Raphael Cormack has a PhD from Edinburgh in Arabic theatre. He is the co-editor of ‘The Book of Khartoum’ (Comma Press)
The Egyptian film industry came to dominate the Arab world – and poster makers did much to secure its hold on the popular imagination
Van Leo’s portraits capture a lost world and are in a class of their own, writes Raphael Cormack
A century after the discovery of his tomb, our interest in the teenage pharaoh says more about the present than the past
An important survey of abstract Arab art throws up questions about the influences swirling around in the post-war period
Most traces of the city’s early 20th-century nightlife have now disappeared. Only the shells of former casinos and theatres hint at this bygone era
A century of writing by and about artists from the Arab world is full of debates that still resonate today
Surrealism in Egypt was an international affair that lost out to more nationalist art movements
The death of Cairo's self-styled ‘friend of researchers’ feels like another great loss at an already difficult time
Review of a groundbreaking study of overlooked 20th-century scholars
