Twigger is an excellent story teller with a great story to tell which he does with brio!A true biography of the longest river in the world.I am an avid reader with a good memory and interest in History and I must say he wrote a history that I was not fully aware of.Fascinating personalities populate his book, with biographical information I knew very little about and which I found fascinating.Personages such as: Pharaoh Menes, Cleopatra, King Herod,Mary Mother of Jesus,Hypatia, Ibn al-Haythem, Anwar the Druze, Maimonides, Duke of Abruzzi, Flaubert and Kuchuk Hanem, Samuel Baker, Jean Baptiste Marchand, Hiram Maxim, Iroquois Indians on the Nile, Ferdinand de Lesseps, Churchill, Orde Wingate, Wilfred Thesiger, Agatha Christi, Sadat.This fascinating list of engaging historical personages just fills the pages of this history with mesmerizing information. This is just one aspect of this engaging history. It is a grand sweep of the historical Nile and a geography on an exceptionally erudite level.The best book I have read in two or three years!