Sailing
Four months adrift in the Pacific: a couple’s extraordinary feat of endurance
When a freak occurrence wrecked the Baileys’ sloop 300 miles from the Galapagos, their chances of rescue were minimal – and one of them couldn’t even swim
An elegy on yachting
Patmos A very long time ago I wrote in these here pages that spending a summer on the Riviera or…
Sailing’s coming home: the stunning Ben Ainslie comeback
Alan Bond was a rogue and a rich man, in every way your typical Aussie larrikin. In 1983 he bankrolled…
How the NHS has coped with the second wave
Across Europe, hospitals have been filling up again with the second wave of coronavirus. France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and the…
Gales and Gaels — sailing solo from Cornwall to the Summer Isles
This is the story of a solo voyage in a 31ft- wooden sailing boat called Tsambika. Philip Marsden pilots his…
Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, master of the seas and model Englishman
Something very odd happened on the Today programme the other morning. Amid the mountains of bombast that usually fill the…
High Life
Greece I am surfing along the Cycladic islands on Puritan, a 125ft classic that was launched in 1929 by…
Introducing the silent narrator
Andrew Miller’s seventh novel, and the first since Pure, which won the Costa Book of the Year award, is an…
The difficult art of finding the right yacht
To Newport, Rhode Island, the smallest state in the Union but one of the most beautiful. Driving north-east from the…
The Olympic spirit may be dead in Ibiza, but at least the hookers are world-class
Ibiza This island is the Spanish equivalent of the Greek sex rock of Mykonos, except its waters are murkier, its…
Alexander McCall Smith’s diary: Meeting Babar’s creator
As any author will tell you, literary festivals differ widely. If you are invited to Willy Dalrymple’s Jaipur Festival, with…
