Raphael Cormack

At​ this year’s International Book Fair in Cairo, I met a bookseller who promised me he had a full run of a 15-part early 20th-century Arabic translation of a work by Michel Saunière entitled Flamberge. At 11.30 the next morning I was ushered into the living room of the third-floor flat that served as his storeroom. The flat had the usual contents – comfy chairs, a desk, a...