Travel

Look out below: one of The Hague’s gargoyles

Look beyond ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ in The Hague

10 October 2015 9:00 am

What a fate it is to be hung next to the most famous painting in a gallery. To be overlooked,…

Max Hastings’s diary: How sporting tourists play into Nicola Sturgeon’s hands

12 September 2015 9:00 am

During our annual odyssey around the Scottish Highlands, I read Tears of the Rajas, Ferdinand Mount’s eloquent indictment of imperial…

Tristram Hunt’s diary: The rainy glories of Devon – and a cold political climate

5 September 2015 9:00 am

‘Devon, Devon, Devon/ Where it rains six days out of seven.’ Nothing beats a British seaside holiday. And north Devon…

Dublin: a small town wrapped in a great city

Theatre, gossip and Guinness: the craic of Dublin

5 September 2015 9:00 am

What a delight it is to toy with a wooden newspaper-holder rather than a smartphone, tucked away in the cosy…

Escape Antigua’s tourists (but be ready to confront some grim secrets)

22 August 2015 9:00 am

‘Tourism, tourism and tourism,’ said my Antiguan cab driver, when I asked what the country’s main industries were. Still, it’s…

Dear Mary: Is there a tactful way to tell a dear cousin she needs a lump removed from her face?

22 August 2015 9:00 am

Q. How can you tactfully tell someone that the large skin tag or blob they have grown in the centre…

The Alster: Hamburg’s centrepiece

Wealthy, cosmopolitan – and sometimes rough: the secrets of Hamburg (and my grandmother)

15 August 2015 9:00 am

‘What was it like growing up in Liverpool?’ a journalist asked John Lennon. ‘I didn’t grow up in Liverpool,’ he…

Prue Leith’s diary: When did weddings stop being for parents?

8 August 2015 9:00 am

My Cambodian daughter and her husband have just got married again. Wedding One was a Buddhist affair in our drawing…

Tripe, pale tawny port and LSD: the delicious flavours of Oporto

8 August 2015 9:00 am

‘When he’s away, the thing he misses about Porto is the tripe.’ I was talking to Eduarda Sandeman, wife of…

The wonders of the Muslim world that my children will never get to see

1 August 2015 9:00 am

I celebrated Eid in a sandy bay in Sri Lanka, watching from the warm, shallow sea as gaggles of local…

Look homeward, angel: Glasgow Necropolis

The graveyard where old Glasgow lives on

1 August 2015 9:00 am

A wet walk in a Glaswegian graveyard might not be your idea of fun, but then you might not have…

Please don’t faint: Florence at sunset

The first things you should do in Florence

25 July 2015 9:00 am

The British have always been in love with Florence. First visits cannot disappoint. One friend recalls being herded around as…

Venetian restaurants know I’m English from the back

25 July 2015 9:00 am

The Gatto Nero — or ‘Black Cat’ — is in Burano, a tiny island in the Venetian lagoon. It is…

Susan Hill’s French notebook: My struggle to avoid local cuisine

11 July 2015 9:00 am

An overnight stop on the Ile de Ré taken between the St Malo ferry and the Quercy, where we always…

Tides of wealth: Polzeath beach

Would Betjeman recognise anything about today’s north Cornwall?

11 July 2015 9:00 am

In a documentary filmed at the end of his life, Sir John Betjeman, who lived in the village of Trebetherick…

Let's fight terror - by holidaying in gorgeous, welcoming Tunisia

4 July 2015 9:00 am

It needs – and deserves – British visitors more than ever

Brugge: best not to call it Bruges

Woe betide you if you try to speak French in Flanders

27 June 2015 9:00 am

Usually, one of the first indications that you’ve entered a bilingual country is that the road signs are in two…

‘Jeddah from the sea’— sketch by Thomas Machell in one of his journals

A Victorian sailor is the new love of my life

27 June 2015 9:00 am

Jenny Balfour Paul is an indigo dye expert. She has written two books on the subject, and lectures around the…

How very English: picnics at Glyndebourne

Country house picnics (with some ace opera attached)

20 June 2015 9:00 am

I stole a blanket last night. Rather a nice one, in fact. I feel bad about it, of course, but…

Cunard – a triumph of steam-age privatisation

30 May 2015 9:00 am

Steam privatisation Cunard celebrated its 175th birthday by sailing three liners down the Mersey. The formation of the Cunard Line…

Alpine joys in summer

You don’t have to be super-rich to enjoy St Moritz in summer

30 May 2015 9:00 am

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!

23 May 2015 9:00 am

 Kiev ‘What the hell’s going to happen to your poor country?’ I ask the man in the flea market not…

Guild houses in the Grote Markt, Antwerp

Antwerp: the compact, charming capital of a country that doesn’t quite exist yet

23 May 2015 9:00 am

Napoleon didn’t think much of Antwerp. ‘Scarcely a European city at all,’ he scoffed. If only he could see it…

A beautiful maze: Marseille’s Old Town

The pleasures of getting lost in Marseille

2 May 2015 9:00 am

If you haven’t been lost in Marseille then you can’t have been there. As Alexandre Dumas wrote, this is a…

Møns Klint as painted by Claudia Massie

‘Was the baby naughty?’: Gory frescoes, spectacular cliffs and herring with a toddler in Denmark

18 April 2015 9:00 am

The sky over the island of Møn, which is at the bottom right of Denmark, was cobalt and the whitewashed…