Old and new,near and far, East and West, Tangier looks across to Europe from the gates of Africa.In Roman times, the Emperor Augustus proclaimed it a free city, the Portuguese gave it to England as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza in 1471, but by the late 1600's finding its curious system of lawlessness beyond their understanding or control, the English, in a fit of exasperation, abandoned it to the Moors, or to be more precise, the pirates of the Barbary Coast. The French, in turn, granted it its own form of government, and so it went on, a place of unbridled free enterprise, a wildly cosmopolitan yet oddly peaceable haven for pirate, smuggler, gun runner, honest tradesman and pleasure seekers alike. Although intergrated into the Kingdom of Morocco in 1956 it remains a free port to this day, a glorious mix of people, of tastes and scents and flavors from around the world.

The ex-patriates - English aristocracy, American socialites, Europeans of every stamp, painters, writers, rock stars and villains - Samuel Pepys, Delacroix Matisse, Saent Saens, Rimsky Korsakov, Edith Wharton, Gertrude Stein, William Burroughs, Paul Bowls, Tennessee Williams, Barbara Hutton, David Herbert, Francis Bacon, The Beatles, The Stones - all demanded satisfaction of their every whim - right down to the infamous Krays who required Bangers and Mash the way their mother, Violet, used to prepare them in Vallance Road, London, E2. But that is the point of Tangier - an exotic locale where the rules are never quite what you expect.