‘A History of Palestine in Twelve Photographs’

Photography is an underused resource in the study of modern Palestine. Photographers, both Western and local, suffered from religious, political and Orientalist prejudices — but their work provides valuable evidence, not least of the much-contested events of 1948-49.

In The Bride, Roger Hardy uses both photography and oral history to illuminate the story of Palestine from 1850 to 1948. Photographers were drawn to Palestine by a special quality of light which threw into sharp relief the walls and cobbled streets of Jerusalem’s Old City, the white apartment blocks of the new metropolis of Tel Aviv, the dust and rubble of houses blown up by soldiers during the rebellion of the 1930s.

‘A stunning book that captures the modern history of Palestine through extraordinary photographs and the words of the Arabs, Zionists and Britons who lived through the tragedy of Palestine and the birth of Israel.’ Eugene Rogan, Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History, University of Oxford

Roger Hardy was for more than twenty years a Middle East analyst with the BBC World Service. He is the author of The Poisoned Well: Empire and Its Legacy in the Middle East, and is an associate fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford.

The Bride: An Illustrated History of Palestine, 1850-1948 is published on 5 May by Mount Orleans Press, in hardback and paperback editions.