My producer sits solemnly atop a camel, a microphone dangling between its legs, recording the sound of camel hoof on sand. This is what the BBC does properly
If you sleep in St Catherine's Monastery, you have to get up at 2am to make it to the summit of Mount Sinai in time for dawn. It took us a couple of hours' stiff walking to get to the end of the camel track and then roughly an hour's climbing to cover the final leg. The moon was so bright you could pick out almost every stone on the path, and at about 6am the light came rolling in from the east, curling into the desert valleys. There was quite a crowd at the summit - including a group of South Korean Christians and their pastor, singing raucous hymns - but it was still one of those rare and cherishable moments when I realise how lucky I am to have a profession that actually pays me to do things many other people dream of. I was researching a history of the Jewish people for Radio 4, and, on our way to see the spot where Moses received the Ten Commandments, my producer hired a camel and sat solemnly on top with the microphone dangling between its legs, recording the authentic sound of camel hoof on sand. This is the sort of thing the BBC does properly.
Mount Sinai was about the only place we did find any crowds; Hebron, where Abraham is said to be buried in the Tomb of the Patriarchs, was under curfew because of an attempted rocket attack on a nearby settlement; and when we took a morning off to explore the Arab fishing town which was once the crusader stronghold of Acre, we were set upon by traders who had not seen a tourist for weeks. Israel on the eve of war seemed a melancholy place.
Approaching my subject with due humility as a Gentile, I found myself constantly ambushed by conversations that took unexpected directions. If you get a good interview, you milk it for all it is worth, and Rabbi Ken Spiro was a natural. He swept me through the great panorama from Abraham to the Diaspora with all the flair for the pithy phrase you would expect from a New York-born immigrant. Then he offered this view on the coming of the Messiah and the Rebuilding of the Temple: "We have a maximum 6,000 years for that to happen, we're in the Jewish calendar year 5763, subtract that from 6,000 and you realise we have 237 years left - and that's the maximum deadline, it's like a game show, you press the button and the game's over."
There is a school of thought among liberal East Coast Americans that holds firmly to the conviction that George W Bush is surrounded by mad millenarian enthusiasts, and it came up at lunch last weekend with the distinguished New York novelist Reggie Nadelson. Reggie, who is Jewish, is determined to frustrate what she regards as right-wing lunacy, and she has spotted a vulnerable point in the theology of the End of Days. "All the Jews have to go back to Israel [before it can happen]," she points out, "and I am just going to refuse. I'll say I am having lunch or something." We were eating in a rather grand restaurant in Wandsworth, London, and the common behind her was looking spring-like, full of families enjoying the Saturday sun. I now have an enduring image of Reggie sitting there stubbornly enjoying some inappropriate delicacy from the menu while the rest of humanity awaits the coming of the Messiah with growing frustration - like passengers whose flight is delayed because someone has gone eternally missing in duty-free.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock has one of those views of New York that take your breath away. The British mission to the United Nations looks down from a skyscraper on the matchbox shape of the UN building one way, and across the jumbled skyline of midtown Manhattan the other. One might imagine that Sir Jeremy would have more time to enjoy it now his Herculean efforts to get a second resolution on Iraq through the Security Council are over. Malcolm Muggeridge operated on the journalistic principle that "only dead fish swim with the stream" , and since journalism seems to have abandoned the UN for a while, it seemed a good moment to try and find out what really happened when diplomacy died there. Sir Jeremy insists there is still plenty of work going on, but I am rather more convinced by his colleague, who told me that a war is the most miserable time to be a diplomat: you are in the middle of a maelstrom, but you cannot influence events until politics begin again. The tours at the UN building are in full swing this week: as the groups are lectured by guides in the Security Council Chamber, I come away with the impression of a giant museum.
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