Bethlehem: Biography of a Town (Paperback)

A lovely personal adventure through the history of Bethlehem from its origins up to the present day. Blincoe captures the continuities and contradictions, the myths and the history of one of the world's most famous towns with real flair - PETER FRANKOPAN, author of Silk Roads

[Bethlehem] brings within reach 11,000 years of history, centering on the beloved town's unique place in the world. Blincoe's love of Bethlehem is compelling, even as he does not shy away from the complexities of its chronicle - PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER

[Bethlehem] illuminates both the past and the present of the Middle East with countless instances of fantastic achievement and equally terrible human folly - YOTAM OTTOLENGHI, co-author of Jerusalem

A book by a talented chronicler who lovingly paints the city's many contradictions and bewildering complexity. Highly readable and informative, it leaves the reader not only with a profound admiration for this city of extremes and its resilient inhabitants who have endured such hardships, but also with a deep lament at the current suffering of the people of Bethlehem - RAJA SHEHADEH , author of Where the Line Is Drawn

An exuberant and erudite journey into the real Bethlehem. Each page leads the reader down new and fascinating tangents of history, cuisine, and personal anecdote, each time somehow finding its way back to Bethlehem and its habit of standing at the centre of world affairs - JACOB NORRIS, author of Land of Progress: Palestine in the Age of Colonial

Majestic . . . [a] book of many marvellous things - John Lewis-Stempel, S magazine

A thorough and entertaining account - Tibor Fischer, Standpoint

Masterful - Emma Williams, Spectator

Blincoe's thoroughness is nothing short of impressive . . . Blincoe offers a biography so vividly imagined that I jumped when my phone buzzed, interrupting my reverie of Nabatean temples . . . The reward is in the lush prose and personal accounts. Blincoe is a joyful writer, well suited to the task of evoking place with passages . . . transporting the reader with mouthwatering specificity. Blincoe handles his own narratives of Bethlehem delicately, like a horticulturist pruning beloved orchids, following its many iterations through the rise and fall of civilizations . . . More than anything, his love for the place leaps off the page; for all its chronicling of incursions and defeat, this is ultimately a book about hope - Hala Alyan, The New York Times Book Review

Part history, part travelogue and memoir, it reads like an extended love letter to a place on the brink . . . a highly discursive, frequently amusing, often tragic but always accessible history - Guardian

Blincoe proves an erudite and evocative guide to a city whose place in biblical history has proved to be more of a curse than a blessing - John Preston, Mail on Sunday