Welcome back, to us all - to our desks, offices, computers, places of work, wherever they might be.  A working Christmas and New Year, saw me slipping away for a little sun to warm my bones while I finished the draft of CITADEL.  In my hotel room in Taba Heights, on the Sinai Peniusula, I immediately rearranged the furniture to turn the bedroom into a home-from-home office.  A view, above my computer screen, of hibiscus, palm trees alive with sparrows and white ring bulbuls and pied wagtails. Beyond, sand and the Red Sea and the rocky outline of Saudi Arabia opposite. It was an inspiring place to work and to decide which sections of the novel were properly finished, and which needed a little more work. This is partly because of the sheer volume of words (180,000 on average) and partly because it's often only when you know your characters really well, you know your plot really well, that the little extra twists and turns that transform a scene become clear.

I did however find time to visit St Catherine's Monastery, the oldest monastical institution in the world.  A centre of Greek Orthodoxy, the monastery has been in continuous use since the sixth century CE.  Built in the era of Justininan (527 - 565 CE), in the heart of the Sinai Desert, its survival is due in part to the fact that men of power - from the Prophet Mohammed in the 7th century CE to Napoleon in the early 19th century - took the monastery under their protection.  Within the walls, there is a Mosque as well as the Basilica and the murals are testament to the Moslem, Christian and Ottoman protectors of the site.

It is said to be the site of the Burning Bush and the Golden Calf, mysterious marks on the rock wall of the desert to the east of the monastery. Now, only the Church itself, the gardens and a small exhibition are open to the public.  The famous charnel house - which holds the skulls of the brother monks who lived out their lives within the monastery walls for generations, centuries - is closed, as are the Bell Tower, the old Refectory and the ancient library.  A religious treasure trove, it is second in significance only to the library of the Vatican. It holds some 3000 ancient texts in Greek, Arabic, Syriac, Georgian, Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian, Slavonic and Latin. The most important volume is the Codex Syriacus, dating from the 5th century CE, which is the the oldest translation of the Gospels, discovered in 1892. There are also some 5000 books, many of them produced in the first decades after the invention of printing.

But for me, the highlight of the visit, was the Icon Gallery. There, in the peace and quiet away from the crowds, I saw painted screens, triptychs, artefacts dating back as far as the early Byzantine Period. Most wonderful of all, though, was looking at a fourth century Codex, the papyrus thin beneath the glass.  When you read CITADEL, you will understand why seeing this beautiful and ancient object - on 31st December 2011 - meant so much.