Caution

 

Who is that woman? Why - it's Beverly Macklin of course - the famous travel writer that nobody had ever heard of. Or is it?

Before we visited Egypt, I thought it would be helpful to purchase a guide book that dealt specifically with the stretch of The Nile between Luxor and Aswan. On Amazon Books, I thought I had struck lucky when I located "Nile River Cruise Travel Guide 2026" by Beverly Macklin. It was quite expensive for a thin volume - costing me £13 or $17US but I thought - what the hell - we'll only be in Egypt once and if the book helpfully informs our visit then it will be money well-spent.

And so the book arrived at our house. I read the 141 pages in two days and it was quite a pleasant publication to read. The style, like the typeface  was fluent and easy. However it kept repeating itself and what is  more it only gave me a broad brushstroke sense of what our Nile cruise might be like. There were no nitty gritty details about accessing ancient sites such as Edfu temple, particular things to look out for in The Valley of the Kings, potential issues with mosquitoes, the best places to buy souvenirs, cuisine highlights  - that sort of thing. In other words  the very kind of helpful information one would customarily find in a a guidebook worth its salt.

In "About the Author" at the front of the book it says, "Beverly Macklin is a travel writer, storyteller, and keen observer of culture, drawn to hidden paths and the untold stories that linger behind every winding road, quiet village and bustling street. With a deep respect for local traditions and an attentive eye for practical advice, Beverly creates travel guides that transcend mere itineraries - they invite readers into a journey of understanding, connection and shared curiosity."

But where was this "practical advice" and how come the great Beverly Macklin has left no other traces of her life within the world wide web?  

I am almost certain that "Nile River Cruise Travel Guide 2026" was created with the aid of A.I. and equally certain that I, along with many others, have been duped by "people" like "Beverly Macklin". The book was "Printed in the United States of America"  but no publishing house is mentioned. After the index, there's a very basic map of the Egyptian Nile but the trouble is - with my copy anyway - that that map is upside down!

But what about the picture of Beverly Macklin at the top of this blogpost?  It can be found in "her" Amazon author details. Out of curiosity, I ran a Google image search over it and discovered that this very same woman appears in several publications, websites  and nooks and crannies within the internet.

Here she is in the banner of a Brazilian  plastic surgery unit in Sao Paulo - Hospital de Olhos...

And here she is an an Arabic lifestyle  magazine where there was an acknowledgement that the picture had been taken from a well-known image library called "Freepix"...

The book is no longer available via Amazon but surprise, surprise there are several new books listed under the very same title - "Nile River Cruise Travel Guide 2026"- but by different "authors" such as the previously never known Harriet Binsky, Gladys Kirk, George Bartholomew and Noel P. Greene. All of these travel "writers" are as elusive as Beverly Macklin.

In short, it's all a scam so be warned my friends. I might become George Bartholomew myself and ask ChatGPT to create several 140 page travel guides about places as varied as Red Deer in Canada, Trelawnyd in Wales and Melbourne in Australia. They should all be  spewed out in five minutes flat thanks to A.I..