Continuing our time-travel through London’s pernicious past, here are a few ominous outings our forefathers might have enjoyed: Newgate prison and Execution dock Take an excursion to Newgate prison to gawk at inmates: Daniel Defoe sat here (for poking fun at the Tories), as did [...]
It’s a chilly, windy evening. Maybe that’s why we’re only six. Six people about to walk through 700 years of London’s criminal history. Jason, a qualified London guide for 13 years, is tall and gangly and reminds me of Hugh Grant. Same wavy hair and [...]
It's a late Friday night in London, and I'm in an Indian restaurant in Gloucester Road. ... drinking a milk shake. I could be doing more interesting things, of course. But the possibilities seem a bit civilised and, dare I say it, dull - compared [...]
It's early evening in the village surrounding Qal’at al-Bahrain. The creatively decorated houses remind me of pictures in fairy-tales, especially through the filter of the setting sun. Five horsemen appear out of the dusk in front of the silhouette of a large 16th century Portuguese [...]
The British Museum is one of my favourite museums in the world. Yet, like many museums in the western world, the British Museum should probably return some of the artefacts to their country of origin. One of these is the Rosetta Stone, a stele from [...]
I'm in Pyramiden, once a showcase of the Soviet Union, a perfect mining community, set between mountains, glaciers and fjords in the Svalbard archipelago. Today, it's an Arctic ghost town. The decision to abandon the settlement was sudden, its implementation even more so. The inhabitants [...]
In Barri Vell, the old town, narrow alleys and medieval stairs appear around every corner. Suddenly I stumble upon this wonderful, dusty antiquarian bookshop.
