An Armchair Traveller's History of Istanbul

Istanbul, City of Forgetting and Remembering, by Richard Tillinghast, is a travel book in the classic tradition of Robert Byron, Evelyn Waugh, Patrick Leigh Fermor, and Jan Morris. The author is an old Istanbul hand who first visited there fifty years ago and has seen it change over the years from a provincial backwater to today's vibrant metropolis. His introduction to the city's art and architecture, culture, history, literature, and cuisine ranges widely and knowledgeably through the city's Byzantine, Ottoman, and Turkish roots, all of it framed by the author's own voyages of discovery. With Tillinghast as a guide through Istanbul's cafes, mosques, palaces and taverns, and along its streets and waterways, readers will feel at home both in the Constantinople of bygone days and on the streets of the modern town. His Istanbul is a densely layered place of deep memory, where the ghosts of Byzantine emperors, theologians, and courtesans rub elbows with Ottoman sultans, poets, and dervishes.