Travel
The wonders of the Muslim world that my children will never get to see
I celebrated Eid in a sandy bay in Sri Lanka, watching from the warm, shallow sea as gaggles of local…
The graveyard where old Glasgow lives on
A wet walk in a Glaswegian graveyard might not be your idea of fun, but then you might not have…
The first things you should do in Florence
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
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
An overnight stop on the Ile de Ré taken between the St Malo ferry and the Quercy, where we always…
Would Betjeman recognise anything about today’s north Cornwall?
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
It needs – and deserves – British visitors more than ever
Woe betide you if you try to speak French in Flanders
Usually, one of the first indications that you’ve entered a bilingual country is that the road signs are in two…
A Victorian sailor is the new love of my life
Jenny Balfour Paul is an indigo dye expert. She has written two books on the subject, and lectures around the…
Country house picnics (with some ace opera attached)
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
Steam privatisation Cunard celebrated its 175th birthday by sailing three liners down the Mersey. The formation of the Cunard Line…
You don’t have to be super-rich to enjoy St Moritz in summer
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: the compact, charming capital of a country that doesn’t quite exist yet
Napoleon didn’t think much of Antwerp. ‘Scarcely a European city at all,’ he scoffed. If only he could see it…
The pleasures of getting lost in Marseille
If you haven’t been lost in Marseille then you can’t have been there. As Alexandre Dumas wrote, this is a…
‘Was the baby naughty?’: Gory frescoes, spectacular cliffs and herring with a toddler in Denmark
The sky over the island of Møn, which is at the bottom right of Denmark, was cobalt and the whitewashed…
Introducing the first Spectator readers’ 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 – and if we’re lucky, other problems will too
In the late 1980s, the parks service in the United States were concerned about the deterioration of the stonework on…
Airport wars: why I'm betting on Gatwick
Easter is a good time to talk about airports — or perhaps a bad time, if you bought your Spectator…
Letter from Cuba: The tourists are coming – but don’t expect Walmart just yet
Sloppy Joe’s — which starred in the film of Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana — was always likely to…
Tourists are trickling back to Egypt – to beat the crowds, go now
Egypt’s revolution of 2011 didn’t just get rid of President Mubarak: it did a pretty good job of clearing out…
Rise early to see the Vatican at its best
The sun has only just risen in Rome and we are standing bleary-eyed in a short queue outside the Vatican.…
Jeffrey Archer’s diary: a pirate at the traffic lights, and other Indian wonders
This last week, in India, I visited six cities in seven days: Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Calcutta and New Delhi.…
Seeing Paris through Impressionist eyes
The spectre of the Charlie Hebdo killings still hangs over Paris. Outside the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, opposite the…
Grim, generous, decaying and hip: the paradoxical charms of Athens
My first visit to Athens as a student gave me a set of impressions that the present crisis has only…
