Travel
A twinge of fear, and a glimpse of a harsher world
I celebrated Eid in a sandy bay in Sri Lanka, watching from the warm, shallow sea as gaggles of local…
Glasgow
A wet walk in a Glaswegian graveyard might not be your idea of fun, but then you might not have…
Florence
The British have always been in love with Florence. First visits cannot disappoint. One friend recalls being herded around as…
Trattoria tour
The Gatto Nero — or ‘Black Cat’ — is in Burano, a tiny island in the Venetian lagoon. It is…
French Notebook
An overnight stop on the Ile de Ré taken between the St Malo ferry and the Quercy, where we always…
North Cornwall
In a documentary filmed at the end of his life, Sir John Betjeman, who lived in the village of Trebetherick…
Don’t abandon Tunisia!
It needs – and deserves – British visitors more than ever
Flanders
Usually, one of the first indications that you’ve entered a bilingual country is that the road signs are in two…
Into the blue
Jenny Balfour Paul is an indigo dye expert. She has written two books on the subject, and lectures around the…
Country house opera
I stole a blanket last night. Rather a nice one, in fact. I feel bad about it, of course, but…
Barometer
Steam privatisation Cunard celebrated its 175th birthday by sailing three liners down the Mersey. The formation of the Cunard Line…
St Moritz
Here’s a tip: when travelling to St Moritz, it’s best not to mention the name of your final destination to…
Calling all British tourists – Ukraine needs you!
Kiev ‘What the hell’s going to happen to your poor country?’ I ask the man in the flea market not…
Antwerp
Napoleon didn’t think much of Antwerp. ‘Scarcely a European city at all,’ he scoffed. If only he could see it…
Marseille
If you haven’t been lost in Marseille then you can’t have been there. As Alexandre Dumas wrote, this is a…
Møn
The sky over the island of Møn, which is at the bottom right of Denmark, was cobalt and the whitewashed…
The first Spectator cruise
It’s a complete recipe for disaster of course. By which I mean being trapped at sea with The Spectator’s ‘Low…
Why plane crashes are getting weirder
In the late 1980s, the parks service in the United States were concerned about the deterioration of the stonework on…
A view from the departure lounge: why Heathrow expansion may never happen
Easter is a good time to talk about airports — or perhaps a bad time, if you bought your Spectator…
Cuba Notebook
Sloppy Joe’s — which starred in the film of Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana — was always likely to…
Egypt
Egypt’s revolution of 2011 didn’t just get rid of President Mubarak: it did a pretty good job of clearing out…
The Vatican
The sun has only just risen in Rome and we are standing bleary-eyed in a short queue outside the Vatican.…
Diary
This last week, in India, I visited six cities in seven days: Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Calcutta and New Delhi.…
Impressionist Paris
The spectre of the Charlie Hebdo killings still hangs over Paris. Outside the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, opposite the…
Athens
My first visit to Athens as a student gave me a set of impressions that the present crisis has only…
