The Enduring Middle East: In The Footsteps Of David Roberts. Plates By Joseph Maxwell Scott.

This book celebrates the enduring beauty of the East by retracing the journey made by Scottish painter David Roberts in 1839. It includes an essay by Mark Muller Stuart QC, international mediator and Executive Director of Beyond Borders, about his and Scottish landscape artist Joseph Maxwell Stuart's journey through Egypt, Jordan, the Holy Land and Syria one hundred and seventy years later. It also contains accounts of earlier writers and travelers who passed along the same way. Rich archival sources are combined upon the pages, from the poetic journals of writers such as Robert Byron and Gustave Flaubert, the travelogue of Moroccan explorer Ibn Battuta, the memoirs of T.E. Lawrence and the diary of David Roberts, among others. Beyond Borders hopes the book rekindles interest in visiting this most beguiling of regions, despite the uncertainties and political upheavals of the Arab Spring.

This book was commissioned by Beyond Borders to accompany its exhibition held at the Mall Galleries in London in June 2012 of the same title. The exhibition and book feature a new collection of paintings and plates by Scottish artist Joseph Maxwell Stuart.