Kolkata has been called a city of furious energy, the city of joy, a dying city. It is teeming, intense, broken and modern, old British empire and a stronghold of Bengali pride and culture. It’s crumbling and developing, wealthy and poor. It’s digested a tragic history but has a unique soul where it’s almost obligatory…
In 1918, my grandfather and seven other British officers escaped from a Turkish prisoner of war camp. That was the easy part. They then faced 450 miles of deadly heat, hostile terrain and trigger-happy brigands.
Exploring abandoned and restored industrial railway heritage in south Scotland and Yorkshire.
Daily winter encounters with the local murder of crows, and exploring crow folklore.
Once, London was a city of horses. Humans lived cheek by jowl with the 300,000 horses of cabmen, traders, laundrymen, grocers and rag-and-bone men. You can see the traces of that time everywhere: old stone drinking troughs, hidden cobbled mews, mounting blocks, slips and ramps.
Dreams, gods, ghost guards, emperors, a lovestruck moon – tea has a rich and often macabre heritage of superstition and stories.
Finding ghosts and spirits at a Victorian séance in one of Britian’s oldest music halls.
How a friendship inspired the great Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, to write a poem about a Scottish naval hero.
This town has an abandoned harbour, lost-in-time cafes, a train junkyard, old-world cinema and an astonishing annual fair. You’ve probably never heard of it (unless you live in central Scotland).
Bedlam is at the end of the road, but that’s the least of it.
An amateur dabbler goes tree-planting on Knoydart, mending Scotland’s ecological damage one sapling at a time. Souls were nearly bartered for dry socks.
Celebrating new English football, drunken tales of the Tartan Army and looking forward to a football homecoming to Glasgow in 2020.
