Travel
Where the young rich flee to
If Elon Musk gets his way, and Mars becomes our newest New World, I had always assumed that the people…
The adventures of the indomitable Dorothy Mills
The society rebel with a fondness for cross-dressing travelled widely in Africa, South America and the Middle East, dying in 1959, aged 70, with bags packed for the next expedition
The Gen-Z fliers obsessed with maximising their air miles
Oscar, 26, joins me on Google Meet from Buenos Aires, having arrived earlier that day from New York – by…
How to ski when you can’t ski
I was 30 when I first went skiing, and up for absolutely anything. I was a successful party caterer who…
Colombia is a better place to watch football than Loftus Road
I’ve just returned from Colombia, where I’ve been visiting my daughter. She’s doing a modern languages degree and has to…
In defence of BA’s new loyalty scheme
One of my favourite cartoons shows a couple sitting in luxury at the front of a plane, the wife peeking…
My YouTube rabbit hole
How do you live with yourself when 179 air passengers are burned alive on a South Korean runway, and you’ve…
At 61, it’s official: I’m ‘young old’
I read with some disappointment recently that the Encyclopaedia Britannica considers 61 – the age I am now – to…
Albania has long lived in Italy’s shadow
Albanians are descended from the most ancient of European peoples, the Illyrians. The country came into existence only after 1912…
Are you a hotel buffet bandit?
Last week, on a Swedish train somewhere between Linkoping and Mjolby, as I struggled to open a bag of cheesy…
Two young men in flight: Partita and A Winter in Zürau, by Gabriel Josipovici reviewed
Kafka, spitting blood, escapes Prague to join his sister in Bohemia, and a fictional lover flees the wrath of an outraged husband in Josipovici’s delightful two-in-one trick
A marriage of radical minds: the creative partnership of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson
Fanny’s influence on her husband’s work was considerable, perhaps especially in the fine late novellas, rich in ironies about imperialism and the exploitation of South Sea islanders
The rootlessness that haunts the children of immigrants
Edward Wong tries to connect with his Chinese heritage by retracing his father’s military postings before the Great Famine – but finds the country too changed to make comparisons
Keep Michelin men out of our hotels!
It’s probably escaped most people’s attention, what with the football, the election, the Ukraine war, the horrors of Gaza, the…
‘I’m a hypocrite and a total fraud’ – the confessions of a French Surrealist poet
My writing is mere bricolage … whatever I do, I only half do’, wails Michel Leiris in the final volume of his self-lacerating autobiography
The day I met a sun priest
Palomino, Colombia I’m in a truly wonderful place: the Caribbean coast of Colombia. It’s got more bird species than most…
A brief glimpse of secretive Myanmar
Taking advantage of a relatively open period after the 2015 election, Claire Hammond explored the country’s interior through its complex, unofficial railway network
How to hack your summer holiday
Since it’s June, here is your cut-out-and-keep guide to hacking your summer holiday. One possibility. Don’t bother. Unless you have…
The pleasure of reliving foreign travel through food
Russian hand pies, Polish chlodnik, Turkish fruit compote and a Latvian trifle are among the many dishes recreated in Edinburgh by the globetrotting Caroline Eden
Tourists are the new pariahs
Think of Majorca and what do you picture? Maybe it is elegant tapas bars in the Gothic quarter of Palma,…
My summer of love with God’s gift
Studying in Russia in 1994, Viv Groskop falls in love with a Ukrainian rock guitarist named Bogdan Bogdanovich and accompanies him on a visit home
How to solve ‘range anxiety’
In ‘The Adventure of Silver Blaze’, Sherlock Holmes mentions ‘the curious incident of the dog in the night-time’. ‘But the…
Following Napoleon: my exile in St Helena
St Helena In an attempt to escape from the world, I have come with friends to St Helena. It is quite…
Alone and defenceless: the tragic death of Captain Cook
Striding ashore unarmed showed courage that bordered on recklessness. But it was a kind of theatre Cook relished on his travels - and, famously, it didn’t always work
The true valour needed to go on pilgrimage in Britain
Oliver Smith finds sanctity in remote peninsulas and holy islands, but is less impressed by the tacky ephemera that decorate our more accessible shrines
