ADRIAN J BOAS

There is something particularly invigorating about going to the market. It is an intensive and intimate encounter with our fellows, one...

On the train from Poitiers to Charles de Gaulle, I had hoped to do some work, but the tabletop was sticky with something someone had...

"Safety in numbers" is an expression that often proves false. It is a fact that we feel safer in what might be a situation of potential...

Lenin, Stalin and I once had places named after us. With the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, Leningrad and Stalingrad reverted...

There is some basis for the romantic aura that fiction occasionally accords to my profession. We actually do on occasion undergo the sort...

In 1941 while on leave in Tripoli, my father, then serving in the Royal Australian Artillery in Syria, ran into his brother who took him...

Israel has almost no equestrian statues. There is one, of Alexander Zaid, a member of the pre-state Jewish defence organisation called...

Human progress comes at a price and many of the scientific efforts that are made with the aim of improving our lives result in the...

Walking along the north shoreline, we came upon a dead sea turtle on the sand, seemingly intact and beautiful, hiding, but for the...

We tend to identify ourselves with our professions. If somebody asks you who you are, after stating your name your first reaction will...

Symbolism is a powerful vehicle for getting a message across to the masses. When Bulgarian troops reached the walls of Constantinople...

Sometimes it is difficult to see what is right in front of us. In 1991, a computer programmer named Tom Baccei and an artist named Cheri...

In 1857, a windmill was built on the hill to the west of the walled city of Jerusalem, in what would become Mishkenot Sha'ananim, the...

On the occasional days when the hum of the traffic on Azza Street is subdued, the chimes from bells of the Greek monastery in the Valley...

Invented words: fine sentiments, tragic statements or self-centred and half-incoherent ramblings: words put into otherwise silent mouths...

We might think that the past, having already taken place, cannot change. But in fact, it is constantly changing, or to be more precise,...

As a child, I liked nothing more than to surreptitiously sneak my favourite cat into the bedroom at night, something that my father did...

It is impossible to avoid making decisions. From the moment we open our eyes in the morning we are faced with the need to decide. Some...

Like other Arab countries, Saudi Arabia frequently condemns Israel. Yet, a recent report by the United Arab Emirate news website...

In his poem Musée des Beaux Arts, W.H. Auden observed what viewers of a famous painting by Bruegel the Elder can hardly fail to notice...