I’m not long back from the best holiday I’ve ever had – a wonderful Nile Cruise.

Having researched what looked like good books to read before I went on holiday, I was really looking forward to reading Red Nile: the biography of the world’s greatest river by Robert Twigger. I started it whilst watching the Nile float by from my sun lounger, dutifully ploughed on, realised I was getting no enjoyment whatsoever from it and wasn’t even getting interesting historical snippets to share with Drew, starting skipping ahead and then gave up altogether. It was just too nice a place to be reading anything that I wasn’t really loving. The fault may well have been all mine, but this is the kind of book I usually love. I think the problem for me was that it didn’t follow either the geography or the history of the river and just seemed to hop about aimlessly.

So instead I sank blissfully into re-reading Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie, because frankly you just have to read that really don’t you, when you’re moared up next to the Cataract hotel in Aswan where she apparently started writing it?

Having been to see the Tutankhamun exhibition at the O2 in 2008 and bought in the exhibition shop Howard Carter and the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun by HVF Winstone (which I really enjoyed reading) I was delighted to be able to go to Howard Carter’s house in the Valley of the Kings, to see how he lived when he made his wonderful discovery. It was then overwhelming to be able to stand in Tutankhamun’s tomb with just Drew and the mummy and no-one else there at all. The unbelievable emptiness of all of the tombs and temples, which is dreadful for the Egyptian people, turned out to give us the most amazing experience. There were less tourists than there had been since the 1880s and we really did have the place to ourselves (so please go to Egypt!).

As I strained back looking out of the window as the Nile disappeared into the distance on the flight home, I consoled myself by settling down for the next five hours to read Howard Carter by TGH James. I had bought it that morning in the Luxor Museum shop having stared marvelling at the golden calf, Tutankhamum’s bed and other artefacts from his tomb that I didn’t even know were in the museum. It’s an excellent read and by an eminent archaeologist so you know you’re getting an accurate and academic account, whilst it’s a really engaging read too. Finishing it after I was back in the UK enabled me to somehow extend the magical experience that was the Nile just that little bit longer.