A poet and adventurer and a leading Egyptologist discuss the past and present of the fabled River Nile, a source of religion, life, stories, the script we use for writing, and the languages we speak.

Robert Twigger led the first exhibition to cross the Egyptian Sahara on foot, and in Red Nile: A Biography of the World’s Greatest River, he turns his attention to the river that gives life to a large swathe of Egypt.  Twigger, winner of the Newdigate Prize for poetry and the Somerset Maugham Award for Literature, tells the story of the river from ancient times to the Arab Spring, recounting the most colourful stories in its history.

Dr Toby Wilkinson is one of the leading Egyptologists of his generation and winner of the Hessel-Tiltman Prize for The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt. In The Nile: A Journey Downriver Through Egypt’s Past and Present, he tells how the Nile continually brought life to an ancient civilization and how it sustained its successors. It is a story of ancient gods, pharaohs, emperors, adventurers, archaeologists and historians, whose fates were all entwined with the river.