When Peter Stothard, editor of the Times Literary Supplement, finds himself stranded in Alexandria in the winter of 2010 after his flight to South Africa has been cancelled, he sets out to explore a nation on the brink of revolution. Guided by two native Egyptians, Stothard traces his own life-long interest in the history of Cleopatra, and his repeated failure to write the book about her that he had always wanted to. In Alexandria, part memoir and part travel literature, Stothard was the sights and sounds of the ancient city to reconnect with the formative experiences of his childhood education, and his literary career. Melancholy and sometimes humorous, Alexandria offers a first-hand glimpse into the fracturing police state of Hosni Mubarak, before the uprising in Tahir Square changed everything.

Finding himself in Alexandria in the winter of 2010, Peter Stothard, editor of the TLS and former editor of The Times, is forced to contemplate his past in circumstances he does not expect. The aftermath of a bombing and the onset of the Arab Spring place obstacles in his plans to complete a long-delayed biography of Cleopatra. Minded by two guides, whose motives are mixed and mysterious, he visits Alexandria's ancient sites and revisits places and people from his own life, an Essex childhood among military engineers, Latin and Greek at Oxford and journalism high and low in London. In this extraordinary book, part memoir and part travel literature, written against the background of the fracturing police state of Egypt, a man and a woman from the author's school days are as pressing as the political minders of today.