly sophisticated distractingly gorgeous models or similar ilk rocking new threads inspired by Inès de la Fressange’s (Parisian Chic Encore: A Style Guide, 2019) “haute couture and street style” – Doron Ashkenaz shirts and skin fade haircuts – dancing in eternal graceful circles. In Tel Aviv, kitchen and club are often confused so dancing on tables is de rigueur. A real era catcher: the New Roaring Twenties. Here they come The Beautiful Ones, The Fabulists, The Found Generation, Our Milieu. As befits our subject matter, we’re looking just a little bit sparkly ourselves: all dressed up in Elie Saab attire with somewhere to go; we shall go to the ball. What Roland Barthes (The Fashion System, 1963) calls “the euphoria of Fashion”. All of life has been a dress rehearsal for tonight. For a hot minute we’re running with the fastest set in town. To reference Nancy Mitford’s Don’t Tell Alfred (1963), it’s “high-falutin’, midnight stuff”.

The hotel is all “courtesy clouds” and “honeyed luxury” in a “rococo harmony” straight from The Diamond as Big as the Ritz (Frances Scott Fitzgerald, 1922). Average doesn’t exist in The Jaffa: it’s Lake Wobegon for real and we’ve got a majestic waterside view. Such is the alchemic segue! And who should know better than us? We’re qualified connoisseurs of fabulousness with diplomas in decadence, bachelors in brio and masters in magnificence. Very Bright Young Things. We’re taking the advice of Frédéric Dassas, Senior Curator of the Musée du Louvre Paris. During the Remembering Napoléon III Dinner at Camden Place in Kent he guided us: “Be part of the room; don’t just go through it.” The Chapel Bar is full of “people one should know” to channel Dorinda, Lady Dunleath. She would say, “It’s wild!” The glitter of this mirage. “Every generation has to keep the party going,” Her Ladyship always remarked in her Belgravia meets Ballywalter accent.

Morning figs and evening chocolates bookend a day’s room service. “Upstairs is crazy with dreams or love,” purrs Elizabeth Bowen (The House in Paris again). Guest suites breathe and stretch and sprawl across six uncrowded unhurried unparalleled bedroom floors, arabesque honeycomb filigreed screens flung open to the birds tweeting roosters crowing leaves rustling church bells peeling Saint Michael’s Greek Orthodox School pupils singing car horns honking cacophony. Deliciously diffused light seeps through the open window conjuring up a crimson carpet of crushed rubies. Devoid of demanding garniture or frivolous flotsam and jetsam, passing on the passementerie, the sole artwork in our bedroom is an orange tree captured by Israeli photographer Tal Shochat. Scholar Rebecca Walker educated us at the Remembering Napoléon III Dinner: “Eugénie, Empress of the French, had a fondness for knickknacks.” The unfussy décor of our bedroom would raise her imperial chagrin. A slanted mirror doubles as a reflection of perfection and a television. The perfumed aroma of jasmine and honeysuckle intensifies in the dying heat of a balmy summer day. And so to bed. Looking back, much later, like Frances Scott Fitzgerald’s character John we “remembered that first night as a daze of many colours, of quick sensory impressions, of music soft as a voice in love, and of the beauty of things, lights and shadows, and motions and faces”. Elizabeth Bowen’s line in To The North (1932) haunts us still: “this evening had an airy superurbanity”.

“… and he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills – to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood and to engage in all kinds of artistic crafts.” Exodus 35:31 to 33

(Extract with alternative imagery from the bestseller SABBATH PLUS ONE Jerusalem and Tel Aviv).

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SABBATH PLUS ONE Jerusalem +

Under the Eucalyptus Tree

“Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you by the gazelles and by the does of the field: Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.” Song of Songs 2:7

We’re on a mission so of course it makes sense crossing the Holy Rubicon to reach the place of Christ’s salvific crucifixion, resurrection and ascension. “We are the people of the resurrection!” beams Reverend Andy Rider, Area Dean of Tower Hamlets London. “We are Easter people!” During the post Paschal season, one can almost hear the soaring descant of Regina Coeli from Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. Benjamin Disraeli (Disraeli: A Biography, 1993) believed, “The view of Jerusalem is the history of the world; it is more; it is the history of heaven and earth.” Simon Sebag Montefiore (Jerusalem: The Biography, 2012) concurs, “The history of Jerusalem is the history of the world, but it is also the chronicle of an often penurious provincial town amid the Judean Hills. Jerusalem was once regarded as the centre of the world and today that is more true than ever.” Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion (A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion, 2019) named it the “Eternal Capital”. Teddy Kollek (Mayor and the Citadel: Teddy Kollek and Jerusalem, 1987), Mayor of Jerusalem in the late 20th century, leads with, “Jerusalem has always projected a metaphysical image.” The ancient Babylonian Talmud (circa 500) gets it: “He who has not seen Jerusalem in her splendour has never seen a desirable city in his life.” In Natural History (77) Pliny the Elder exalts Jerusalem to be “… by far the most famous city of the East and not of Judea only”.

