Philip Mansel

Philip Mansel is a historian of France and the Middle East. He has lived in Paris, Beirut and Istanbul, and has frequently visited Aleppo. In 2012 he won the London Library Life in Literature award and became a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres in 2013. Aleppo: The Rise and Fall of a World City is a sequel to his two best-selling books on other mixed cities of the Middle East: Constantinople: City of the World's Desire (1995), on Istanbul; and Levant: Splendour and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean (2010), on Smyrna, Alexandria and Beirut. He is also the author of The Eagle in Splendour (I.B.Tauris).