Clive James' Postcard from

Postcard from Cairo

In an occasional series that has included reports from Shanghai, Rome, Sydney and Los Angeles, Clive James makes his first trip to the Middle East and finds a city of opposites: liberalism and fundamentalism, opulence and poverty, ancient and modern. James visits the pyramids ("they're exactly as advertised: big, pointed buildings"), tries to buy a camel and talks to Omar Sharif about his love for Cairo's traditions of tolerance and cosmopolitanism.