I first visited the Near East when posted to Cyprus in September 1955 as part of my two year National Military Service. It did not take me long to discover how quick and easy it was to fly from Nicosia Airport to Beirut, Cairo and Tel Aviv, using my Christmas leave to spend time in Israel/Palestine and then getting myself locally demobilized from the army in May 1956 in order to visit Cairo and Beirut. All this left a lasting impression for many different sets of reasons. One was certainly the politics of the immediate post-war period with Israel emerging out of the 1948 war and Egypt moving from qualified independence via the 1952 Revolution to the final departure of British troops in the summer of 1956. All events so much more exciting than the rather dull English politics of the late Winston Churchill/Antony Eden period. With everything becoming more intense as a result of President Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal in July 1956 and the misguided Anglo-French attack of October/November just after I had arrived in Oxford for my three years of undergraduate studies.