The truth behind Netflix’s controversial new Cleopatra series

The water sloshing around in the extravagant arc of the bay is not the colour of Ibizan afternoons, Côte d’Azur cocktail hours or Kefalonian sunsets caught in Instagram filters. It is a sullen grey, mouldering occasionally to a dreary blue – though it seems to turn the green of pea soup and wet school-dinner cabbage when the currents really churn. Behind me, Alexandria is in no better mood to play the Mediterranean postcard. The traffic is slow and sulky on the seafront Corniche, Egypt’s second city slogging through its morning...