Dan Jones: Our struggles pale in comparison to what Jerusalem has gone through

As we cruise through the Judean hills, sighting Ramallah to the north, our driver points out a military watchtower. “For snipers,” he says. “Most are women. You know why they use women?” We shake our heads. “Women don’t hesitate.”

And so Jerusalem got to us before we got to it. The road from the airport in Tel Aviv is clear but the barbed wire and long stretches of wall separating Israel from the West Bank set the tone. Tension and territorialism. Ancient disputes folded into the fabric of everyday life. It’s calm at the moment but I keep remembering the line from James Joyce’s Ulysses: “History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I’m trying to awake.”

It had been nearly 20 years since I’d visited the Holy City and my memories from that time were only of being herded in and out of a succession of empty tombs before later plunging into the Dead Sea. This time there are still many tombs to examine, including Christ’s shrine in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Virgin’s in the Kidron Valley; I also get caught up one morning in a procession of elderly Brazilian women lamenting behind their slightly hunky pastor, carrying a cross along the cramped streets of the Via Dolorosa.

But my most frequent experience is being shooed away. Hustled past the Wailing Wall and scolded for not passing through the security gates quickly enough. Bundled out of the way of Franciscans droning beside the Edicule in the Holy Sepulchre. Hissed at for stepping too close to the portico of al-Aqsa Mosque, then waved away when I poke my head into the Islamic museum next door.

Jerusalem is a place of deep importance to the three great Abrahamic religions, and the only thing they seem to agree on is that it would be best if I buggered off.

Probably they have a point. And I’m not complaining. A few days in Jerusalem yield more wondrous sights than I have seen in almost any other city. We eat like kings, walk around 30km every day and get tattoos from Razzouk, the shop by the Jaffa Gate that has inked pilgrim hipsters since 1300AD. Then we return to London reflecting that no matter how divided Britain seems today, we don’t have it too bad.

You can’t beat a daddy’s girl, Harry

Plaudits to Prince Harry for telling a well-wisher that he would prefer a girl as his firstborn. When I was fretting before the first of my daughters arrived, a late and much-missed acquaintance gave me the sage advice. “You think you want a son but there’s nothing like a daddy’s girl,” he said.

His words — the apparent progressiveness cloaked in the language of patriarchy and possession — have possibly not dated that well. But the sentiment was right, and so is Harry.

Girls rule.

Folk captures the folly of the Trump era

My tickets are booked for the stage performance of Anaïs Mitchell’s brilliant 2010 album Hadestown, which opens at the National Theatre in a couple of weeks’ time, directed by Rachel Chavkin. The show is here for a couple of months before heading back to Broadway.

Catch it if you can, because Hadestown is one of the most beguiling folk/alternative albums of the past decade, one I would have worn out with repeat plays were we in the age of vinyl and CD (as it is, it makes my Spotify subscription feel like it’s worth every penny).

That’s good going for a concept album about the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice piped through a vision of 21st-century America, composed during the George W Bush years but suited to the age of Trump. Its catchiest refrain is “Why We Build The Wall”. Mitchell plays a one-off gig on Sunday but it’s sold out. If you see me begging on the South Bank, you’ll know why.

Scale the heights like George Mallory

A tantalising exhibition opens at the Royal Geographical Society in Kensington on Monday — photographs captured on the 1921 expedition to Mount Everest and the surrounding area.

This was the first of George Mallory’s three visits to Everest — he died on the slopes attacking the summit in 1924.

If you’re going to the show, do also take a copy of Into the Silence by Wade Davis, an epic account of suicidally brave climbers who survived the horrors of the First World War and went in search of the top of the world.