Katharina Galor and Hanswulf Bloedhorn open The Archaeology of Jerusalem: From the Origins to the Ottomans (2014) with, “Jerusalem first appears in the written sources as a Canaanite city at the beginning of the second millennium BC.” Moshe Safdie observes in Jerusalem: The Future of the Past (1989), “Jerusalem the Golden is the Jerusalem of yellow-gold limestone.” Henry Van Dyke (Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land, 1908) calls it “a metropolis of infinite human hopes and longings and devotions”. We’re reminded of the words of Paula Fredriksen (When Christians Were Jews: The First Generation, 2018), “It [Jerusalem] was probably the most beautiful city that any of them [Jesus and His followers] had ever seen.” They resonate with Stewart Perone (Jerusalem and Bethlehem, 1965), “Its beauty is bewildering, the accumulated treasure of more than three millennia.” Celestial and terrestrial, natural and supernatural, sacred and secular, universal and personal, Jerusalem is truly the interface of heaven and earth. Jerusalem, the intersection between the then, the now and the not yet. Jerusalem in all your treasured totemic totality, lift up your gates and sing! Rivers clap your hands! Daphne du Maurier writes in her short story The Way of the Cross (1973), “The lights were burning bright in the city of Jerusalem.” They continue to burn bright. Our pilgrimage gathers pace. To repeat the title of singer songwriter Amy Grant’s modern day song of ascents, it’s Better than a Hallelujah.

“And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved; for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be deliverance, as the Lord has said, even among the survivors whom the Lord calls.” Joel 2:32

(Extract with alternative imagery from the bestseller SABBATH PLUS ONE Jerusalem and Tel Aviv).

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SABBATH PLUS ONE Jerusalem + Tel Aviv

Diligent Hands Make Wealth

Achilles James Daunt CBE is not one to rest on his laurels. MD and reinventor of British bookshop chain Waterstone since 2011, back in 1990 the former banker purchased an Edwardian bookshop on Marylebone High Street (incidentally the US Ambassador to the UK Jane Hartley’s favourite London street), stocked it with the best titles, renamed it after himself, and the rest is literary history. The top lit three storey interior is lined with long oak galleries. Stained glass windows and William Morris wallpaper add to the period charm of what is now undoubtedly London’s finest bookshop. There are offshoots in Belsize Park, Cheapside, Hampstead, Holland Park Kentish Town, Oxford and Marlow.

We’re proud to announce Daunt Books Marylebone is the world exclusive stockist of the first book by Lavender’s Blue. You’re getting our dynamic: SABBATH PLUS ONE Jerusalem and Tel Aviv now takes pride of place in the Middle East travel section shelves. It’s about all our favourite places rolled into two: one of the newest and one of the oldest cities in the world. Brought to fruition by the genius of Digitronix, industry leaders in multi disciplinary design and print. Not forgetting Pete R’s invaluable direction. Beyond conventional categorisation, for we are more than mere phantoms, maybe it’s best to quote some readers’ reactions (from Royalty to Archbishopry to Clergy to Society) to the first edition. Time for some laurel resting.

“This is an outstanding achievement. A vivid creative expression of your wide literary interests and your strong visual sense — and particularly for this subject, your personal spiritual values. Being a person of no religion myself, I’m enjoying your quotations from Biblical sources, especially those expressed in 17th century language. Also the well chosen theological and historical quotes from leading writers of today which are thought provoking. Your rich text together with your wonderful illustrations gives the reader so much to understand and to appreciate about the places described. Congratulations! This is a very engaging book for the reader, it feels like the living experience of a journey with the many historical facts, associations and emotions that are stimulated by travel. In many ways your book makes me think of Jan Morris, who is the ‘grand master’ of travel writing — though she doesn’t offer the reader your richness of visual imagery! I should add that I’m also enjoying your Nancy Mitford references and I really love your quote from Min Hogg: ‘Visiting a hot country especially for those who are not native to it reawakens the senses.’ This is so true.”

“Super, you capture the essence of the Holy Land and Presentation A1, your Singular Contribution to Publishing today. The Slip Cover, so enticing as is the Midnight Blue Binding. So many thanks for the mention, and so apt the dedication to Brother and Prince Alfred. Vulcans must have carried you from desk to studio, as I have never seen a publication arrive at such speed, it is the works of you and the God of letters and images. Now congratulations, and press on now with the next Project, you have The Gift!”

“How wonderful, beautiful, how gracious. So with the packaging still on the floor the next hour was spend reading the text and looking at the gorgeous photographs. Thank you SO much it was so kind of you to think of me for such a beautiful book. I look forward to reading more.  I’ve noticed how the Biblical texts seem so comfortable on the page but also how they are vibrant or energy filled almost as if they jump off the page. You have chosen so well and carefully.”

“Just opened the sumptuous tome on Tel Aviv. What fabulous photographs – they really inspire me to visit and confirm all the wonderful things I have heard about the city. I shall study as the nights draw in and dream of sun kissed climes. You are a true artist of the lens! Straight to the top of the pile … after reading.”

“I was blown away by the stunning book … It is beautiful! I am in awe of the clarity and depth of each picture that speaks so vividly they draw you in … And the time, skill and story you have shared through this stunning piece of art! Thank you so so much (I particularly like page 180)!”

“AND – yesterday we opened a parcel with an amazing book in it – Sabbath Plus One is amazing – what a wonderful creation … utterly incredible and what a lovely gift – we were both enthralled. THANK YOU so much for sending us a copy – beyond that I am speechless! Just THANK YOU.”

“An Amazing Work – I really can’t believe it was the fruit of a lay weekend visit. It feels like you really got under the skin of the place – and had great fun in doing so. Your work is already drawing much attention from those coming into my office.”

“A very interesting book – amazing photos taken with an architectural eye. Brought back memories! I see Newtownstewart and Pubble got a mention on page 28!”

“Amazing photography accompanied by your usual descriptive style and excerpts from Scripture too. Wonderful!”

“Super Daunt Books reception! You follow in the paths of H V Morton and Mary McCarthy. Again, press on and on.”

“A total entity onto itself.”

“I like the book title.”

“A beautiful book.”

(Alternative imagery from the bestseller SABBATH PLUS ONE Jerusalem and Tel Aviv).