Selected articles
Oxford Literary Festival
March 31, 2025
Oxford Martin School: Lecture Theatre
Travel writer and historian Barnaby Rogerson looks back at the reasons for the 1,400-year divide between Sunni and Shia and how it has shaped and continues to shape the Middle East.
Jaipur Literature Festival 2025
January 31 and February 1, 2025
Cheriton Talks
February 22, 2025
St Michael’s Church, Cheriton in Hampshire
The Sherborne Travel Writing Festival 2025
April 12, 2025
The Houthi are Highlanders
Until a few months ago, the Houthi were an obscure footnote to the complex history of the Arabian peninsular, but now due to their habit of firing rockets at ships using the Red Sea … they are very much at the centre of everyone’s attention.
Reading Out Loud
I still cherish my memories when the thrill of the story was in fantastic contrast to the close, protective warmth of the person reading to you
Pilgrims to the Mountain
The carvings of gods and heroes that King Antiochus had commissioned to adorn this mountain have now been weathered by two thousand years of winter snow and the fierce heat of summer.
Into the West: an island off an island off an island
The sea water moans as if some vast submarine monster lies chained to the sea floor and has been struggling for a thousand years to break free.
Dervla Murphy (1931-2022)
Whatever the theologians might say about heaven being in a state of union with God, I knew that it consisted of an infinite library; and eternity was simply what enabled one to read uninterruptedly for ever
With Don McCullin to the Frontier
it was like winning the prize in a travel competition, the chance to work alongside Britain’s most celebrated war-journalist and photographer, who had himself travelled with many of my literary heroes – such as Norman Lewis and Bruce Chatwin.
Gobekli-Tepe: The Oldest Temple on Earth?
So what was Gobekli-tepe? The stones have already been linked with aliens, refugees from the drowned island of Atlantis, Noah's flood, the lost paradise of Eden and more plausibly as places of astronomical observation.
Memorial address for Alida Harvie
For the beautiful young Alida was warmly embraced by Lloyd George, beamed at by Mr Baldwin, Ramsay Macdonald bestowed a wintry smile, the be-monocled Austern Chamberlain offered a more formal salute and even Mr Winston Churchill gave her a puckish smile.
Funeral address for Keith Rogerson
Though enchanted by the sea, he was not a natural cog within any system. When they shared a cabin together, Andrew Waugh remembers how my father used to ‘lose’ a portion of his paperwork by posting them into a crack he had opened into the metal bulkhead.
China Tea in Gibraltar
For a skilled submariner could piggy-back his way through any surveillance, by waiting patiently and then tagging its way along by following (a bit like a limpet) underneath a noisy ship.
My Mother / Kathy's Youth
... on one memorable occasion we arrived home to find her racing around the garden in her car, apparently trying to run down my father
Spirit of Place
He remembered with documentary accuracy what an indifferent, if not bored and shirty, student he had been as both boy and young man, only interested in music, films, cigarettes, booze and girls.
Observing the Baring family
The first Lord Ashburton was a brilliant young diplomat who won over the hostile society of colonial America after the 1812 war and was arguably the first to establish the special relationship, sealing a new style of peace-making by taking an American girl home to be his wife.
Memorial address for Nico Rogerson, 1943-2017
Nico was always active, as close to Peter Pan as any mortal I have met. He lived life to the full, wonderfully alive to the moment, and forever charmed by the prospect of the next adventure.
John Baring - Lord Ashburton
John was knighted twice, built two country houses, was married twice, served as the Chairman of two great British institutions and helped establish two Country Operas. He had worked for the Prince of Wales and was a personal friend of the Queen. It is not a record that is likely to be equalled.
People of the Gardens: Five generations of the Rochford Family
Whether for real or in their imagination they looked back to a 14th-century heyday when they were in possession of slender tower-castles in the West of Ireland