Blog - Page 3 of 3 - SOMEWHERE WONDERFUL

Wondrous Winter

Posted on 8th September 2017 by Jeremy Seal

Anybody who has seen Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s 2014 Palme D’Or winner Winter Sleep, a wrenchingly acute portrayal of an ageing hotelier in the depths of a Cappadocian January, will have been enthralled by this Turkish director’s Chekhovian vision. What it won’t have done is make them rush to book a…

Timewarp Turkey

Posted on 22nd June 2017 by Jeremy Seal

Blame the heat, but I’m currently suffering from an aggravated case of goulette envy – I have adopted the French form in the hope it will go some way to eradicate the undeserving pronunciation abuses that dog these lovely Turkish traditional boats – even though I spent a week on…

Keeping Turkish Tourism Ticking

Posted on 8th February 2017 by Jeremy Seal

During a recent research trip to Turkey, I learned that this holiday season looks like being as dreadful as the last, with many hotels, travel agencies, restaurants and bars sure to close and a great many livelihoods lost. The sector is realistic about its prospects and is not the…

Saying it Right: Gulets

Posted on 5th January 2017 by Jeremy Seal

Goulette/Goélette (Fr.): schooner At a time like this, when Turkey is in such turmoil, there seems precious little point in sweating the small stuff. Like pronunciation. Except that, unlike the assassinations and the massacres, and the imprisonment by a shamefully craven judiciary of every dissenting voice, however original…

Another Turkish Tour Operator Closes, But Its Spirit Lives On

Posted on 2nd September 2016 by Jeremy Seal

Some of you will have heard that Westminster Classic Tours, a knowledgeable specialist tour operator with a glorious niche product, announced yesterday that it is to cease trading at the end of this season. The small-group cultural gulet (Turkish schooner) tour company went down in characteristic style; which is to…

The Prospect of Being Published in Turkey

Posted on 18th March 2016 by Jeremy Seal

Next month my first book (now approaching the 21st anniversary of its original appearance in English) finally sees its publication in the land that is its subject. A Fez of the Heart: Travels Around Turkey in Search of a Hat (London, Picador) becomes, simply, Fes (Istanbul, Koton Yayincilik). Which, given…

Life in the Ruins

Posted on 11th February 2016 by Jeremy Seal

With all the dire news coming out of Turkey, and this summer’s tourism prospects in tatters, what better time to recount a little tale, if only to remind all those holidaying elsewhere of what they’ll be missing? Some will have heard of Ara Guler, a distinguished Turkish-Armenian photographer now in…

Turkey? At A Time Like This?

Posted on 12th January 2016 by Jeremy Seal

Only last night a friend asked me whether Istanbul was safe to visit; he was planning to take the family in April. I was busy putting together enthusiastic recommendations this morning when the news broke that a suicide bomber, Hell-bent on Paradise, had exploded his vile self near Istanbul’s Sultanahmet…

Welcome to Turkey…

Posted on 31st December 2015 by Jeremy Seal

Welcome to Turkey…. … where suicide bombers and trigger-happy anti-aircraft gunners are busy stirring up mayhem. A country whose security forces have been accused of complicity with Islamic State in northern Syria, Turkey’s immediate neighbour, by allowing passage, and even supplying arms, to jihadis and facilitating sales of their oil;…

Subscribe to our Mailing List