Carlos holds a portrait of Filipino ‘national hero’, Jose Rizal Photo © Andy Brown/2011/Philippines

When I think of the great histories of the world – the Roman civil war of the First Century BC, the ‘Three Kingdoms’ of Imperial China, the British Raj and the partition of India – the Philippines doesn’t get much of a look in. But this oft-neglected corner of the world has a fascinating heritage that occasionally places it at the heart of global events in surprising ways.

I was first introduced to Filipino history in 2009 by Carlos Celdran, the self-styled ‘Pied Piper of Manila’, his diminutive figure and larger-than-life character dressed up in Nineteenth Century top hat and tails. Every week, Carlos takes tourists and locals around Manila’s handful of historic buildings – those that survived World War II – and treats them to, not so much a tour, as a piece of stand-up political theatre.

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