Miss Brocklehurst on the Nile
This little book is an absolute delight. A detailed diary written with wit and humour. Modern travellers to Egypt will recognise many of Marianne’s comments and observations as she travelled the length of Egypt on board her specially-commissioned dahabeeya.
Bob Partridge, Ancient Egypt Magazine
Miss Brocklehurst on the Nile is the transcript of a fascinating travel diary kept by Marianne Brocklehurst of Macclesfield. In 1873 she arrived in Egypt for a voyage up the Nile (the fashionable winter pastime in the 1870s). She was 40 years old and accompanied by her friend and partner in her photography business, Mary Booth. Travelling with them were Marianne’s trigger-happy nephew Alfred and their resourceful groom George. Money was no problem — she was from one of Macclesfield’s wealthy silk families and daughter of the town’s MP — so in Cairo they hired a boat with a crew of fifteen and set off to the Second Cataract.
Their boat was part of a flotilla of eager sightseers, among them Miss Amelia Edwards, author of A Thousand Miles up the Nile. As they progressed upriver, they visited temples, picnicked in tombs, dug for antiquities, dinner-partied and bartered. And shot (Alfred blazed away at anything that moved). Marianne also indulged in a spot of smuggling, sneaking a mummy and an ancient papyrus out of the country. With her more legally acquired trophies, they formed the basis of what was to become a fine collection at West Park Museum in Macclesfield.
Marianne was a talented artist as well as diarist and some of her sketches and watercolours are reproduced in the book. The diary was given to Macclesfield Museums by her family and it is thanks to Macclesfield Borough Council that we have been able to publish it for the first time.
A fascinating insight into the mechanics of the Victorian Grand Tour.
Kate Chisholm, The Spectator
- cover
- hardback
- dimensions
- 170x120mm, xxiv + 120 pp
- list price
- £14.95
- website price
- £13.50
- ISBN
- 978 1 902173 146