The first time I visited Cairo, 48 years ago, I stayed at the old Imperial. It was not much of a hotel. In fact, a colleague once threw his breakfast tray down the lift shaft as a reproof to the kitchen staff.

This time, I did rather better, staying at the Mena House in Giza. When I arrived after midnight and was shown to my first-floor suite, I walked onto the spacious balcony and found myself staring up at the Great Pyramid. I admit I was impressed.

Built by the Khedive Ismail as a hunting lodge, Mena House was used by many of the royals who attended the opening of the Suez Canal by Empress Eugénie of France in 1869. She herself stayed at the Gezira Palace, not far away, where she was provided with an exact copy of her own apartments in Paris. Ismail wanted her to feel at home.

Mena House has been in the eye of history ever since. Winston Churchill met Roosevelt there in 1943 to plan the allied invasion of Europe, and Montgomery worked on his strategy for El Alamein. Each had his own suite, and the rooms are virtually unchanged aside from the addition of some entertaining memorabilia: Churchill’s is hung with black-and-white photographs of the great man in his siren suit and broad-brimmed hat, while the Montgomery Suite includes a Heath Robinson-type loo — handy in case of a sudden attack of gippy tummy.

Quite a lot has changed in 48 years. On the Nile you see far fewer feluccas, those infinitely graceful, ancient craft that tack their way slowly and silently upriver. And I don’t like the way the monstrous new hotels crowd the banks of the immortal waterway like so many importunate dragomen.

There’s something eternal and unchangeable about the river itself, though. Sitting sipping a glass of delicious cold white Egyptian wine on the river one evening, watching the egrets flying home to roost over the red-gold water, I realised what a sense of calm and well-being the Nile instils.

The wine, incidentally, has improved remarkably. So has the traffic. An ingenious system of over- and underpasses means you can speed from one side of Cairo — estimated population 14m — to the other in 30 minutes. It used to take hours.

Another development is more delicate. Previously, the belly dancers had their shimmying tummies swathed in a sort of fine net mesh, as a sop to the puritans; now, they wiggle and wobble before the popeyed customers uncensored.

Descending to the dining room for dinner, we were placed right in front of the band, almost on the dancefloor. The belly dancer — young, buxom and enormously energetic — writhed and wriggled like a dervish under our noses, her tummy engagingly bare. Great fun, until she suddenly reached out and dragged me onto the floor, where, I’m afraid, I did less than justice to the national art form. A Japanese businessman who followed me into the spotlight produced a more enthusiastic performance, a cross between a Highland fling and a military quickstep.

The changes extend to the pyramids themselves. On my first visit, my guide led me into the heart of the Great Pyramid, which meant scrambling up a claustrophobic tunnel into the central burial chamber. Once there, he demonstrated the echo with a deafening shout, which startled me and made him laugh. Today, access to the Great Pyramid is restricted to about 300 visitors a day, on a first come, first served basis. We failed to arrive in time, so I was denied the chance of a repeat performance. Just as well, on reflection. It is an exhausting ascent.

Nor are tourists allowed to clamber about on the pyramid itself, unlike the days in the 1920s when Joe Campbell, an American wrestler, used to train by running up the pyramid every morning and performing handstands on the top. In 1928, the Prince of Wales, after a swim in the hotel pool, climbed up the Great Pyramid and drove a golf ball off the summit for the first time.

I also swam in the vast pool, but otherwise we contented ourselves with taking photographs and avoiding the attentions of the dragomen, although they seemed less persistent than of old. I remembered one exchange: “You like ride camel?” “No thanks.” “You want change money?” “No.” “My sister very nice, you like?” Dignified silence. “You like boy, yes?” “Oh, go away.” Now it was merely: “You like postcard, mister?” Pity, really. It was more amusing in the old days.

FORSAKING THE comforts of Mena House, I flew across the desert to inspect a new resort, 20 miles south of Hurghada on the Red Sea. It was called Sahl Hasheesh. Did this mean we were expected to smoke the weed, I asked in jest. “No, it’s just the name of the place,” I was told rather lamely.

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