The Lovely Land

British author Ethel Mannin has been to Jordan prior to the journey on which her book is based, and she freely compares and draws from all her trips in her thorough examination of Jordan, which includes Israel and Palestine.

Her views are rampantly pro-Jordan, and pro-Palestine, and while she maintains she is not anti-Jew, she is very much anti-Israel. In this stance she is no doubt falling in line with those Jordanian authorities that made her trip possible and extended all kinds of courtesies and assistance to her travels. Unfortunately this taints the reading of this book for me, as the reader can just see every chapter angling towards the inevitable. I am completely neutral in the Palestine/Israel argument, and tend to consider both sides significantly flawed if their positions, but I am not particularly interested in reading a strong bias from one side of the other.

Certainly it is an extensive review of all things Jordanian. Mannin visits all the common tourist spots (although not all on this trip, as she references earlier visits) and many that far more rarely receive tourists. She makes an concerted effort to explain all facets of history and culture, lifestyle and opinions of the Arabs, although for me this was a fairly dry read. The author is clearly well read, and has researched thoroughly for she quotes other works extensively (excessively also perhaps).

There are many references to King Hussein's book Uneasy Lies the Head as well as frequently referring to other well know authors including Lankester Harding, TE Lawrence, Gertrude Bell, Glubb Pasha, Charles Doughty & Muhammad Asad. If I had a dollar for every time we learning what Lankester Harding thought about something I would come out ahead of my purchase price by some amount! It is fairly repetitive in parroting Mr Harding. To be fair, Harding is somewhat of an authority in Jordan - as he is a British archaeologist, who was the director of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan from 1936 to 1956.

In the course of the book Mannin writes of Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Jericho, the Bedouin, Aqaba, Petra, Madaba & Mt Nebo, Umm al Jamal, Amman, Umm Qais and Jerash. She also visits a forestry establishment, a Jordanian wedding, a desert farm, the high dam at East Ghor Canal and the New York World Fair (1965) where she waxes lyrical about the Jordanian Pavilion.

In the end this book was a 2.5 star read - it has pockets of interest, but not enough for me. Rounded down. A rare letdown from the Travel book Club publishers.