ADRIAN J BOAS

In his book Mornings in Mexico*, D.H. Lawrence gave an enlightening description of the tanning industry as carried out by the native...

A city under siege is better than a city awaiting siege. Under siege people know what they must do. They are occupied in defending...

Another of my father's childhood stories is of when he initiated the expedition of a small group of fellow cub scouts, he being the...

City walls are like the wrappings gifts come in - rarely as exciting as their contents, though sometimes, in which case they inevitably...

My mother, who delighted in talking about her childhood, often spoke of the hardships her family underwent during the Great Depression,...

In the early sixth century BC the so-called Great Amphictyonic League, an association of Greek tribes founded for the protection and...

I have a great affinity for William Louis Calver, the intrepid amateur archaeologist whose reputation was such that he was occasionally...

In constructing the shells of the Sydney Opera House, the Danish architect, Jørn Utzon claims having resolved a seemingly insurmountable...

This year it was butterflies, then moths and there was a brief threat of locusts moving north through the Arabian Peninsula. It was, we...

One of my favourites among my father's childhood stories was about an acquaintance of his who "borrowed" some dynamite from the...

I have seen the bloated bodies of the dead following a battle and it is something I will never forget, but if asked what is the most...

Henry Reed produced one of the most poignant poems of the Second World War, a war which, unlike the Great War, was not known for...

Where I grew up we called those tiny glass projectiles "cats’ eyes", "American alleys" and "tom bowlers". Elsewhere they went by many...

I follow no guru, and while I have great admiration and respect for some people, I have no heroes. I did have a hero once, the...

I am a lover of nature, and as such, a lover of many forms of both animal and plant life, with a few exceptions, particularly among the...

Most of us have the capacity to see, but we are so used to what we see that we rarely are able to really appreciate it. In a recent video...

The narrow path along the side of my grandmother’s house was planted with tall acanthus plants which I remember disliking and avoiding as...

Maritime pollution has reached catastrophic proportions. At Catania, Sicily in 2003, a report of the United Nations Environment Programme...

As I was only about three at the time, I am not at all certain that this is a real memory. Perhaps it was something I was told or...

In 1971 I spent a number of weeks living in a fortress. It consisted of a central massive bunker constructed of great blocks of large,...