ADRIAN J BOAS

In 1214, on the Feast Day of Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem was assassinated during a procession in Acre....

Surprise can be a highly effective tactic. The runner in a marathon who stays steadily in the pack, and with a last minute surge suddenly...

Last week I drove up north to show some friends around my castle. It might sound a bit presumptuous, not to say pompous, to refer to it...

I have never had much luck with lotteries. The only time in my childhood when I recall winning a prize, was at a show in the Royal...

In Rome, back in 1977, I saw a screening of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Leaving the cinema with friends at the end of the movie,...

In the 1960s everything became angular – tailored suits, women's "cat-eye" glasses, cars. But I think that the most remarkable example of...

Our minds automatically make a connection between the form and sound of a word and what it represents. If the meaning of the word...

As a heavy drinker (of coffee, that is) I have found solace in a bout of recently published studies that claim that consuming even fairly...

In 1974 a young Japanese adventurer named Norio Suzuki, came upon Hirō Onoda a former intelligence officer with the rank of second...

I first "went to sea" aboard the RMS Orion in September 1952, sailing from Perth to London, then from Southampton to New York on the RMS...

It is said that first impressions are everything, and generally, people desire to come across well in front of strangers. We often...

The "pleasures" of modern air travel are considerable: the sleepless night before, the rush to get to the airport in time, the fear that...

A few years ago, I travelled in south-eastern Spain to give a lecture in the town of Lorca in the Province of Murcia. It has an...

The first car my father owned, the one I recall from my earliest childhood, was a, by then, very aged 1934 Singer 11 Saloon. It was...

For the latrine philosopher, subway prophet, pilgrim, prisoner and pauper, the chief desire is just the same as that of the politician,...

A vast and ever-expanding necropolis known as Givat Shaul (The Hill of Saul) stands at the entrance to Jerusalem on the main...

It is today possible to talk about matters that would once have been regarded as risqué, or simply distasteful; not the sort of thing one...

Over the past few months Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have introduced a highly effective means of frustrating the Israelis, and causing...

If anyone ever re-excavates the site of the Teutonic Order's first headquarters in the town of Akko (medieval Acre) in northern Israel,...

The idea that the modern State of Israel and the medieval Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem share a common destiny is one that has found an...