Twists and turns through history

Jeremy Seal is a Turkophile, but don’t look to him for a grand history of the republic or lives of the Ottoman sultans. That is not his way. He prefers to approach things obliquely and, in particular, to come at them from an angle dictated by chance and beginning with a discovery. His first book, A Fez of the Heart, looked at Turkey and Turks through the prism of their most iconic piece of clothing: the fez. His previous book, Santa: A Life, was decided upon when he discovered that St Nicholas was a Turk. And now another discovery: the Meander.

We all know the idea of meandering. The word, with its sense of twisting and turning, and also of being convoluted, of going slowly, taking time, was used by ancient Greeks and Romans. It was inspired by the course of a river in Anatolia, one that Seal assumed was like the Styx and the Rubicon, lost to time.