Irma Kurtz sets off from her central London home to follow Mark Twain’s route from Gibraltar to Tangier. She meets the distinguished American novelist and diarist John Hopkins (author of Tangier Diaries and Tangier Buzzless Flies) and discusses the 'Beat' generation who found Morocco so appealing. During the 1950s and 60s, writers from Britain and the United States including Paul Bowles, William Burroughs and Tennessee Williams, flocked to Tangier for a high-society life of social and creative freedom. On arriving in Gibraltar she browses in the eccentric Garrison Library, meets the Rock’s famous apes and finds out about everyday life from the new Governor Sir Francis Richards. In Tangier, Irma explores the legendary Caves of Hercules, visits the old Medina to discover the secrets of Moroccan bookbinding and samples the bohemian Tangier café life.
In the second show of the series, Irma meets Daniel Vitaglione, author of A Literary Guide to Provence, who reflects on the literature of Marseilles and the south of France. Irma samples Marseilles' most famous fish dish bouillabaisse, and enjoys dessert with the owners of the city's most exotic chocolatière. In the footsteps of Mark Twain, she goes to the Chateau d'If to discover where Alexandre Dumas set his classic novel The Count of Monte Cristo. Sociologist, editor of the journal Mediterranee and writer Kenneth Brown dissects the huge mix of people in the city, and Irma finds out why Marseilles is crazy about football, at the home team's club, and famous for fish, with stallholders at the fishing market.
Irma meets best-selling crime novelist Donna Leon, creator of the Brunetti thrillers, to ask why she sets her best-selling books in the dark and secret streets of Venice. The contemporary Casanova scholar Maurice Agosti takes Irma to the sites of some of the great Venetian lover's liaisons. Irma discovers what life is really like for a gondolier and reflects on the story of Venice's Jewish Ghetto in the city where the term was invented. Author and Venetian historian Alessandro Gianatassio takes Irma back in time in the lavish Ducal Palace. Irma also pays a visit to the Guggenheim Museum and Rialto Market.
Writer and social commentator Alan Epstein explains why he loves to do As the Romans Do at some of the city's most famous sites. Rome's flamboyant Anglican chaplain and author Jonathan Boardman talks to Irma about his enormous passion for the city and sneaks her in to the local clerical outfitters. Miriam Tomponzi, Rome's most glamorous private investigator, reveals some of the tricks of her trade. Irma also visits the Keats and Shelley House on the Spanish Steps and attends a mass said by the Pope at St Peter's.
Irma meets renowned novelist Raffaele La Capria (Capri and No Longer Capri) on the legendary island, home to Graham Greene, Compton Mackenzie and other writers lured by the island's beauty and myths. In Naples, Neapolitan tour guide Antonella Rizzo, introduces Irma to the superstitions and miracles of life in the city; American travel writer, Michael Pauls, explains how the Neapolitans' historical bad luck has shaped their fatalism and under the shadow of Vesuvius scientist Giovanni Orsi at the Vesuvius Observatory explains how and why they are monitoring the activity of the infamous volcano 24 hours a day. Irma bids farewell to Italy in the company of the words of the 17th Century Neapolitan fairy-tale writer, Giambattista Basile.
Mark Twain arrived in Athens only to spend 11 days anchored off the coast in quarantine. He managed to escape under cover of darkness and was rewarded with the spectacle of the Acropolis by moonlight. Irma has a less dramatic, but still enjoyable, visit with the young English writer Sofka Zinovieff. She visits a little Byzantine church on Mount Lykavettos, travels on the new metro and dodges the Athens traffic to meet the celebrated author of On the Misery of Being Greek, Nicos Dimou. Famous cookery writer and veteran of two Athenian husbands, Diana Farr Louis, then discusses the Greek way of living, loving and eating with Irma. Finally, in the company of the travel writer Dana Facaros, Irma escapes to the islands and attends the last religious festival of the year - the feast of Agios Nektarios on the Isle of Aegina. On her return to Athens she reflects on the contradictions and joys of modern day Greece.
Irma is delighted to be finally in the 'East' as she skitters along the Bosphorus in a speed boat to land on the banks of the Golden Horn. She pays a nostalgic visit to the Red Mosque of Haghia Sophia and goes to meet the Irish American writer and Istanbul historian John Freely (Inside the Seraglio). After sampling a Nargileh pipe, Irma drifts on to meet Buket Uzuner (The Sound of Fishsteps and Mediterranean Waltz), a thoroughly modern Istanbul woman and best-selling Turkish author. After a night of belly dancing and darkness in the famous Roman Cistern, the poet and travel writer John Ash (A Byzantine Journey), lightens Irma's mood with a shopping trip to the Spice Market and Grand Bazaar.
In Damascus, Irma meets Brigid Keenan, author of Damascus: Hidden Treasures of the Old City. Together they explore the hidden world of beauty and the ancient treasures of the oldest city in the world. Author Ammar Abdul Hamid takes Irma on a visit to the last of the ancient Damascus Hakawate, or storytellers, and they discuss the importance of literature in Syrian culture. Irma also catches a glimpse behind the doors of the Umayyad Mosque with teacher Tala Tlass, who reveals the history of the sacred site. Following Twain’s route into the desert, Irma comes across the ruined Roman city of Palmyra, the most impressive archaeological site in all of Syria and arguably one of the best in the world. Back in Damascus, American writer Elaine Imady (Postcripts from Palisades), speaks of the experience of bridging the culture gap between her homeland and adopted country.
Irma meets Batya Gur, the Israeli thriller writer who sets her novels in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and also hears the other side of the Jerusalem experience from Liana Badr, a Jerusalem-born Palestinian writer. With Irma, she returns to the childhood home she was forced to flee during the Six-Day War. Following in Mark Twain’s footsteps, Irma visits the Dead Sea and tracks down the hotel he stayed at in Jerusalem. She takes a tour of the old city with guide Ali Mohammed Jiddah, a Palestinian who spent 17 years in prison for his bombing of Jerusalem, and together they visit the famous Via Dolorosa. In a city holy to several religions, Irma visits the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the most sacred Christian site in the world, and the famed Wailing Wall. Reverting to her day job as an agony aunt, Irma exchanges professional tips with Ruthie Blum (agony aunt of the Jerusalem Post) to discuss the everyday woes of a city whose political problems are so often major world news.
