Open Day at Eland Publishing in December 2017
It is late November 2017, and I am with Barnaby Rogerson, author and expert on North Africa, whose latest book, In Search of Ancient North Africa – A History in Six Lives, has just been published.
This is the second part of our interview and the focus is on travel writing in general and on Eland, the publishing house where he is a director.
We are in the Eland hub – books are everywhere.
Barnaby Rogerson (in the white shirt) with Nigel Barley (author of The Innocent Anthropologist). The photograph was taken at the Eland Open Day in early December 2017.
The day is sunny, the bus ride easy, and the grey door is exactly where it should be. There are no signs … just a button to press, and then a set of narrow grey stairs to follow in a spiral to the top.
I climb the smooth steps and at the top a door is open. Just inside a tall, elegant, eager dog waits to say hello. Beside the dog is a slightly less-leggy man. He is, as I presume, Barnaby Rogerson, author of In Search of Ancient North Africa – a History in Six Lives, and one of the directors of Eland Publishing.
Behind them both is a book-filled den.
In Search of Ancient North Africa (A History in Six Lives) by Barnaby Rogerson
“And though the world’s population keeps expanding, the number of individuals who know the stories of their own lands diminishes every year.”
Barnaby Rogerson in the introduction to In Search of Ancient North Africa
This is a book about forgotten origins and outcomes. Through six lives it shows us legends, families, survival, and the importance of memory. It gives the north of Africa a fresh polish.
The Phraser 