
The Irish-American physicist, academic & traveller John Freely wrote more than sixty lively books on travel, history & science before he died in 2017, aged 90. But It was Istanbul, where he emigrated with his family in 1960 to take up a post teaching physics at the American Robert College, that turned him into a writer. His first book, ` Strolling Through Istanbul`
- written with his fellow academic Hilary Sumner-Boyd
- was an instant success when it was published in 1972 & has never been out of print since. With the exception of Oguz, so thin that he was known as The Ghost because he barely cast a shadow, everyone in John Freely`s rumbustious memoir, including the author himself, is larger than life. Bohemian Istanbul was a haven for myriad misfits who found their feet in the city. Clamorous, glamorous, eccentric, cosmopolitan & frequently outrageous, they included the `berserker` Peter Pfeiffer, a resourceful exile with three passports; Aliye Berger, the beautiful queen of bohemian Pera; the writer James Baldwin &, fleetingly, the future Pope John XXIII. This elegy for a lost world encapsulates the flavour of their daily life & nightly excesses. Well lubricated with lemon vodka & Hill Cocktails served by Sumner-Boyd`s gloomy housekeeper, ` Monik Depressive`, the Freely crowd weave their way from the Galatasaray fish market & the taverns of Cicek Pasaji to the Russian restaurant Rejans, & frequently on to the Freely household on the Bosphorus hills, where a party will soon be in full swing & eggnog flowing freely. ` Stamboul Ghosts` is lllustrated with Ara Guler`s poignant black-&-white photographs, which make of Freely`s beloved city an evocative stage-set.